Thaler - Immobilization in the name of Charles V

Besançon's thalers bearing Charles V's name were struck decades after the emperor's death in 1558 — a deliberate legal fiction. The city held imperial privileges tied specifically to Charles, and by freezing the coinage in his name, the civic authorities avoided triggering the renegotiation of those rights under his successors. This practice of monetary immobilization was not uncommon in the Holy Roman Empire, but Besançon sustained it with unusual persistence across nearly two decades of the Thirty Years' War.

The city was formally ceded to Spain by the Treaty of the Pyrenees in 1659, ending this numismatic anachronism entirely.