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

Descriptive Outline of the Coinages of E^lrope 343
multiples, and an aureus equivalent to twelve florins, the last
probably as a piece de plaisir. The monetary system had
then attained a high state of development. We have heard
of the Italian workman employed by a thirteenth-century
King of Bohemia : Matthias Corvinus obtained artists from
the same source, whom we find him recommending to the
Czar of Muscovy ;
and the mints, which were numerous,
and varied under different reigns, were subject to the control
of a Count of the Chamber, whose name, with the place
of coinage or mark, appeared as part of the die. The
thalers of Lladislas VI. have Kretnitz and Tvrso [Kremnitz
and the director Johann Turso]. The m.m. is usually the
initial letter of the locality.
The Austrian administrators preserved to a large extent
the local or native complexion of the money from their first
entrance on the ground down to the present century. The
coins of the emperors for this region,
till we come to some
of the more recent issues of Francis Joseph, continue to
exhibit the Hungarian type of the Virgin and Child and the
full-length figure of the sovereign, crowned and robed, with
sceptre and orb. On the reverse of a florin of Maria Theresa,
1754, she appears girt with a sword, suggestive of the repugnance
of the Magyars to female sway. The copper money,
during that and the following reigns, was composed of the
poltur, gresch, and krajczar. There are pieces of I and 3
krajczar in 1848; but from 1868 dates a coinage closely
resembling that for the rest of the empire, except that the
reverse shews a quartered escutcheon, surmounted by the
crown, with angels as supporters.
It remains to be pointed out that *
long after the titular
amalgamation of Hungary with Austria the political and
administrative union was very incomplete and precarious ;
and the formal embodiment of 1867 betrayed a sense of
uneasiness and insecurity on the part of the house of Haps-
1
We have more than once had occasion to accentuate the wide discrepancy
between nominal and possessory sovereignty as indicated in legends ; and we
must observe that the titles and dignities of some of the earlier European princes
became so multiplied, and often so unreal, that it was thought sufficient to enumerate
them to a large extent by initials.