(sold for $205.0)

1768, Tuscany, Pietro Leopoldo. Rare Silver Francescone (10 Paoli) Coin. VF-

Mint year: 1768 Mint Place: Pisa, Italy (PISIS) Denomination: Francescone (10 Paoli) Reference: Davenport 4844, CNI 47, KM-C22. R! Ruler: Pietro Leopoldo (the later Emperor Leopold II) Condition: Damage (rough surfaces from heating), heavy scratchesw in reverse (probably removed from jewellery), otherwise VF+ Weight: 26.84gm Diameter: 41mm Material: Silver   Obverse: Large armored and draped profile bust of Pietro Leopoldo as Grand Duke of Tuscany  right.  Privy mark (crossed axes) below. Legend: PETRVS . LEOPOLDVS . D . G . P . R . H . ET . B . A . A . M . D . ETRVRIAE   (privy mark: crossed axes)   Reverse: Crowned and spiked arms of Tuscany surmounted by Toison d'Or Chain. Legend: DIRIGE DOMINE GRESSVS MEOS / PISIS - 1768

Leopold II (5 May 1747 – 1 March 1792), born Peter Leopold Joseph Anton Joachim Pius Gotthard,  was Holy Roman Emperor from 1790 to 1792, King of Hungary, archduke of  Austria, and Grand Duke of Tuscany from 1765 to 1790. He was a son of  Emperor Francis I and his wife, Empress Maria Theresa. Leopold was a  moderate proponent of enlightened absolutism.

Leopold was born in Vienna, a third son, and was at  first educated for the priesthood, but the theological studies to which  he was forced to apply himself are believed to have influenced his mind  in a way unfavourable to the Church. On the death of his elder brother  Charles in 1761, it was decided that he should succeed to his father's  grand duchy of Tuscany, which was erected into a "secundogeniture" or  apanage for a second son. This settlement was the condition of his  marriage on 5 August 1764 with Infanta Maria Luisa of Spain, daughter  of Charles III of Spain and Maria Amalia of Saxony. On the death of his  father Francis I (18 August 1765), he succeeded to the grand duchy.  Leopold was famous in Florence for his numerous extra-marital affairs.  Among his lovers was Countess Cowper, wife of the 3rd Earl Cowper, who  in compensation for being cuckolded was given honors by Leopold's  brother Joseph II.

For five years, he exercised little more than  nominal authority, under the supervision of counsellors appointed by  his mother. In 1770, he made a journey to Vienna to secure the removal  of this vexatious guardianship and returned to Florence with a free  hand. During the twenty years which elapsed between his return to  Florence and the death of his eldest brother Joseph II in 1790, he was  employed in reforming the administration of his small state. The  reformation was carried out by the removal of the ruinous restrictions  on industry and personal freedom imposed by his predecessors of the  house of Medici and left untouched during his father's life, by the  introduction of a rational system of taxation, and by the execution of  profitable public works, such as the drainage of the Val di Chiana. As  he had no army to maintain, and as he suppressed the small naval force  kept up by the Medici, the whole of his revenue was left free for the  improvement of his state. Leopold was never popular with his Italian  subjects. His disposition was cold and retiring. His habits were simple  to the verge of sordidness, though he could display splendour on  occasion, and he could not help offending those of his subjects who had  profited by the abuses of the Medicean régime.

But his steady, consistent, and intelligent  administration, which advanced step by step, brought the grand duchy to  a high level of material prosperity. His ecclesiastical policy, which  disturbed the deeply rooted convictions of his people and brought him  into collision with the pope, was not successful. He was unable to  secularize the property of the religious houses or to put the clergy  entirely under the control of the lay power. However, his abolition of  Capital Punishment was the first permanent abolition in modern times.  On 30 November 1786, after having de facto blocked capital executions  (the last was in 1769), Leopold promulgated the reform of the penal  code that abolished the death penalty and ordered the destruction of  all the instruments for capital execution in his land. Torture was also  banned. In 2000 Tuscany's regional authorities instituted an annual  holiday on 30 November to commemorate the event. The event is also  commemorated on this day by 300 cities around the world celebrating the  Cities for Life Day.

