5 Ducats - Christian Brieg

The Piast dukes of Liegnitz-Brieg occupied a precarious position throughout the seventeenth century, caught between Habsburg pressure to re-Catholicize Silesia and their own staunchly Lutheran population. Christian, the last duke, minted heavily during the 1660s and early 1670s — these large gold multiples functioned partly as diplomatic currency, suitable for gift-giving at a court level where silver simply wouldn't do.

Christian died without a legitimate male heir in 1672, and the Habsburgs immediately absorbed the duchy under the terms of the 1537 Erbverbrüderung, a dynastic inheritance treaty the Bohemian crown had contested for over a century. These ducats were struck in the final years before that absorption ended Piast rule in Silesia permanently — a line that had held the territory since the thirteenth century.