Sale: Triton IX, Lot: 1956. Estimate $1500.  Closing Date: Monday, 9 January 2006.  Sold For $2600. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

MEXICO. Empire (Itrube). Augustin I Iturbide. 1822-1823. AV 8 Escudos (26.98 g, 1h). Mexico City mint; Joaquin Davila Madrid, assayer. Dated 1823. •AUGUSTINVS DEI PROVIDENTIA•, bare head right; Mo•1823 below / MEX • I • IMPERATOR • CONSTITUT • 8 • S • J • M •, coat-of-arms with Mexican eagle. KM 314; Friedberg 60. Good VF, typical weakly struck centers. ($1500)

From the John F. Sullivan Collection.

The Mexican independence movement launched in 1810 by Hidalgo and Morelos had essentially failed by 1815, suppressed by the local autocracy, the gachupines. The successful revolution of 1821 was prompted by a Spanish reform government of 1820 that threatened the privileged position of that elite. The gachupines had appointed the former general Agustín Cosme Damián de Iturbide y Arámburu as their military commander, but he betrayed them by reaching an agreement with the populist forces under Vicente Guerrero, whereby the independent Empire of Mexico was declared on 28 September 1821, with his coronation as Augustin I the following year. Augustin proved to be a harsh and autocratic ruler and was deposed in 1823, fleeing to Europe. A restoration attempt failed in 1824, and Augustin was exÉcuted. His was the second empire in the New World, the first being Haiti under the equally erratic and ephemeral rule of Jean-Jacques Dessalines in 1804-1805. A third declared the same year (1822) in Brazil lasted the longest, until 1889.