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Jean Paul Marat

The French journalist and political leader Jean Paul Marat (1743-1793) was an influential advocate of extreme revolutionary views and measures.

Jean Paul Marat was born in Boudry, Neuchâtel, Switzerland, on May 24, 1743, the son of lower-middle-class parents. Of his early years very little is known. He acquired a medical education and for some years was a successful physician in both England and France. He also conducted scientific experiments in the fields of optics and electricity. But failure to achieve what he considered to be proper recognition for this work left him with a feeling of persecution.

Marat also published several books on philosophical and political themes, the most important of which was The Chains of Slavery, in which he voiced an uncompromising denunciation of royal despotism, a defense of the sovereignty of the people, and a sympathy for the poor and downtrodden which he never abandoned. The coming of the French Revolution in 1789 gave him his opportunity to pursue these themes, and before the year was out, he had begun to publish his journal, Ami du peuple (Friend of the People). In his opinion the moderate Revolution of 1789, although it had ended royal despotism, had left a new aristocracy of the rich in control, with the grievances of the poor still unsatisfied. Thus a radical revolutionary uprising was necessary, in his opinion, and he bluntly called time and again for popular executions and a temporary dictatorship to save the Revolution and bring about a regime of social justice.

Marat's radical views and the ferocity with which he voiced them won him great popularity among the lower classes in Paris and the provinces. But he was the object of particular fear and hatred to those who supported the moderate revolution that had produced the limited monarchy. The authorities frequently tried to silence him, but he avoided arrest by hiding with the aid of his supporters and published his journal at least intermittently.

When the moderate experiment with limited monarchy failed in the midst of disastrous military reverses, the King was deposed in August 1792, and less than a month later the September massacres, an outbreak of popular executions such as Marat had been urging, took place in Paris. These events inaugurated the radical phase of the French Revolution. The Paris voters elected Marat to the Convention, which was to serve France as a legislature for the next 3 years, and he sat and voted with the "Mountain," the left-wing Jacobin faction. But he was blamed by many for the September massacres, and his continued incitement to direct action and purges, plus his advocacy of an extensive program of social legislation, kept all but the most radical aloof from him. His extreme ideas and language were matched by his informality of dress and unkempt appearance, which was heightened by the evidence of a chronic skin disease.

Marat concentrated his invective during the early months of 1793 against the moderate Girondin party, and they responded in kind. They tried to silence him and persuaded the Convention to decree his arrest and trial. But he emerged from hiding and by a brilliant speech won a triumphant acquittal in April 1793. His Girondin opponents now came under attack from the Jacobin Mountain, and Marat reached the height of his influence as he led the attack in his journal. With the decisive aid of the Paris masses, the Convention was forced to unseat and then order the arrest of the Girondin leaders (June 2, 1793).

Marat's triumph led ironically to his own death. Charlotte Corday, an idealistic young girl of Girondin sympathies from the provinces, came to Paris to seek revenge and to rid her country of the monster Marat. By this time his health had so deteriorated that he was living and working in seclusion in his apartment under a regimen of medicinal baths. On July 13, 1793, she managed to gain admittance to his apartment, under the pretense of bringing information to aid him in his continued campaign against the Girondins, and stabbed him to death in his bath.

Further Reading

The best biography of Marat in English is Louis Gottschalk, Jean Paul Marat: A Study in Radicalism (1927). The author emphasizes the ideas of Marat rather than the detailed facts of his career. There has not been a more recent scholarly biography in English. A much older and very laudatory biography is Ernest Belfort Bax, Jean Paul Marat: The People's Friend (1900).

Additional Sources

Germani, Ian, Jean-Paul Marat: hero and anti-hero of the French Revolution, Lewiston: E. Mellen Press, 1992.

 
 
Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: Jean-Paul Marat

Jean-Paul Marat, detail of a portrait by Joseph Boze, 1793; in the Museum of the History of Paris.
(click to enlarge)
Jean-Paul Marat, detail of a portrait by Joseph Boze, 1793; in the Museum of the History of Paris. (credit: Giraudon/Art Resource, New York)
(born , May 24, 1743, Boudry, near Neuchâtel, Switz. — died July 13, 1793, Paris, France) French politician and a leader of the radical Montagnard faction in the French Revolution. He was a well-known doctor in London in the 1770s. Returning to France in 1777, he was appointed physician at the court of Louis XVI's brother, the count d'Artois (later Charles X). Marat wrote scientific publications as well as political pamphlets. From 1789, as editor of the newspaper L'Ami du Peuple, he became an influential voice for radical measures against the aristocrats. He criticized moderate revolutionary leaders and warned against the émigré nobility, then advocated the execution of counterrevolutionaries. One of the most influential members of the National Convention (1792), he was actively supported by Parisians in street demonstrations. In April 1793 the Girondins brought him before a Revolutionary tribunal, but he was acquitted. In July a young Girondin supporter, Charlotte Corday, gained admittance to his room and stabbed him to death in his bath, making him a martyr to the people's cause.

