Double Pistole - Immobilization in the name of Charles V

Besançon's mint exploited a legal fiction that persisted for over a century: by "immobilizing" the effigy and titulature of Charles V — dead since 1558 — the city's coins technically bore the authority of the Holy Roman Emperor without requiring fresh imperial approval for each new issue. This allowed the Free Imperial City to continue striking gold coinage well into the Thirty Years' War under a face that had been in the grave for generations.

The practice was not unique to Besançon but was carried further here than almost anywhere else in the Empire. The 1625–1652 window covers the worst decades of that war, during which Franche-Comté became a contested buffer between French ambition and Habsburg authority — a tension that would end with Louis XIV's final annexation in 1678.