The Coinage of Poland 1815-1841
IN THE MIDDLE AGES, Poland was one of the great nations of Europe, justly famed for its culture and toleration, both religious and racial. Warsaw came to be known as the ‘Paris of the East’ with good reason.
Yet, in their quest for the rights of the individual, the Poles lost sight of the right of the nation for security from aggression; by the seventeenth century the strong military power of the country had eroded seriously. In the early 1700s Poland slowly became a pawn of surrounding nations.
In 1764 the situation had deteriorated to the point that Russian Empress Catherine II was able to put one of her former favorites, Stanislaus Poniatowksi, on the Polish throne as Stanislaus Augustus. It was the beginning of the end.
The new king turned out to be loyal to the nation but was unable to stop his greedy neighbors. In 1772 Russia, Prussia, and Austria teamed up to seize vast areas of the Polish state and incorporate them into their respective countries. Two more such partitions, ending in 1795, destroyed the state; there was nothing more to take.
(In 1794 Polish patriots, determined to preserve what was left, prepared a superb Constitution. Under the leadership of Tadeusz Kosciuszko, a hero of the American Revolution, Poland attempted to regain her place in the European family of nations. The new constitution greatly
