LITHUANIA, 2 denari, 1567
$25.00
LITHUANIA, Sigismund II, 1548-69, 2 denari, 1567, Obverse: crowned AS, Reverse: knight rider, II, billon, 14mm, 0.44g, G595, F
Out of stock
Description
The Baltic nations are ethnically quite complicatedly diverse. Lithuania, with Poland to the south, Latvia to the north, and Russia to the east, organized as a kingdom in 1253. The kingdom became a Duchy of the Holy Roman Empire, which did not stop the Teutonic Knights from invading on the pretext that the Lithuanians were pagans, which, at that time, they were not. Lithuania beat back the Teutons, and proceeded on a course of military expansion that took them deep into Poland and Ukraine and Russia. They united with Poland in 1589. Tied to Poland, it was awarded to Russia as Poland was dismembered by its neighbors. Lithuania disappeared from politics until after World War I.
