ASSIGNATS, a form of paper money issued in France from 1789 to 1796. Assignats were so termed as representing land assigned to the holders. The term is from Lat. assignatus, assigned.
The financial strait of the French Government in 1789 was extreme. Coin was scarce, loans were not taken up, taxes had ceased to be productive, and the country was threatened with imminent bankruptcy. In this emergency assignats were issued to provide a substitute for a metallic currency. They were originally of the nature of mortgage bonds on the national lands. Those lands consisted of the church property confiscated, on the motion of Mirabeau, by the Constituent Assembly on Nov. 2 1789, and the crown lands, which were taken over by the nation on Oct. 7 (see FRENCH REVOLUTION) .
The assignats were first to be paid to the creditors of the State. With these the creditors could purchase national land, the assignats having, for this purpose, the preference over other forms of money. If the creditor did not care to purchase land, it was supposed that he could obtain the face-value for them from those who desired land. Those assignats which were returned to the State as purchase-money were to be cancelled, and the whole issue, it was argued, would consequently disappear as the national lands were distributed.
A first issue was made of 400,000,000 francs' worth of assignats, each note being of I oo francs' value and bearing interest at the rate of 5%. They were to be redeemed by the product of the sales, and from certain other sources, at the rate of 120,000,000 francs in 1791, 100,000,00o francs in 1792, 8o,000,000 francs in and 1794, and the surplus in 1795. The success of the issue was undoubted, and, possibly, if the assignats had been restricted, as Mirabeau at first desired, to the extent of one-half the value of the lands sold, they would not have shared the usual fate of in convertible paper money. Mirabeau was a strenuous advocate of the assignats. "They represent," he said, "real property, the most secure of all possessions, the soil on which we tread." "There cannot be a greater error than the fear so generally prevalent as to the over-issue of assignats . . . reabsorbed progressively in the purchase of the national domains, this paper money can never become redundant."