Fiat Money Inflation in France: How it Came, What it Brought, and How it Ended

Late President and Professor of History at Cornell University; Sometime United States Minister to Russia and Ambassador to Germany; Author of "A History of the Warfare of Scienc...

France was now fully committed to a policy of inflation; and, if there had been any question of this before, all doubts were removed now by various acts very significant as show...

From time to time various new financial juggles were tried, some of them ingenious, most of them drastic. It was decreed that all _assignats_ above the value of one hundred _fra...

This great debtor class, relying on the multitude who could be approached by superficial arguments, soon gained control. Strange as it might seem to those who have not watched t...

To crown its work the National Assembly, to explain the advantages of this new currency, issued an address to the French people. In this address it spoke of the nation as "deliv...

It has been argued that the _assignats_ sank in value because they were not well secured,--that securing them on government real estate was as futile as if the United States had...

[Footnote 8: For specimens of this first issue and of nearly every other issue during the French Revolution, see the extensive collection of originals in the Cornell University...