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Updated: June 15, 2025
Then, less than three months later, it was decreed that the twenty-one billions of assignats still in circulation should be annulled. As to the bonds which the creditors of the nation were thus forced to take, they sank rapidly, as the assignats and mandats had done, even to three per cent of their value.
Monot led off by proposing penalties against those who shall speak publicly against the mandats; Talot thought the penalties ought to be made especially severe; and finally it was enacted that any persons "who by their discourse or writing shall decry the mandats shall be condemned to a fine of not less than one thousand francs or more than ten thousand; and in case of a repetition of the offence, to four years in irons."
This was a relic of the revolutionary measures with regard to the rich; but, having been irresolutely adopted, and executed without due authority, it did not succeed. The directory then endeavoured to revive paper money; it proposed the issue of mandats territoriaux, which were to be substituted for the assignats then in circulation, at the rate of thirty for one, and to take the place of money.
* The mandats were, in fact, but a continuation of the assignats, under another name. The last decree for the emission of assignats, limited the quantity circulated to forty milliards, which taken at par, is only about sixteen hundred millions of pounds sterling! What I have hitherto written you will understand as applicable only to the troops employed on the frontiers.
Then from February 4 to February 14, 1797, came decrees and orders that the engraving apparatus for the mandats should be destroyed as that for the assignats had been, that neither assignats nor mandats should longer be a legal tender and that old debts to the state might be paid for a time with government paper at the rate of one per cent of their face value.
But even before the pamphlet was dry from the press the depreciation of the mandats had refuted his entire argument. The old plan of penal measures was again pressed.
It happened by a curious coin- cidence that, having made a few years before a very careful study of the issues of paper money during the French Revolution, I had a portion of my very large collection of assignats, mandats, and other revolutionary currency in Albany, having brought it there in order to show it to one or two of my friends who had expressed an interest in the subject.
* The mandats were, in fact, but a continuation of the assignats, under another name. The last decree for the emission of assignats, limited the quantity circulated to forty milliards, which taken at par, is only about sixteen hundred millions of pounds sterling! What I have hitherto written you will understand as applicable only to the troops employed on the frontiers.
Never were great expectations more cruelly disappointed. Even before the mandats could be issued from the press they fell to thirty-five per cent of their nominal value; from this they speedily fell to fifteen, and soon after to five per cent, and finally, in August, 1796, six months from their first issue, to three per cent.
It was determined to issue a new paper which should be "fully secured" and "as good as gold." Pursuant to this decision it was decreed that a new paper money "fully secured and as good as gold" be issued under the name of "mandats."
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