5 Schillings

Schwyz was one of the three original forest cantons whose 1291 alliance formed the nucleus of the Swiss Confederation, and cantonal coinage remained a jealously guarded privilege well into the late eighteenth century. This 1785 piece was struck under that tradition, decades before the Helvetic Republic of 1798 briefly abolished cantonal sovereignty and swept away the patchwork of local monetary systems that had defined Swiss exchange for centuries.