5 Rappen

Fribourg's cantonal coinage authority was already living on borrowed time when this piece was struck. The Act of Mediation of 1803 had restored cantonal sovereignty after the Helvetic Republic's failed experiment with centralization, but Swiss monetary unification was an inevitability the cantons could not indefinitely resist. Fribourg continued issuing its own small denominations for several more years before federal pressure gradually ended the practice.

Billon coinage of this period varies considerably in silver content depending on the striking date and batch — HMZ cataloguers have noted this across multiple cantonal issues of the early Mediation period.