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

358 The Coins of Europe
pieces answering to the references in the Russian annals in
1115 and 1257. They represent the duke seated and
crowned, holding in his right hand a long Latin cross the
;
reverse exhibits a kind of trident ;
and the legends are in
incorrect Slavonic characters.
There is the possibility that the money paid to Tartar invaders
by way of tribute or ransom may have also served for
commercial objects in the same manner as in Poland. It
is certain that from having at the outset Arabic or Mongolian
inscriptions on either side, the obverse was in course of time
reserved for the titles of the grand -duke of Moscow or
Russia, as the ruler of the country was successively designated ;
and under Ivan III., Vasilievitch (1462-1 505), the foreign
element finally disappeared. It was this prince to whom
Matthias Corvinus of Hungary sent, about 1483, some of his
own workmen with a view to an improved coinage but a
;
pattern gold ducat of Hungarian type
is all that is known to
have arisen from the experiment and it
; appears that, when
the Czar desired in those days to distribute pecuniary gifts,
he procured specie from his more advanced continental
neighbours.
The accession of the house of Romanoff in 1613 accomplished
nothing in a numismatic respect. We find Ivan
Alexievitch (1682-89) ordering a special gold ducat with
his own portrait and those of his brother Peter (afterward
czar) and his sister Sophia (afterward regent). But the
earliest symptom of a movement forward presents
itself in
certain roubles and half roubles of Peter the Great and his
immediate predecessor, of rather poor fabric and work, struck
prior to his tour and stay in Western Europe ;
and that
remarkable episode contributed to stimulate progress to some
extent. Yet down to 1 704 the archaic denga still survived,
and it does not seem to have been till about 1711 that an
improved type in copper under the name of kope'ika appeared.
As denga signified a token, the new denomination implied
a lance, in reference to the armed horseman copied from the
currency of Lithuania. The kope'ika was accompanied by a
denga, forming the moiety. In 1707, Peter had ordered
.