5 Batzen

Aargau had only existed as a Swiss canton since 1803, when the Act of Mediation imposed by Napoleon reorganized the Helvetic Republic into a confederation of cantons. This coin is among the earliest independent issues from a jurisdiction that was, at the time of striking, barely five years old. The canton wasted little time establishing its own coinage authority — a pointed assertion of the autonomy Napoleon's restructuring had nominally granted.

The HMZ 2#22c designation distinguishes this as a specific die variant within a short-lived series that was largely superseded as Swiss federal coinage consolidation advanced through the following decades.