I was very happy to get this coin in my grubby hands: Insurrection Coinage / Belgium, Revolt against Joseph II (HRE), 10 Sols, 1790, Brussels / obv. Brabant lion standing right, MON NOV ARG PROV FOED BELG (Currency new money Provincial federated Belgium), rev. two hands shaking, arrows behind, IN VNIONE SALVS (in union for health/strength/salvation) The bundle of 11 arrows representing 11 provinces: East Flanders, West Flanders, Brabant, Hainault, Tournai, Namur, Luxembourg, Liège, Limburg, Antwerp and Mechelen. I love the odd little baby angel head in between the 17 and 90
Congratulations with this find, Drusus! You got me really jealous! The angel head is the mint mark of the Brussels Mint. This is (at least in my country) a coin with a high historical significance: the Brabantian Revolution lead to the Insurrection in 1790, leaving the Southern Netherlands for the first time in its history without a foreign ruler. As there were many quarrels between the 2 fractions which lead the revolution (Catholic conservatives and liberals), the Austrians got a chance to recapture the country after some months of independence. Note: the Insurrection of 1790 made only the Austrian Netherlands an independent country. This country didn't include the prince-bishopry of Liege, which was ruled by the Habsburgs' great rivals: the Bavarian Wittelsbacher. Liege stayed independent from the rest of the Southern Netherlands until 1795, when it was captured by France and incorporated in what would become later Belgium.
Crazy...very stylistically similar to early American coins (although with very different subject matter)
There are more similarities than you could think of on first sight: the Belgian Republic was set up as a federation in 1790 with the United States as role model. A big part of the US's Constitution was copied by the short-lived Belgian Republic.
Got this one that is from roughly the same general time and area of the world. not quite as exciting design though still interesting to me.
