10 000 Francs Assignat

The assignat program, launched in 1789 as a bridge solution backed by confiscated Church and émigré property, had by 1795 collapsed into one of history's more instructive hyperinflationary disasters. This 10,000-franc denomination — unthinkable in the early Revolutionary years when assignats circulated as modest land-backed certificates — exists precisely because earlier issues had been printed in such volumes that face values had to keep escalating to keep pace with purchasing-power destruction. By early 1796 the entire assignat system was formally abolished, with outstanding paper worth fractions of a percent of face value.

Counterfeiting was a persistent and politically weaponized problem throughout the series; Britain ran organized forgery operations as deliberate economic warfare.