Assignat of 400 livres

The circuit did not turn. With war and deficits going on, the assignats taken back in were not burned but printed again, swelling to some fifteen times the assessed value of the national lands that backed them. The amount in circulation reached about 2.7 billion livres in the autumn of 1792 and about 45 billion by January 1796. Rising issue and falling value made an inverse graph of one another. The more printed, the lighter each one. This high-value note is the symbol of paper printed far past the backing behind it.