The Assignats

The revolution inherited the bankruptcy that had helped cause it, seized the Church's lands, and issued paper notes — assignats — backed by that property, to be retired as the land sold. Then it kept printing. By 1796 the notes had lost more than 99% of their value, prices in Paris rose to hundreds of times their pre-revolutionary level, and the government made refusing the paper a capital offence, which did not help. Peasants would not sell food for it. The chaos discredited the republic's economics and prepared people for someone who could restore order.