Double Vierer with shield

Colmar occupied an uncomfortable position throughout the Thirty Years' War — nominally under Habsburg suzerainty but effectively a free imperial city with its own monetary prerogatives. Small billon and silver issues like this double vierer were the daily workhorses of local commerce when larger regional coinage was hoarded or simply unavailable. The city would pass permanently to France under the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, making the later dates of this emission among the final independent municipal coinage struck before French administration absorbed Alsatian civic minting rights.