6 Heller - Frederick II

Frederick II of Hesse-Cassel is better remembered for leasing roughly 17,000 of his subjects as soldiers to the British Crown during the American Revolutionary War than for his domestic coinage policy. The Hessian subsidy payments, paid in hard currency by London, actually stabilized Hesse-Cassel's finances considerably — an irony not lost on contemporaries who noted the landgrave's treasury growing while his men bled in New Jersey and South Carolina.

Small copper issues like this one absorbed the practical needs of local commerce that the subsidy windfall did nothing to address at street level.