Ducat

Bern's late seventeenth-century ducats were issued under the authority of the city's ruling patriciate — a closed oligarchy that had consolidated power so completely by 1697 that fewer than a hundred families controlled both the civic government and its coinage. The ducat served Bern's substantial mercenary trade, as the city-state derived enormous income from renting soldiers to foreign powers, particularly France, and hard gold coin was the preferred medium for those contracts.

HMZ 1#2-188h places this among a tightly sequenced die study; the 188 series spans several years with subtle shield and legend variations that require direct comparison to distinguish reliably.