50 Livres Assignat

The Caisse de l'Extraordinaire was not a bank in any conventional sense — it was an emergency instrument of the Revolutionary government, created specifically to manage the proceeds from the forced sale of nationalized Church and émigré properties. The assignats it issued were, in their earliest form, essentially interest-bearing bonds secured against those confiscated lands. The 50 livres denomination sits in the middle range of the series, large enough to attract forgers but small enough to circulate widely, which became a serious problem by 1791.

Gatteaux was one of the foremost medallists of the period, and his involvement gives the engraving an unusual precision for a document produced under considerable political urgency. Lorthior handled the typographic and ornamental elements. The watermark was the primary anti-counterfeiting measure — and an inadequate one, as forgery of assignats, both domestic and foreign-sponsored, contributed materially to the hyperinflationary collapse that followed.