Real - Enrique II

Enrique II's claim to Castile was contested from the start — he seized the throne from his half-brother Pedro I in a civil war backed by French mercenary companies under Bertrand du Guesclin, and these coins were struck during the first, unstable phase of his rule before Pedro's final defeat and murder at Montiel in 1369. The billon coinage of this period was chronically debased, a direct consequence of the financial strain of financing foreign troops whose wages Enrique could not meet through taxation alone.