After Bishop Talleyrand sold off the Church's land, the new government's financial crisis seemed to have eased for the time being. But selling land worth more than three billion Livres all at once was no easy matter. Set the price too high, and no one could afford it; set it too low, and the government would take a heavy loss. So someone proposed a new solution: issue paper money backed by the land.
According to the original plan, the amount of paper money issued would correspond to the value of the Church's land. In theory, the government could gradually buy the notes back by selling off the land. So, in theory, their value was still guaranteed.
This paper money was called the Assignat. By now, most of Joseph's wages were paid in it.
Carnot thought that Joseph must spend all his free time studying mathematics after work. Otherwise, there was no way to explain how he could keep making discoveries despite his crushing workload.
In fact, Joseph's main concern when he got home each day wasn't academic research at all. It was how to turn the Assignats in his hands into silver coins or something else he considered more reliable, such as land and grain.
A few years later, when Robespierre was in power, doing this would have been like sticking your own head beneath the guillotine. But for now, everyone was doing it. Robespierre had reportedly proposed in the Assembly that a maximum price be set for grain. The proposal was rejected, just as anyone would have expected. It didn't even make it to formal discussion—because at that point, everyone in the Assembly except Robespierre was making money from the trade.
Joseph wasn't working alone. In fact, he had brought in a couple of partners. One was his longtime