For more information on Jean-Paul Marat, visit Britannica.com.

 
French Literature Companion: Jean-Paul Marat

Marat, Jean-Paul (1744-93). A physician and indefatigable intellectual, born in Neuchâtel, whose pre-Revolutionary activity demonstrated both professional and broad philosophical interests and who, not unlike Linguet, crossed swords with all and sundry with little concern for personal repose. Politically active early in 1789, Marat began to broadcast his radical democratic principles even more widely with his Publiciste parisien (12 September 1789), which became, five issues later, L'Ami du peuple and which lived vigorously, with two changes of title (Journal—then Publiciste—de la République française) until Marat's death. Always incendiary in defence of the popular revolution (though no more violent than many royalist adversaries), he was constantly one of the most powerful (for some, loathed and frightening) men of the whole period: though often notable for good sense and political astuteness, L'Ami du peuple became, above all, synonymous with accusation and denunciation, with the notion that pre-emptive strikes or purges of named individuals or groups ‘hostile’ to the Revolution made good political sense. Marat had a wide, devoted following among the ordinary people and the radical bourgeoisie (whom he also represented in the Convention), who looked upon him as their oracle and tribune. Assassinated by Charlotte Corday (13 July 1793), he became a Republican martyr.

— John Renwick

 
Columbia Encyclopedia: Marat, Jean Paul
(zhäN pōl märä') , 1743–93, French revolutionary, b. Switzerland. He studied medicine in England, acquired some repute as a doctor in London and Paris, and wrote scientific and medical works (some in English), but was frustrated in his attempts to win official recognition for his work. His Philosophical Essay on Man (1773) was attacked by Voltaire for its extreme materialism. When the Revolution began (1789), he founded the journal L'Ami du peuple, in which he vented his bitter hatred and suspicion of all who were in power. Outlawed for his incendiary diatribes and calls for violence, he twice fled to England (in 1790 and the summer of 1791). He continued to publish his paper in secret and successfully attacked Jacques Necker, the marquis de Lafayette, the commune, the comte de Mirabeau, the émigrés, and, finally, the king. Marat's inflammatory articles helped foment the Aug. 10, 1792, uprising and the September massacres (see French Revolution). In Aug., 1792, he was elected (1792) to the Convention. There he led the attack against the Girondists. He was stabbed to death (July 13) in his bath by Charlotte Corday, a royalist sympathizer. As a revolutionary martyr he was the subject of many tributes, most strikingly the famous death portrait of Jacques-Louis David. Selections from his writings have been published as Textes choisis (1945).

Bibliography

See studies by L. R. Gottschalk (1967) and J. Censer, Prelude to Power (1976).

 
History Dictionary: Marat, Jean-Paul
(muh-rah)

A French political leader of the eighteenth century. In the French Revolution, Marat was a leader of the Jacobins, a party of radicals. He was stabbed to death in his bathtub.

 
Wikipedia: Jean-Paul Marat
"Marat" redirects here. For other uses, see Marat (disambiguation).
Jean-Paul Marat
IH189029.jpg
Born May 24, 1743
Boudry, Neuchâtel, Switzerland
Died July 13, 1793
Nationality Swiss
Occupation Scientist, Physician
Parents Jean Mara, Louise Cabrol

Jean-Paul Marat (May 24, 1743 – July 13, 1793), was a Swiss-born French physician, philosopher, political theorist and scientist best known as a radical journalist and politician from the French Revolution. His journalism was renowned for its fiery character and uncompromising stance towards the new government, "enemies of the revolution" and basic reforms for the poorest members of society. His persistent persecution, consistent voice and uncanny predictive powers brought him the trust of the people and made him the main bridge between them and the radical Jacobin group that came to power in June 1793. For two short months, leading up to the downfall of the Girondin faction in June, he was one of the three most important men in France, alongside Danton and Robespierre. He was stabbed to death in his bathtub by the Girondin sympathizer Charlotte Corday.

