W. C a r e w H a z l i t t Coinage of the European Continent

Descriptive Outline of the Coinages of Europe 349
employers at one time. For instance, Chur in the beginning
of the seventeenth century was striking money concurrently
for the see, the city, and the feudal lord of Schauenstein-
Ehrenfels in right of his lands in Haldenstein and Lichtenstein
acquired in 1608 and Schaffhausen and Saint-Maurice-
;
Valais were during a long period open to various external
patrons under ancient imperial concessions or by
virtue of
prescription.
The two agencies which chiefly contributed to demoralise
the Swiss coinage, prior to the French Revolution and the
rise of the Helvetic Republic, were the Thirty and Seven
Years' Wars, which led Switzerland to lower its own standard
in the inferior or mixed metals to obviate the danger of
being hampered by the deluge of coins of base alloy circulating
throughout Northern Germany. The effect outlived
the cause ;
and the consequence is before us in a large volume
of uninviting examples, representing the ordinary medium of
exchange during upwards of a century and a half (1620-
1790). The connoisseur may profitably turn over the pages
of the Townshend Catalogue,
1
where we see the vast, yet
imperfect, gleanings of a life, or glance through some of the
public collections at Zurich and elsewhere ;
and he will
perhaps conclude that a select representative group of the
three or four epochs above indicated is sufficient to satisfy
ordinary curiosity and enthusiasm.
The debasement of the coinage and scarcity of specie in
the higher values were sensibly felt
both before and after the
revolutionary era, and the Swiss admitted, within living
memory, the French louis d'or and the Napoleon in the absence
of an adequate local supply, and indeed continue to take the
20 and 5 franc pieces of the Third Republic part passu with
their own new gold issues. The financial exigencies of the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries had the effect of reducing
the stock of old silver currency and checking the output of
1
A Descriptive Catalogue of Swiss Coins in the South Kensington Museum,
bequeathed by the Reverend Chauncy Hare Townshend. Edited by R. S.
Poole. Royal 8vo, 1878. The student will find it useful to refer to Ed. Jenner,
Die Miinzen Der Schweiz, 8vo, Berne, 1879, where he will meet with many
examples and issues not in the other work.