Page:Ivan the Terrible - Kazimierz Waliszewski - tr. Mary Loyd (1904).djvu/84

 60 more frequently in the constantly increasing number of contracts between borrower and lender.

The scarcity of coinage, to which I have already referred, was in itself a symptom of the general distress. Until the close of this century, according to Guagnino, squirrel skins were used as currency, and, indeed, Peter the Great paid his functionaries their salaries in the same fashion. Yet there was a free coinage in the sixteenth century, the State only intervening to verify weights and designations. Some artisans, indeed, were given the right to stamp their own names on their coins. A great deal of ingot silver was also used, and the ancient Novgorod coins, of which Chaudoir gives us facsimiles in his book (Aperçu sur les Monnaies Russes, 1836), were nothing but ingots, either. The habit of regarding gold and silver as merchandise was long to linger in the Russian mind. But there was a shortage in the supply of raw material. Though the mines, contrary to the assertions of Paulus Jovius (Pauli Jovii Descriptiones, i., 1571), were not entirely unproductive, though even in 1482 Ivan III. was asking the Hungarian King Matthius Korvinus to send him engineers to work fresh ones, and though argentiferous soil had been discovered in 1491 on the banks of the Tsylma, an affluent of the Piétchora, the supply of metals was trifiingtrifling [sic], and Russia depended, in this respect, on foreign countries. As to gold, the only coins in circulation were foreign—Hungarian, Dutch, Polish, and Florentine ducats, and English shiff-nobles and rose-nobles. And amongst the silver currency, numbers of Dutch florins, German thalers, generally known as efimki (Joachim’s Thaler), and English shillings figured. Gold pieces were so rare that any event which brought about a larger demand for them, such as a marriage or baptism in the Sovereign's family, or the despatch of a foreign mission, resulted in a sudden rise in value, sometimes amounting to doubling the value of each gold coin. On such occasions as marriages and christenings the Sovereign received gifts of ducats from the boïars and the representatives of the various constituted bodies; and Ambassadors, even in Poland, needed gold pieces if they were to make any decent show.

The Sovereign always had all he needed in his cellars. He was the very wealthy master of a very poor country. He dazzled everybody, even the Western world, by his riches; but it is impossible to come to an absolutely clear understanding of the amount of these, nor of the manner in which they were acquired. I shall consequently limit myself to a very few brief remarks upon this subject.