Scientist and physician

The eldest child of Jean Mara, (Giovanni Mara), a native of Cagliari in Sardinia, and Louise Cabrol of Geneva, Marat was born in Switzerland, at Boudry in the principality of Neuchâtel, on May 24, 1743. His father was a Mercedarian "commendator" and religious refugee who converted to Calvinism in Geneva, his mother was a Huguenot. At the age of 16, aware of the limited opportunities for outsiders (his highly educated father was turned down for several teaching posts), Marat set off on his travels. After spending two years in Bordeaux as a private tutor, he settled briefly in Paris before moving to London, where he studied medicine and practised informally as a doctor. He also published several philosophical and medical works. [1]

His first published work, written in English and later published in his native French in Amsterdam, was a Philosophical Essay on Man (1772), which demonstrates extensive knowledge of English, French, German, Italian and Spanish philosophers. His essay attacked the materialist philosopher Helvétius, who in his De l'Esprit ("On the Mind", 1758) which reduced all Man's faculties to physical sensation alone and his actions as motivated by self-interest alone. His professed belief that philosophy had no need for science was refuted by Marat who argued that a knowledge of physiology could solve the eternal problem of the mind-body connection and the location of the soul, which he argued was found in the meninges. Voltaire's sharp critique (in defense of his friend Helvétius) brought the young Marat to wider attention for the first time and only helped to reinforce Marat's growing sense of division between the materialists, grouped around Voltaire on one side, and their opponents, grouped around Rousseau on the other. [2]

In 1774, Marat published The Chains of Slavery, urging constituencies to reject the (British) king's friends as candidates for Parliament. According to Marat, this book brought him honorary memberships in the patriotic societies of Carlisle, Berwick-upon-Tweed and Newcastle.

An essay on gleets (gonorrhea) probably helped him to secure an honorary medical degree from St. Andrews University in 1775. On his return to London he published an Enquiry into the Nature, Cause, and Cure of a Singular Disease of the Eyes. In 1776, he moved to Paris via a brief stopover in Geneva to visit his family. Here his reputation as a highly effective doctor, along with the patronage of his mistress and former patient, the Marquise de l'Aubespine, secured him a position as physician to the bodyguard of the comte d'Artois (afterwards Charles X of France) in 1777, which paid 2,000 livres a year plus allowances.

Marat was soon in great demand as a court doctor among the aristocracy and he used his new-found wealth to set up a laboratory in his mistress's house. Soon he was publishing works on fire/heat, electricity and light. Even Brissot, in his Mémoires, admitted Marat's influence in the scientific world of Paris. However, when he presented his scientific researches to the Académie des Sciences, they were not approved and he failed to be accepted as a member. In particular, the academicians were appalled by his temerity in disagreeing with the great (and hitherto uncriticized) Newton. Marat wrote to Benjamin Franklin who visited him on several occasions. Goethe always regarded his rejection by the academy as a glaring example of scientific despotism.

In 1780 Marat published a Plan de législation criminelle, inspired by the work of Beccaria. In April 1786 he resigned his court appointment and, over the next few years, completed a new translation of Newton's Opticks (1787) and Mémoires académiques, ou nouvelles découvertes sur la lumière. ("Academic memoirs, or new discoveries about light," 1788), a collection of essays including a study on the effect of light on soap bubbles.

The Friend of the People

On the eve of the French Revolution, Marat placed his career as a scientist and doctor behind him and took up his pen on behalf of the Third Estate. After 1788, when the Parlement of Paris and other Notables advised the assembling of the Estates-General for the first time in over 150 years, Marat devoted himself entirely to politics.[3] His Offrande à la patrie ("Offering to the Nation") dwelt on much the same points as the Abbé Sieyès' famous "Qu'est-ce que le Tiers État?" ("What is the Third Estate?") When the Estates-General met, in June 1789, he published a supplement to his Offrande, followed in July by La constitution ("The Constitution") and in September by the Tableau des vices de la constitution d'Angleterre ("Tableau of the flaws of the English constitution") intended to influence the structure of a constitution for France. The latter work was presented to the National Constituent Assembly and was an anti-oligarchic dissent from the anglomania that was gripping that body.

In September 1789, Marat began his own paper, which was at first called Moniteur patriote ("Patriotic Watch"), changed four days later to Publiciste parisien, and then finally L'Ami du peuple ("The Friend of the People"). From this position, he expressed suspicion of all those in power, and dubbed them "enemies of the people". Although Marat never joined a specific faction during the Revolution, he condemned several sides in his L'Ami du peuple, and reported their alleged disloyalties (until he was proven wrong or they were proven guilty).

