[Verse 1] November, seventeen eighty-nine, Talleyrand stands up and draws the line, "The clergy's land is the nation's own now," Biens nationaux — hear the solemn vow. Monastery silver turned to civic stone, Altars count as assets on a kingdom's loan, They sequester the steeples, bolt the abbey door, Collateral for a treasury gone poor. [Chorus] Seize the land, print the note, Church to coin, watch it float, Assignat, assignat, backed by stolen ground, Ninety-nine percent gone, not a whisper of a sound. Nationalize, monetize, then let it fall — History's oldest trick: sell it, spend it, stall. [Verse 2] Seventeen-ninety, the bond grows bold, No more interest — now it apes for gold, Legal tender stamped on vellum thin, Spend your faith before the ink wears in. Presses hum in Paris through the night, Every parish deed converted out of sight, Value melting like a candle's final wick, Paper breeding fast while the harvest's sick. [Chorus] Seize the land, print the note, Church to coin, watch it float, Assignat, assignat, backed by stolen ground, Ninety-nine percent gone, not a whisper of a sound. Nationalize, monetize, then let it fall — History's oldest trick: sell it, spend it, stall. [Verse 3] Forty-five billion livres by ninety-six, A sum collapsing under its own arithmetic, Mandats territoriaux step in to save the name, Land warrants dressed in the assignat's old flame, They wither too, in less than half a year, Collateral exhausted, the ledger insincere, A nation measuring wealth in cinders and in ash, Watching paper empires turn to smoke, then trash. [Bridge] Lavoisier once weighed the air, named oxygen its own, But collector of the gabelle, a tax farmer long known, Seventeen ninety-four, the blade would not delay — science counts for nothing when the mob has had its say. Ramel arrives in ninety-seven with the final word, Two-thirds of every rente, erased, unheard — Defalcation dressed in a bureaucrat's disguise, a debt that won't be paid, forgiven, sanitized. [Chorus] Seize the land, print the note, Church to coin, watch it float, Assignat, assignat, backed by stolen ground, Ninety-nine percent gone, not a whisper of a sound. Nationalize, monetize, then let it fall — History's oldest trick: sell it, spend it, stall. [Outro] Henry's monks fell in fifteen thirty-six, same old recipe, just different bricks, seize the abbey, mint the claim, then let it drop — the state's oldest debt trick never has to stop, from Tudor stone to revolutionary paper thin, the ledger always finds a way to default again.
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