Leopold also approved and collaborated on the  development of a political constitution, said to have anticipated by  many years the promulgation of the French constitution and which  presented some similarities with the Virginia Bill of Rights of 1778.  Leopold's concept of this was based on respect for the political rights  of citizens and on a harmony of power between the executive and the  legislative. However, it could not be put into effect because Leopoldo  moved to Vienna to become emperor in 1790, and because it was so  radically new that it garnered opposition even from those who might  have benefitted from it.

However, Leopold developed and supported many social  and economic reforms. Smallpox vaccination was made systematically  available, and an early institution for the rehabilitation of juvenile  delinquents was founded. Leopold also introduced radical reforms to the  system of neglect and inhumane treatment of those deemed mentally ill.  On 23 January 1774, the "legge sui pazzi" (law on the insane) was  established, the first of its kind to be introduced in all Europe,  allowing steps to be taken to hospitalize individuals deemed insane. A  few years later Leopold undertook the project of building a new  hospital, the Bonifacio. He used his skill at choosing collaborators to  put a young physician, Vincenzo Chiarugi, at its head. Chiarugi and his  collaborators introduced new humanitarian regulations in the running of  the hospital and caring for the mentally ill patients, including  banning the use of chains and physical punishment, and in so doing have  been recognized as early pioneers of what later came to be known as the  moral treatment movement.

During the last few years of his rule in Tuscany,  Leopold had begun to be frightened by the increasing disorders in the  German and Hungarian dominions of his family, which were the direct  result of his brother's headlong methods. He and Joseph II were  tenderly attached to one another and met frequently both before and  after the death of their mother. The portrait by Pompeo Batoni in which  they appear together shows that they bore a strong personal resemblance  to one another. But it may be said of Leopold, as of Fontenelle, that  his heart was made of brains. He knew that he must succeed his  childless eldest brother in Austria, and he was unwilling to inherit  his unpopularity. When, therefore, in 1789 Joseph, who knew himself to  be dying, asked him to come to Vienna and become co-regent, Leopold  coldly evaded the request.

He was still in Florence when Joseph II died at  Vienna on 20 February 1790, and he did not leave his Italian capital  until 3 March 1790.

Leopold, during his government in Tuscany, had shown  a speculative tendency to grant his subjects a constitution. When he  succeeded to the Austrian lands, he began by making large concessions  to the interests offended by his brother's innovations. He recognized  the Estates of his different dominions as "the pillars of the  monarchy", pacified the Hungarians and Bohemians, and divided the  insurgents in the Austrian Netherlands (now Belgium) by means of  concessions. When these failed to restore order, he marched troops into  the country and re-established his own authority, and at the same time  the historic franchises of the Flemings. Yet he did not surrender any  part that could be retained of what Maria Theresa and Joseph had done  to strengthen the hands of the state. He continued, for instance, to  insist that no papal bull could be published in his dominions without  his consent (placetum regium). One of the harshest actions Leopold took  to placate the noble communities of the various Habsburg domains was to  issue a decree on 9 May 1790, that forced thousands of Bohemian serfs  freed by his brother Joseph back into servitude.

If Leopold's reign as emperor and king of  Hungary-Croatia and Bohemia had been prolonged during years of peace,  it is possible that he would have repeated his successes as a reforming  ruler in Tuscany on a far larger scale. But he lived for barely two  years, and during that period he was hard pressed by peril from west  and east alike. The growing revolutionary disorders in France  endangered the life of his sister Marie Antoinette of Austria, the  queen of Louis XVI, and also threatened his own dominions with the  spread of a subversive agitation. His sister sent him passionate  appeals for help, and he was pestered by the royalist emigrants, who  were intriguing to bring about armed intervention in France.

