The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Assignats

paper money from the period of the Great French Revolution. Assignats were first issued in 1789 in large notes (10,000 livres), with a total sum of 400 million livres. They were issued as interest-bearing state bonds with an annual interest rate of 3–5 percent, and they were supposed to mature in 1–5 years. These assignats were to be guaranteed by confiscated property, primarily by the lands of royal and ecclesiastical domains. The second issue took place in 1790 (800 million livres), with no interest specified. Assignats were declared to be legal tender, and they began to be issued in various small denominations equivalent to metal coins. The output of assignats, by means of which the evergrowing state expenses were covered, rapidly increased, and this led to catastrophic inflation. In February 17% the issuance of assignats was stopped, and in 1797 a law was adopted that declared all assignats to be voided.

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References in periodicals archive

It was in near desperation over the consequent situation that the revolutionaries opted to seize the lands of the French Catholic Church and pay off the debt with the newly printed assignats for which this property was to serve as collateral.

Stuff and Money in the Time of the French Revolution

She is best known for her theatrical portraits of actors and fellow artists, but she supplemented her commissions by speculating on assignats during the Revolution.

Royalists to Romantics: Women Artists from The Louvre, Versailles, and Other French National Collections

All the same, it should be noted that property that had already been sold was reimbursed in vastly depreciated assignats and vouchers redeemable only on the purchase of emigre property, thereby stripping the gesture of much of its monetary worth.

Robespierre's tail: the possibilities of justice after the terror

2 for 70-year-old incumbent Harry Reid, facilitator of the Obama-Pelosi-Schumer agenda, who promised to keep their government-union paychecks or pension checks or various forms of welfare checks flowing, even if they're now denominated in "dollars" that more closely resemble French revolutionary "assignats"--shares in the estates and 401(k)s and pension funds of the "greedy landed classes" which the current regime promises to seize and divvy up as soon as it proves necessary and convenient.

Reid wins as NRA sits this one out

Second, the return of France to a gold-backed currency after Her years of trying to manage the disastrous hyperinflation of the assignats, moreover, pulled specie from Britain back to France.

William Pitt, the Bank of England, and the 1797 suspension of specie payments: Central Bank war finance during the Napoleonic Wars

Sadly, the Dutch bankers were paid finally in assignats, the worthless paper money printed in revolutionary Paris, which was useless when it came to trading it for food.

BOOKS: Hope at the centre of Regency Britain; Thomas Hope: Regency Designer. Editors, David Watkin and Philip Hewat-Jaboor. Yale, pounds 50

The mill won a Government contract for printing the paper used to make forged assignats - the currency used by the French revolutionary state - in an attempt to undermine its economy.

Reivers launched a revenge attack on Haughton

Other writings presented include the Social catechism (1784), Replies to the principal objections that can be made against a single tax (1789), Reflections on the issue of assignats (1790), The New system of taxation established by the national assembly of France in 1791 (1791), and Theoretical considerations about sinking funds of public debt (1801).

At the origins of mathematical economics; the economics of A.N. Isnard (1748-1803)