Biens nationaux (French Revolution)
프랑스 혁명기의 국유재산
Movable and immovable property of the Church, the Crown and certain nobles, legally confiscated and then sold in the first months of the French Revolution to resolve the financial crisis of 1788. It comprised buildings, agricultural land, mines, woods and forests, rested on the decree of 2 November 1789 and the law of 9 July 1790, and served as the collateral for the assignats.
In depth
Creation and legal basis
The Constituent Assembly's decree of 2 November 1789 declared the Church's property "placed at the disposal of the Nation": cathedrals, churches, chapters, parish property and lands, and the property of monastic orders and religious communities. The decrees of 19 and 21 December 1789 put the Church's property and the Crown domain up for sale up to a limit of 400 million livres, and the assignat, created on 19 December 1789, was secured on the biens nationaux. From 21 December 1789 the Crown domain (great and small domains) and the royal manufactures were also included, later joined by the property of the suppressed trade guilds, the Order of St John of Jerusalem, charitable confraternities, educational establishments (1792), charity houses and hospitals, and the fabriques (1795).
Extension to émigrés and suspects
The notion of bien national was then extended to the property of émigrés and suspects, confiscated from 30 March 1792 and sold after the decree of 27 July 1792. A law of 28 December 1793 placed at the Nation's disposal the movable and immovable property confiscated from individuals considered enemies of the Revolution: émigrés and fugitives, refractory priests, deportees and detainees, those condemned to death, and nationals of enemy countries.
Sale modalities and social incidence
A decree of 14 May 1790 fixed the sale modalities: the property was sold to private individuals by auctions held at district seats, the price payable over 12 years, with parcelling advocated. The decrees of 2 and 17 November 1791 required sale by whole estate and favoured the regrouping of plots, which favoured the bourgeoisie in acquiring the biens nationaux. The decrees of 3 and 10 June 1793 imposed the division of émigré property into one-arpent lots for heads of household owning less than one arpent, against a rent of 5 % of the value, an embryonic agrarian reform modified by the law of 13 September. A decree of 22 November 1793 imposed the parcelling of the biens nationaux. Recent estimates indicate that 6 % to 6.5 % of the national soil changed hands, less than is generally claimed.
Purchasers and cancellation mechanism
The assignats were first to be paid to the state's creditors, who could then purchase national land, the assignats having preference over other forms of money for that purpose. Assignats returned to the state as purchase-money were to be cancelled, so that the whole issue would disappear as the national lands were distributed. This is why the transfer of the biens nationaux created purchasers tied to the new regime, the "new landed bourgeoisie" named in the existing assignat entry.
Chronology and significance
Alienations began at the end of 1790 and were completed in the autumn of 1795, the date fixed for their suspension, though some districts continued a few weeks and sales resumed in spring 1796 under the legislation of ventôse an IV, finishing at very variable dates (Seine-et-Marne only in 1867). In the provinces spared civil war, the sale of the biens nationaux was the principal political event of the period from late 1790 to the end of 1793.