6 Stuivers `Arendschelling` - Rudolph II

Nijmegen's right to strike its own coinage was a jealously guarded municipal privilege, and the Arendschelling issues of 1602–1604 fall squarely within the chaotic monetary landscape of the early Dutch Revolt — a period when Spanish authority over the southern provinces had collapsed but unified Northern coinage policy had not yet taken hold. Individual cities still struck under imperial authority nominally attributed to Rudolf II, even as those same cities were actively fighting Habsburg rule. The legal fiction of the emperor's name on a rebel city's coin is about as pointed a contradiction as the period produces.