Double Pistole - Charles IV

Charles IV came to the ducal throne in 1624 and almost immediately began maneuvering between the Habsburgs and the French crown with a recklessness that would eventually cost him his duchy entirely. By 1631, French pressure was already mounting; Richelieu would force the Treaty of Vic later that year, extracting significant territorial concessions from Lorraine. This double pistole was struck in that narrow window before the duchy lost effective independence.

The pistole standard itself followed the Spanish gold escudo weight tradition, adopted across much of Catholic Europe in the sixteenth century and retained in Lorraine into the seventeenth.