6 Kreuzers - Louis III

The 1848 start date on this series is not coincidental. Louis III ascended in June of that year, the same month Frankfurt's liberal parliament was convening just forty kilometers away. Hesse-Darmstadt's small billon fractional coinage continued largely uninterrupted through the revolutionary period — the Grand Duchy's government made enough concessions to avoid the worst of the unrest without losing administrative continuity.

Billon at .350 fine was already scraping the lower boundary of what contemporaries considered silver coinage rather than copper.