5 Baiocchi - Pius VI

By 1797, Pius VI was watching the Papal States collapse in real time. Napoleon's Italian campaign had already stripped Ferrara, Bologna, and the Romagna from papal control under the Treaty of Tolentino signed that February, which also extracted 30 million livres and hundreds of artworks from the Holy See. The Gubbio mint, operating in Umbria, continued striking copper coinage even as the temporal power of the papacy entered what would prove to be its terminal phase — Pius himself would die a French prisoner in Valence two years later.