Lot 1686
France. 20 Francs, 1855-A (Paris). Fr-573; KM-781.1. Weight 0.1867 ounce. Napoleon III. Bare head right. PCGS graded MS-61. In special PCGS Ship of Gold holder witch contains One Pinch of Gold Dust recovered from the S.S. Central America treasure.
Special PCGS number 674162.61/35474695. Estimated Value $500 - UP
Scarred by decades of unrest, revolution, and conquest, by the mid-nineteenth century Paris was very much in need of a facelift. To this end, in 1854, Napoleon III had himself granted sweeping powers to rebuild the city center to make it a worthy nexus for his Second French Empire. By 1855, he had already made great progress by tearing down hundreds of old buildings and constructing a new railway station, La Gare de Lyon. The building projects of this year also involved the construction of avenues to connect the central points of Paris. This simultaneously did away with many of the cramped streets of the medieval city and established wide avenues that could not be easily barricaded by potential rioters and revolutionaries.
At the same time that Napoleon III was embarking upon the reconstruction of Paris, France continued its military support of Britain in the Crimean War. This conflict broke out in 1854 when Tsar Nicholas I of Russia had attempted to force the crumbling Ottoman Empire to grant him a protectorate over the Christian states in the Balkans and control of the Dardanelles. Following a grueling siege of 337 days, on 11 September 1855, the important Crimean city of Sevastopol was taken from the Russians by the French and British and forced the new Tsar, Alexander II, to come to Paris to negotiate an end to the horrific conflict in 1856. The siege of Sevastopol alone had claimed the lives of 95,000 French soldiers (75,000 from disease) although this number was concealed from the public through Napoleon III's tight censorship of the press. Despite the heavy death toll, French involvement in the war resulted in the warming France's relationship with Britain, which had been icy since the days of the Revolutionary and Napoleon ic Wars, and established a new alliance with Russia. These developments ended the so-called Concert of Europe between Britain, Prussia, Austria and Russia, that had maintained an anti-French status quo since 1815 and introduced the new system of European alliances that would ultimately unleash the nightmare of the First World War in 1914.
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| Realized $1,620 |
