6 Grossus - Ernst Johann von Biron Mitau

Ernst Johann von Biron's coinage rights were themselves a product of Russian court politics. A former stable hand who became the dominant favourite of Empress Anna, Biron was granted the Duchy of Courland in 1737 — then stripped of it, arrested, and exiled to Siberia within months of Anna's death in 1740. He spent over twenty years in internal exile before Catherine II restored him to Courland in 1763, the very year this grossus was struck. These pieces are essentially monuments to a second reign that almost never happened.