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In the wonderful world of coins, one can find the history of the planet reaching back more than two and a half thousand years. We find kings and emperors aplenty, but how often do we find bona fide romantics? Idealists? The answer is not often. Romantics and idealists rarely make it to the top of the political and imperial ladders to absolute power. There have been some short-lived exceptions to the rule. We will consider several nineteenth century figures in this numismatic context. One was Guiseppi Mazzini who wanted to create an Italian national state. Another was Louis Kossuth, whose dream it was to liberate Hungary from the domination of Austria. Both men found sympathy for their respective causes in the United States in the 1840s. In fact, the United States issued a pair of stamps in 1958 honoring Louis (Lajos) Kossuth as a champion of Hungarian Freedom. Considering that this was the time period known as the “Cold War,” the anti-Soviet propaganda value of the stamps cannot be overlooked. Hungary was behind the “Iron Curtain.” This term was coined by Winston Churchill on March 5, 1946 in a speech in Fulton, Missouri. The speech defined the European limits of Soviet dominated Europe. On March 6, 1946 the entire free world either read or heard Churchill’s opening lines of that immortal speech, “From Stettin in the Baltic to Triest in the Adriatic, an Iron Curtain have descended across the continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe.” Those lines were burned into the collective western mind in the mid to late twentieth century. Kossuth was the perfect propaganda tool for the 1950’s, just as he inspired Hungarian freedom a century before. In the 1950’s, the Hungarians revolted against the domination by the Soviets. In the nineteenth century, it was Russia as an imperial presence who crushed the hopes of freedom-loving people throughout Europe when Hungary sought freedom from Austria in 1848. Russia’s czar, Alexander I, authored the Holy Alliance in 1818, for the purpose of crushing all revolts against Europe’s royalty who ruled by divine right as god’s chosen masters of the earth. His brother, Nicholas I, who reigned from 1825 to 1855 as Czar of all the Russias, also supported the Holy Alliance and helped to put down nationalistic revolts in 1830 and 1848. Giuseppe Mazzini attempted to drive the Austrians out of Northern Italy and the pro-Austrian pope out of Rome. Short lived republics were set up in Rome and Florence. The silver four baiocchi coin shown here was minted after Pope Pius IX was driven from Rome by Mazzini and attests to the 1848-1849 Roman Republic’s freedom. The beautiful five lire coin of Lombardy was minted by the Provisional government of a free Lombardy. The freedom was short lived. Austria crushed all the hopes of a free Italy in 1849. Mazzini’s freedom fighters were driven out. Pius IX, shown on this scudo, was restored to his papal throne as absolute monarch in 1849 by the Austrians and French. He ruled the Roman States until 1870, protected by the French and Austrians. When wars forced the Austrians to leave in 1866, and the French in 1870, the Sardinians entered the city in the name of Victor Emanuele II, and Rome became the capital of the new Kingdom of Italy. From 1870, until his death in 1878, Pius IX lived as a self-made prisoner of the Vatican, as did all the popes who followed him until 1929. Kossuth established a short-lived Hungarian state, but Russian and Austrian forces brought an end to it. Kossuth went to England, and the United States on lecture tours to raise money for the cause of Hungarian Freedom. Here are examples of Hungarian Banknotes issues and signed by Kossuth. They were sold in America at the face value of one and five forints (florins) respectively to pay for the cause of Hungarian freedom. These pieces of fantasy currency were actually printed in the United States by the firm of Toppan, Carpenter, Casilear, and Co. This company also printed a great deal of the “broken banknotes of the period. By the way, a forint of this time traded at twenty-cents silver. Europe spawned a lot of idealists. Some of them were real, and others truly false. For example, Louis Philippe became the “Citizen King” of France in 1830 as the result of a popular revolution. In 1848, he was tossed out of France as result of another popular revolution. 1848 was, like 1830, a year of revolutions throughout Europe. Ultra reactionary Metternich, Austria’s prime minister, was forced into exile, and Francis Joseph became the new conservative emperor of Austria and ruler of Hungary. In 1867, Francis Joseph recognized Hungary as a co-equal national state, and had himself crowned King of Hungary. In 1848, composer Richard Wagner was so caught up in the spirit of revolution and German nationalism, that he burned down his own opera house in protest against the rule of Frederick August II, King of Saxony. This was a little extreme, I’m sure you’ll all agree. Freedom-loving people are frequently rather extreme. Consider the French Revolution for example. In 1989, when France celebrated the bicentennial of the First French Revolution (remember, the French also had revolutions in 1830, and also again in 1848), British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher had a little too much champagne and her host, France’s president, was offended by her repeating Edmund Burke’s assessment of that historic event. Burke’s observation was that France had nothing to celebrate because all that their revolution had given France, was a pile of headless corpses and a dictator (Napoleon I). Poor Mrs. Thatcher ended up seated in the back of the reviewing stand instead of the front row on the next day as France paraded by in a great celebration of her history. If one looks at this 1000 Franc Banknote of Revolutionary France printed in 1792, one can see that Mrs. Thatcher was right. The note was inflationary and without value, and reflects the terror of the period. The note carries these words, “The Law Punishes With Death the Counterfeiter. The Nation Rewards the Informer.” That’s where idealism, without democracy, led France in 1789. Romantics and revolutionaries have left evidence of their passing in the coinage and the paper money of their times. Numismatics is endlessly interesting.
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author of several books. He has also written more than 1,500 articles and monographs in The Numismatist, Linn’s Stamp News, The Regional Recorder, and other publications.
