Pistole

Geneva's pistole coinage of the 1750s was struck against a backdrop of acute political tension within the republic — the ongoing conflict between the ruling patriciate and the bourgeois and natif classes that would eventually culminate in the revolution of 1782. The city-republic maintained its own gold coinage partly as a deliberate assertion of independence from both French and Savoyard monetary influence, despite being economically entangled with both.

The two HMZ references — 338b and 338c — indicate distinct die varieties across the 1753 and 1754 issues, a split that collectors working the series track carefully.