SET RARE HISTORIC RUSSIAN EMPRESS ANNA IVANOVNA COPPER POLUSHKA & DENGA! 1731/39

Description: Superb pair of almost 300-year-old Russian Empire copper coins!! Issued under the reign of EMPRESS ANNA IVANOVNA! She was the niece of Peter the Great who greatly influenced her rule. The deliberations of the council were held even as Peter II lay dying of smallpox during the winter of 1729–30. The document "Conditions" which favored the nobility was presented to Anna in January, and she signed the same on 18 January 1730, which was just around the time of his death. The ceremony of endorsement was held at her capital, Mitau in Courland (now known as Jelgava), and she then proceeded to the Russian capital. On 20 February 1730, shortly after her arrival, Empress Anna exercised her prerogative to do away with her predecessor's Privy Council and dissolved that body. The Supreme Privy Council which had stipulated those onerous "Conditions" had been composed largely of the families of the princes Dolgorouki and Galitzin. Within a matter of days, another faction rose at court which was opposed to the domination of these two families. On 7 March 1730, a group of people belonging to this faction (numbering between 150 and 800 people, depending on the source) arrived at the palace and petitioned the empress to repudiate the "Conditions" and assume the autocracy of her predecessors. Among those who urged Anna to do so was her elder sister Catherine. Anna duly repudiated the document of Conditions, and for good measure sent some of the framers of the document to the scaffold, and many others to Siberia. She then assumed autocratic powers and ruled as an absolute monarch, in the same fashion as her predecessors. On the night that Anna tore up the Conditions, an aurora borealis appeared in the sky, making the horizon "appear in all blood" in the words of one contemporary, which was widely taken to be a dark omen of what Anna's reign would be like. Strong-willed and eccentric, Anna was known for her cruelty and vulgar sense of humor. She forced Prince Mikhail Alekseevich Golitsyn to become her court jester and had him married off to her unattractive Kalmyk maid Avdotya Buzheninova. To celebrate the wedding, the Empress had an ice palace measuring thirty-three feet high and eighty feet long built together with icy beds, steps, chairs, windows and even logs of ice in a fireplace of ice. Prince Golitsyn and his bride were placed in a cage atop an elephant and paraded through the streets to this structure, to spend their wedding night in the ice palace, despite it being an extremely cold night in the dead of winter. Empress Anna told the couple to make love and keep their bodies close if they did not wish to freeze to death. Eventually, the couple survived when the maid traded a pearl necklace for a sheepskin coat from one of the guards. An enthusiastic hunter, Anna always kept a rifle by her window so she could blast away at birds at all hours. You will receive one very rare copper 1731 Palushka (1/4 Kopek) and one very rare copper 1739 Denga (1/2 Kopek) - the exact coins shown. Both are in excellent condition for their age and rarity.

Price: 19.95 USD

Location: New York, New York

End Time: 2025-01-08T22:43:26.000Z

Shipping Cost: 2.99 USD