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40 Stivers Siege of 1625
| Issuer | City of Breda |
|---|---|
| Year | 1625 |
| Type | Emergency coin |
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| Obverse description | Square klippe flan struck in silver as a siege emergency issue. Central field bears the crowned coat of arms of William of Orange enclosed within a pearled circle. Auxiliary countermarks appear in the corners of the flan, comprising a denomination mark, the civic arms of Breda, and a rose device. The surrounding legend, rendered in Latin, records the denomination, the city name, and the siege date. |
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| Obverse lettering | 40 · BREDA· OBSESSA· I625· (Translation: Breda under Siege) |
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| Additional information |
Breda fell to Spinola's Spanish forces in June 1625 after a nine-month siege — an event famous enough that Velázquez commemorated it in paint a decade later. The city struck these pieces from whatever silver was at hand when conventional supply lines had long collapsed, a practice common to Dutch and Flemish towns caught in the grinding territorial warfare of the Eighty Years' War.
Siege coinage of this period was struck under emergency municipal authority, not state sanction, which explains the issuer attribution to the city itself rather than the States General or the House of Nassau.