Ecu - Philip III

Philip III here refers to Philip III of Spain as Count of Luxembourg — the coin predates his actual accession to the Spanish throne by twenty years, issued under the authority of his father Philip II but bearing the younger Philip's comital title. Luxembourg's Spanish Habsburg governors used local silver coinage partly to fund the Army of Flanders, whose mutinies and payroll crises defined the region's monetary history through the 1570s. The 1576 Pacification of Ghent had briefly united the provinces against Spanish rule, and resuming credible coin production was a political act as much as an economic one.

Davenport EC I#8660 places this among the scarcer Luxembourg écus of the period.