The Coinage Of Alexander II, 1855–1881
The Emperor Nicholas I died suddenly in March 1855 and was succeeded by his eldest son, the Czarevich Alexander Nicolaevich, now to be known as Alexander II. It was an especially bad time for Russia as the Crimean War was then raging in all its fury. Nicholas I had been an autocrat in every sense of the word, but his son was made from a different mold and tried to bring the vast Russian nation fully into the 19th century.
Alexander’s first task was to put an end to the conflict in the Crimea, where British, French, and Turkish troops were steadily defeating the Russian armies. Despite some temporary Russian successes, as in the disastrous British ‘Charge of the Light Brigade’ immortalized by the famed poet Alfred Lord Tennyson, the outlook was grim. The economy was unable to withstand the rigors of war, and the lack of a good transportation system meant that fresh troops had difficulty in reaching the Black Sea and the scene of fighting.
The Western powers were nearly as tired of the war as the Russians and in 1856, a treaty was signed ending the conflict. Little was gained by either side except that the ‘Sick Man of Europe’ (Turkey) gained a little breathing space and managed to exist as an empire for a few more years.
The fragile Russian economy had nearly broken under the strain of