From the east he was threatened by the aggressive  ambition of Catherine II of Russia and by the unscrupulous policy of  Prussia. Catherine would have been delighted to see Austria and Prussia  embark on a crusade in the cause of kings against the French  Revolution. While they were busy beyond the Rhine, she would have  annexed what remained of Poland and made conquests against the Ottoman  Empire. Leopold II had no difficulty in seeing through the rather  transparent cunning of the Russian empress, and he refused to be misled.

To his sister, he gave good advice and promises of  help if she and her husband could escape from Paris. The emigrants who  followed him pertinaciously were refused audience, or when they forced  themselves on him, were peremptorily denied all help. Leopold was too  purely a politician not to be secretly pleased at the destruction of  the power of France and of her influence in Europe by her internal  disorders. Within six weeks of his accession, he displayed his contempt  for her weakness by practically tearing up the treaty of alliance made  by Maria Theresa in 1756 and opening negotiations with England to  impose a check on Russia and Prussia.

He was able to put pressure on England by  threatening to cede his part of the Low Countries to France. Then, when  sure of English support, he was in a position to baffle the intrigues  of Prussia. A personal appeal to Frederick William II led to a  conference between them at Reichenbach in July 1790, and to an  arrangement which was in fact a defeat for Prussia: Leopold's  coronation as king of Hungary on 11 November 1790, preceded by a  settlement with the diet in which he recognized the dominant position  of the Magyars. He had already made an eight months' truce with the  Turks in September, which prepared the way for the termination of the  war begun by Joseph II, the peace of Sistova being signed in August  1791. The pacification of his eastern dominions left Leopold free to  re-establish order in Belgium and to confirm friendly relations with  England and Holland.

During 1791, the emperor continued to be  increasingly preoccupied with the affairs of France. In January, he had  to dismiss the Count of Artois, afterwards Charles X, king of France,  in a very peremptory way. His good sense was revolted by the folly of  the French emigrants, and he did his utmost to avoid being entangled in  the affairs of that country. The insults inflicted on Louis XVI and  Marie Antoinette, however, at the time of their attempted flight to  Varennes in June, stirred his indignation, and he made a general appeal  to the sovereigns of Europe to take common measures in view of events  which "immediately compromised the honour of all sovereigns, and the  security of all governments." Yet he was most directly interested in  the conference at Sistova, which in June led to a final peace with  Turkey.

On 25 August 1791, he met the king of Prussia at  Pillnitz, near Dresden, and they drew up a declaration of their  readiness to intervene in France if and when their assistance was  called for by the other powers. The declaration was a mere formality,  for, as Leopold knew, neither Russia nor England was prepared to act,  and he endeavoured to guard against the use which he foresaw the  emigrants would endeavour to make of it. In face of the agitation  caused by the Pillnitz declaration in France, the intrigues of the  emigrants, and the attacks made by the French revolutionists on the  rights of the German princes in Alsace, Leopold continued to hope that  intervention might not be required.

When Louis XVI swore to observe the constitution of  September 1791, the emperor professed to think that a settlement had  been reached in France. The attacks on the rights of the German princes  on the left bank of the Rhine, and the increasing violence of the  parties in Paris which were agitating to bring about war, soon showed,  however, that this hope was vain. Leopold meant to meet the challenge  of the revolutionists in France with dignity and temper, however the  effect of the Declaration of Pillnitz was to contribute to the  radicalization of their political movement.

He died suddenly in Vienna, in March 1792.

Like his parents before him, Leopold had sixteen  children, the eldest of his eight sons being his successor, the Emperor  Francis II. Some of his other sons were prominent personages in their  day. Among them were: Ferdinand III, Grand Duke of Tuscany; the  Archduke Charles of Austria, a celebrated soldier; the Archduke Johann  of Austria, also a soldier; the Archduke Joseph, Palatine of Hungary;  and the Archduke Rainer, Viceroy of Lombardy-Venetia.

Mozart's opera La clemenza di Tito was commissioned  by the Estates of Bohemia to be included among the festivities that  accompanied Leopold's coronation as king of Bohemia in Prague on 6  September 1791.

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