Why the revolution went off the rails

Assignats are the bane of every student of the French revolution without an economics background. They were the bonds issued by the National Assembly from 1789, underwritten by the sale of newly nationalised church property, and all I ever really grasped about them was that they contributed to rampant inflation. In fact, as Ian Davidson shows in his new account of the revolution, their issue and ‘reckless mismanagement’ were as essential to the revolution’s initial success as to its ultimate failure. They may even have been ‘the single most important factor that caused the revolution to go off the rails’. At last someone has not just explained
assignats but made them interesting.

It is all too easy, with a subject as vast as the French revolution, to be distracted by the multiplicity of sources and individual narrative trails one can follow. But Davidson’s book is cool, concise and utterly compelling, driven not by personalities but by the relentless momentum of the revolution itself.