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

532 The Coins of Europe
the share of that prince in the crusade against the Turks.
The original cruzado reads on obverse Crvsatvs Alfonsi Qvinti
Regis, and usually weighs about 7 1 gr.
Not counting the
few instances in which conventional or fanciful effigies
were placed on the money in earlier times on the French or
Castilian model, the first reign in which actual portraits
occur is that of John V. (1706-50), and the feature was even
then rather sparingly introduced.
There is no European country where the principle of
countermarking, generally for higher values, so largely prevailed,
and a collection of Portuguese coins belonging
to this category would doubtless be the
most numerous one of the kind. But even before the practice
of actually stamping the money with altered figures became
so general after the Revolution of 1640, frequent ordinances
were published to a tantamount effect. The official reduction
or advance of standard was actuated by various causes, of
which the inexperience or dishonesty of the authorities and
financial exigencies were the most usual and we note ;
^
macutas of the eighteenth century for Mozambique or
Guinea surcharged with a stamp of the national arms, obliterating
part of the face-value in order to make the piece
pass for a whole macuta.
The period immediately succeeding the recovery of
independence was evidently one attended by considerable
and prolonged pecuniary embarrassment ;
and the almost
unvarying form of surcharge is found to be in an upward
direction. Curiously enough, coins of John III. occur
stamped with enhanced values in the following century by
John IV.: a real dobrado of 80 reis is countermarked with
100 on the reverse ;
so that the old currency was called in,
and made to serve the purposes of the revenue or treasury
in some cases at a distance of about a hundred years from
its original issue. But the usage was, as a rule, applied to
contemporary specie, and it is seen in fullest force under varied
circumstances between the fall of -Sebastian in 1578 at the
battle of Alcazar and the death of Alfonso VI. in 1656.
Even the Hispano-Portuguese rulers, of whom there are