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When I was going through the archives of my local web analytics company, I found another interesting case, when major government in Europe was cheated and lost its national treasure to Bolsheviks. This case is related to the Civil war in Spain in the thirties of the twentieth century. It is called infamously Moscow gold case.

Short lived Spanish Republic desperately needed arms and military equipment but other European countries did not want to get involved in the civil war and did not sell anything to the Spaniards. The only country that ignored this embargo was the Soviet Union. That is why in 1937 the Spanish republic sent most of the gold reserves from its national Treasure to Russians. One must say, that at the time Spain was on the fourth place in the world for its stored gold. And the USSR got most of it, which amounted at the time to five hundred million dollars.

When Franco and his supporters learned about it, they heavily protested this transaction, stating that this gold belongs to the people and not to the Spanish government. But the transaction turned sour for the republicans because Soviets sold them all kind of military junk stored since World War I. Besides, prices were extremely inflated for each rifle and each bullet. This outdated equipment, part of which was malfunctioning right from the start, turned out to be one of the huge factors that impacted the defeat of the Spanish Republic.

When World War I started Romania was on the side of the Entente Powers. Its military campaign was against Germany was not successful and soon German troops moved into Romania and even occupied its capital Bucharest. Romain administration had no other choice but to send its national Treasure abroad. It was hard to choose which Ally country would safe keep the Treasure until bad times are over. There were plans to send it to England or the United States but Germans troops controlled Central Europe and there was a big chance that they would intercept the Treasure. Sweden or Denmark were another choice but there was a problem to transport all values there safely because German submarines were all over the North Sea.

In this hard situation the decision had been made to send Romanian national Treasure to tsarist Russia. I found more additional facts of this story in archives of web analytics company. According to mutual agreement Russia would safe keep Treasure until the end of the war. Under heavy guard almost hundred tonnes of gold bars and coins with the total cost of 1.25 billion dollars was sent to Moscow and safely got there. Soon situation at the front became even worse for Romania, so its administration send additional valuable transport to Russia. It included priceless items, like jewels of Romanian royalty, jewels of ancient rulers, jewels dated to the time of Roman empire and antique jewels of the pre Roman era. But this was not all.

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Without going into history details, people sometimes think that Alexander the Great did not have children and, thus his vast empire had to be divided by his generals. Quite the opposite, Alexander had two sons. I found very interesting materials about them in archives web analytics company . Although one of them was from a concubine and could not really pretend to take the throne, the other one was a legitimate heir - Alexander IV.

The problem was that he was a posthumous child, who was born after the death of his father. While Alexander the Great was dying, his wife, Bactrian princess Roxana was pregnan, and nobody knew if the child would survive or what gender it would be. There was another legitimate pretender to the throne - Alexander’s half-brother Philip Arridaeus, who was mentally ill.

This led to the split of Alexander's generals in two conflicting parties. One wanted to give full power to Phillip, while the other wished to wait for the birth of the heir of Alexander and to give him the throne under the control of the regent. The last one led by general Perdiccas won, eliminated all partizans of Phillip and repartitioned all the territories between former generals and satraps of Alexander. In its turn these tragic events led to the infamous War for Succession or Wars of the Diadochi.