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Message:: [QUOTE="Juan Blanco, post: 1575584, member: 41665"]You're mistaken. Typically gold coins were used only to trade with foreigners. The notion that soldiers were paid in Gold is so absurd it's laughable. Really?! Soldiers were paid in Assignats, a horribly debased paper currency, and a pittance. Notoriously, Russians would sometimes maim their sons/themselves to avoid conscription - if they'd been paid in Gold do you honestly suppose they'd have done that? They were serfs (slaves) - with Gold, they might have purchased their freedom or afforded to escape bondage. The Russian ducat coined to the Holland standard was apparently by mutual agreement of both governments (or so the Russians said.) This wasn't counterfeiting - it was by permission (see below.) For the ruling elite and minuscule merchant class, it's true that chernovetsii trickled back into the local money mkts, sold at very high premium to assignats. As such, we can imagine that these ducats "circulated rarely" within the Russian Empire (as did SPANISH/US Dollars more commonly, btw) But that wasn't the primary intent behind their minting, nor was counterfeiting (fraud.) On the Soldier's Pay in Paper or (very rarely) Silver, see Robert Sears, An Illustrated Description of the Russian Empire (1855) p.505 For whom the ducat was minted, see Dr. Edward D. Clarke's 1822 memoir: Why Russia minted Dutch ducats, see Recollections of Siberia, in ... 1840 and 1841 ; Charles Herbert Cottrell (1842) p.227 Gold ducats (the term connotes 'major coin') were manufactured to cover certain imperial debts and as foreign-trade currency. Otherwise, Gold coins were common in upper-class salons (gambling) but totally unseen at the peasants' market-place. Even Silver Roubles were rare.[/QUOTE]

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