Fiat Money Inflation in France: How It Came, What It Brought, and How It Ended.

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/6949

TL;DR - France went through a period of money printing (Assignats) to create an economic stimulus and keep the nation afloat. As each printing of money further devalued the currency the government turned to printing more to compensate for the inflationary effects. What it brought were the guillotines, how it ended was Napoleon.

FTB:

"And, finally, as to the general development of the theory and practice which all this history records: my subject has been Fiat Money in France; How it came; What it brought; and How it ended.

It came by seeking a remedy for a comparatively small evil in an evil infinitely more dangerous. To cure a disease temporary in its character, a corrosive poison was administered, which ate out the vitals of French prosperity.

It progressed according to a law in social physics which we may call the "law of accelerating issue and depreciation." It was comparatively easy to refrain from the first issue; it was exceedingly difficult to refrain from the second; to refrain from the third and those following was practically impossible.

It brought, as we have seen, commerce and manufactures, the mercantile interest, the agricultural interest, to ruin. It brought on these the same destruction which would come to a Hollander opening the dykes of the sea to irrigate his garden in a dry summer.

It ended in the complete financial, moral and political prostration of France-a prostration from which only a Napoleon could raise it."

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