Marat often attacked the most influential and powerful groups in France, including the Corps Municipal, the Constituent Assembly, the ministers, and the Cour du Châtelet. In January 1790, he moved to the radical Cordeliers section, then under the leadership of the up-and-coming lawyer Danton, and was nearly arrested for his aggressive campaign against the Marquis de La Fayette, and was forced to flee to London, where he wrote his Denonciation contre Necker ("Denunciation of Jacques Necker"), an attack on Louis XVI's popular Finance Minister. In May he returned to Paris to continue the publication of L'Ami du peuple, and attacked many of France's most powerful citizens. Fearing reprisal, Marat was forced to hide in the Catacombs, where he almost certainly aggravated a debilitating chronic skin disease (scrofula).

Marat, long a supporter of the abolition of the Bourbon Monarchy, subsequently attacked more moderate revolutionary leaders. In July 1790, he wrote:

“ Five or six hundred heads cut off would have assured your repose, freedom and happiness. A false humanity has held your arms and suspended your blows; because of this, millions of your brothers will lose their lives. ”

Events

Marat placed his hopes in the Constituent Assembly, but lost faith in the actions of the Legislative Assembly.

Around March 1792, he married 27 year old Simone Évrard, the sister-in-law of Jean Antoine Corne, the typographer of L'Ami du peuple.

During this time, Marat was frequently criticized, and went into hiding until The August 10 Insurrection, when the Tuileries Palace was besieged and the Royal Family sheltered with the Legislative Assembly. This was partly caused by the proclamation by Karl Wilhelm Ferdinand, Duke of Brunswick-Luneburg which called for the crushing of the Revolution, and served to inflame sentiments in Paris.

The National Convention

Although still without party affiliation, Marat was elected to the National Convention in September 1792 to represent the people of France. When France was declared a Republic on September 22, Marat stopped printing L'Ami du peuple, and, three days later, began the Journal de la république française ("Journal of the French Republic"). Much like L’Ami du peuple, it criticized many of France's political figures, and made Marat almost uniquely unpopular with his fellow members of the Convention.

His stance during the trial of the deposed king Louis XVI was also unique. He declared it unfair to accuse Louis for anything anterior to his acceptance of the French Constitution, and, although implacably committed to his idea of securing the people's good through the monarch's death, he would not allow Guillaume-Chrétien de Lamoignon de Malesherbes, the king's counsel, to be attacked in his paper, and spoke of him as a "sage et respectable vieillard (wise and respectable old man). "

On January 21, 1793, King Louis was guillotined, an episode which created political turmoil; from January to May, Marat fought bitterly with the Girondins, whom he believed to be covert enemies of republicanism. The Girondins won the first round when the Convention ordered that Marat should be tried before the Revolutionary Tribunal. However, their plans were scuppered when Marat was acquitted and returned to the Convention with a greatly enhanced public profile and popular support.

Marat's death

See also: Charlotte Corday

The fall of the Girondins on May 31, provoked by the actions of François Hanriot, became one of Marat's last achievements. His skin disease was having negative effects on his life, and his last resort for alleviating the discomfort was to soak in a cold bath. Marat was in his bathtub on July 13 1793, when a woman claiming to be a messenger from Caen (where escaped Girondins were trying to gain a Normandy base) begged to be admitted to his quarters.

He ordered her in, asked her the names of the offending deputies, and after recording their names said "They shall all be guillotined." The young woman, Charlotte Corday, then drew a knife, purchased earlier that day at a shop, and stabbed him in the chest. He called out, "À moi, ma chère amie!" ("Help me, my dear friend!"), and died. Corday was a Girondin, and her action provoked reprisals in which thousands of the Jacobins' adversaries – both royalists and Girondins – were executed on supposed charges of treason. She was guillotined on July 17 1793 for the murder of Marat. During her four-day trial, she had testified that she had carried out the assassination alone, saying "I killed one man to save 100,000."

Marat's memory in the Revolution

Marat's assassination led to his apotheosis during the following years. The French painter Jacques-Louis David led the task of organising a grandiose ceremony. The entire National Convention attended Marat's funeral and he was buried in the Couvent des Cordeliers. His remains were transferred to the Panthéon on November 25, 1793 and his near messianic role in the Revolution was confirmed with the elegy: Like Jesus, Marat loved ardently the people, and only them. Like Jesus, Marat hated kings, nobles, priests, rogues and, like Jesus, he never stopped fighting against these plagues of the people.

