Timeline
Ten years, from a manageable deficit to a coin worth six hundred times its face in paper. The paper is the assignat: a state note secured on land taken from the Church, and later from the estates of émigrés, the nobles and officeholders who had left the country. Amounts run in livres, twenty sous to one, renamed francs in 1795 at very nearly the same value; the four governments that issued them are named in the glossary. Each row carries the printed page it comes from. Every figure here is also in the numbers, and the narrative runs through I, II and III.
France finds itself with a heavy debt and a serious deficit. Necker, Minister of Finance and a banker Europe took seriously, argues against paper money; Marat’s newspaper paints him as a wretch enriching himself from the public purse.
pp. 1–2The Assembly debates notes secured on Church land. The first design is deliberately awkward: notes of 1,000, 500 and 200 livres, too large for daily use and bearing interest, so that holders would hoard them or spend them on land.
pp. 2–3400,000,000 livres in assignats decreed, at 3 per cent, secured on Church property valued at two thousand million or more. The notes are engraved in the best style of the art, with the king’s portrait at the centre and the daily interest printed in the margin.
pp. 7–8Montesquieu’s report favours a second issue with evident reluctance and ends: “We must save the country.” Mirabeau then argues for it in the speech that decides the question.
p. 12Within five months the government has spent the whole issue and is again in distress.
p. 10Necker’s last report against the issue is spurned. He resigns and leaves France for ever; the paper-money press rings with contempt for a man unable to see the advantages of filling the treasury from a printing press.
p. 14800,000,000 livres more, without interest, carried 508 to 423 — coupled with a solemn declaration that the total in circulation shall never exceed 1,200,000,000 and that notes paid in for land shall be burned.
p. 19A single silver standard decreed and the gold–silver ratio altered. Citizens are spurred by law to send silverware and jewels to the mint; the king sends his plate; churches surrender vessels; church bells are melted for copper. Silver and copper go on disappearing.
pp. 20–21Sixty-three kinds of unguaranteed “confidence bills” circulate in Paris alone. The Assembly reissues as small notes most of the 160,000,000 livres received for land, which by its own pledge should have been burned.
p. 20Prudhomme’s newspaper explains the disappearance of coin: it “will keep rising until the people shall have hanged a broker.” Other favourite explanations are Bourbon intrigue and British emissaries.
p. 23600,000,000 livres more, with few speeches, in a silence White calls very ominous — less than nine months after the pledge to keep the total down.
p. 21At Lodève five thousand workmen are discharged from the cloth manufactories; the great works of Normandy close and the rest of the kingdom follows. Heavy duties are put on foreign goods — every cause is assigned except the right one.
p. 25300,000,000 livres more, bringing authorisations to 2,100,000,000, coupled with a declaration limiting circulation to 1,600,000,000 — a limit of 1,400,000,000 having been voted a month earlier. The 100-livre note falls from about 80 livres to about 68.
p. 33300,000,000 livres — the fifth great issue. Clavière, proud of his share in inventing the assignat, is now Minister of Finance. Payment is suspended on public debts above ten thousand francs.
p. 34The day’s wage stands at fifteen sous — what it had been four years before, before any of the paper was printed.
p. 35300,000,000 livres more. Fouquet reports the total currency issued at about 2,400,000,000 and claims the national lands are worth a little more than that.
p. 35Official statement: 3,500,000,000 put forth, 600,000,000 burned, 2,800,000,000 in circulation.
p. 35The estates of proprietors who fled the country are confiscated — an estimated three thousand million francs of new security. Issues continue on the old theory. Under the Convention, the Committees of Public Safety and of Finance begin decreeing them in secret session.
p. 36At eight in the evening a mob in disguise begins plundering the shops of Paris; two hundred are stripped over six hours. Order is restored by a grant of seven million francs to buy the mob off.
pp. 37–38The Forced Loan. Levied first on incomes above ten thousand francs, then — the rich having fled or hidden their wealth — on incomes as low as one thousand, at rates from one-tenth to one-half of the whole income.
pp. 38–39Repudiation of the first issue. The 558,000,000 francs of notes bearing the king’s portrait are demonetised because they traded above the Republic’s paper. Danton: “Imitate Nature, which watches over the preservation of the race but has no regard for individuals.”
pp. 39–40Death, with confiscation of property, for refusing assignats or taking them at a discount, and a reward for informers. Selling coin at a difference had already carried six years in irons.
pp. 42–43The Law of the Maximum. Four rules: the 1790 price plus one third; transport at a fixed rate per league; five per cent for the wholesaler; ten per cent for the retailer. Barère pours contempt on political economy as “that science which quacks have corrupted.”
pp. 40–41The Exchange is closed and all commerce in the precious metals suppressed under terrifying penalties. The Maximum itself is abolished about a year later.
p. 43Death for anyone convicted of “having asked, before a bargain was concluded, in what money payment was to be made.”
p. 43An exceptionally fruitful year, followed by autumn scarcity and winter distress: the Maximum price has fallen below the real value of produce, so farmers raise less or keep it off the market, and are forced to bring it in.
pp. 48–49Circulation rises from 7,000,000,000 to 10,000,000,000 by the end of May and 14,000,000,000 by the end of July. One hundred francs in paper buys four francs in gold, then three, then two and a half.
p. 49The gold louis of 25 francs costs 920 paper francs, then 1,200, then 2,600, then 3,050, and in February 1796 7,200 — one franc in gold for 288 in paper.
p. 50The whole amount issued is limited to 40,000,000,000, after which the copper plates are to be broken. About ten thousand million more is issued anyway.
p. 53At nine in the morning, in the presence of a great crowd, the machinery, plates and paper for printing assignats are broken and burned in the Place Vendôme — on the spot where the Napoleon Column now stands.
p. 53A young man tells the Convention that his brother, administering their father’s estate, paid the heirs in assignats and that he received scarcely one three-hundredth part of his share. A “scale of proportion” for settling debts follows, and brings new evils.
p. 51The mandats, decreed “fully secured” and “as good as gold.” Before they can be issued from the press they stand at 35 per cent of face; then 15, then 5, and by August — six months — 3 per cent. Assignats go on being printed alongside them.
pp. 55–56Fines of 1,000 to 10,000 francs, and four years in irons on repetition, for decrying the mandats in speech or writing. A decree also fixes one franc in paper as worth ten pounds of wheat.
pp. 57–58The engraving apparatus for the mandats is destroyed as the assignats’ was. Neither is legal tender any longer; old debts to the state may be paid in government paper at one per cent of face.
p. 58The twenty-one billions of assignats still in circulation are annulled. Since that month both assignats and mandats have been virtually worthless.
p. 58The bankruptcy of the two-thirds. National debts are to be paid two-thirds in bonds usable for buying confiscated real estate; the remaining “Consolidated Third” goes on the Great Book to be paid as the government thinks best. The bonds sink to three per cent of value.
p. 58Royalist presses are still issuing notes in the insurgent districts — the last of them bearing “Pro Deo, pro Rege, pro Patria” and “Armée Catholique et Royale.” Counterfeits, mostly shipped from London, had run to nominal billions; one seizure by General Hoche exceeded ten thousand million francs in face value.
p. 61Bonaparte takes the consulship with the government bankrupt and the armies unpaid. Asked at the first cabinet council what he intends to do, he replies: “I will pay cash or pay nothing.” Later, pressed to resort to paper: “While I live I will never resort to irredeemable paper.”
p. 67Acute suffering from the wreck lasts nearly ten years. It takes fully forty years to bring capital, industry, commerce and credit back to where they stood when the Revolution began.
p. 62Kinds · issue law or decree penalty price or wage event