8 Escudos - Fernando VII Guadalajara - Royalist Coinage

The Guadalajara mint operated under royalist control through most of the Mexican War of Independence, and its 1821 gold coinage occupies a peculiar historical position: struck in the same year Iturbide's Army of the Three Guarantees swept to victory, these coins were almost certainly being produced as royal authority in the region was already collapsing. Fernando VII never set foot in New Spain and had spent years imprisoned by Napoleon before reclaiming his throne — the crown these coins proclaim was, by 1821, a fiction on Mexican soil.

KM#161.1 distinguishes the Guadalajara issues from contemporaneous strikes at Mexico City and other operating mints. Guadalajara's gold output in this terminal royalist period was limited, and examples seeing sustained circulation were rare given the political upheaval that immediately followed.