On the 19 of November, the town of Le Hâvre de Grâce changed its name to Hâvre de Marat and then became Hâvre-Marat. When the Jacobins started their Deist Dechristianisation campaigns (setting up the competing Cult of Reason of Hébert and Chaumette and Cult of the Supreme Being of Robespierre), Marat was made a quasi-saint, and his bust often replaced crucifixes in the former churches of Paris.

By early 1795, however, Marat's memory had become tarnished. On January 13, 1795, Hâvre-Marat became simply Le Havre (the name it bears today). In February, his coffin was removed from the Panthéon and the various busts and sculptures were destroyed. His final resting place is the cemetery of the Church Saint-Étienne-du-Mont.

His memory was not deprecated in the Soviet Union, though. Marat was a common name there and the Russian battleship Petropavlovsk was renamed Marat in 1921. There is one of streets in the centre of Sevastopol, that was named after Marat on January 3, 1921, shortly after the Soviet power had been established in the city.[4]

Marat's skin disease

The nature of Marat's debilitating skin disease has been an object of ongoing medical interest. Dr. Josef E Jelinek noted that "(h)is skin disease was intensely pruritic, blistering, began in the perianal region, and was associated with weight loss leading to emaciation. He was sick with it for the three years prior to his assassination, and spent most of this time in his bathtub." Jelinek's diagnosis is dermatitis herpetiformis[5]

Marat's bath

After Marat's death, his bathtub disappeared. Simonne Evrard, Marat's wife, may have sold it to her journalist neighbour. It was included in an inventory of the journalist's possessions after his own death. The royalist M. de Sainte-Hilaire bought the tub, taking it to Sarzeau, Morbihan in Brittany. His daughter Capriole de Sainte-Hilaire inherited it when he died in 1805 and she passed it on to the Sarzeau curé when she died in 1862 without heirs.

A Le Figaro journalist tracked down the tub for an article published on July 15, 1885. The curé then understood that the tub could earn him money for the parish, yet the Musée Carnavalet director turned it down due its lack of identification as well as the high price the curé proposed. The curé then approached Madame Tussaud's waxworks. The Tussauds agreed to purchase Marat's bathtub for 100,000 francs; however, the curé's response in accepting this offer was lost in the mail. After rejecting other offers, including one from Phineas Barnum, the curé sold the tub for 5,000 francs to the Musée Grévin, where it remains today.[6]

Marat's works

Besides the works mentioned above, Marat wrote:

  • Recherches physiques sur electricité, &c. (1782)
  • Recherches sur electricité medicate (1783)
  • Notions elementaires d'optique (1784)
  • Lettres de l'observateur Bon Sens a M. de M sur la fatale catastrophe des infortunes Pilatre de Rozier et Ronzain, les aeronautes et l'arostation (1785)
  • Observations de M. l'amateur Avec a M. labb Sans . . . &c., (1785)
  • Eloge de Montesquieu (1785), published 1883 by M. de Bresetz
  • Les Charlatans modernes, on lettres sur le charlatanisme academique (1791)
  • Les Aventures du comte Potowski (published in 1847 by Paul Lacroix, the bibliophile Jacob)
  • Lettres polonaises (published in English only; disputed by French authorities)

Artistic and theatrical representations

Quotations

  • "Nothing superfluous can belong to us legitimately so long as others lack necessities."[7]
  • "To ensure public tranquility, two hundred and seventy thousand heads more should fall."[8]
  • "Man has the right to deal with their oppressors by devouring their palpitating hearts."

References

  1. ^ Oeuvres de Jean-Paul Marat, 10 vols ed. J de Cock & C Goetz, 1995, Editions Pole du Nord.
  2. ^ Marat, Jean-Paul, Encyclopædia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, 1911. Accessed online 2 July 2006.
  3. ^ "His scientific life was now over, his political life was to begin; in the notoriety of that political life his great scientific and philosophical knowledge was to be forgotten…" Marat, Jean-Paul, Encyclopædia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, 1911. Accessed online 2 July 2006.
  4. ^ (Russian) Streets of Sevastopol - Marat Street
  5. ^ Jelinek, J.E., "Jean-Paul Marat: The differential diagnosis of his skin disease", American Journal of Dermatopathology (1979) 1:251-2. PMID 396805.
  6. ^ Ransom, Teresa, Madame Tussaud: A Life and a Time, (2003) p. 252-253.
  7. ^ Durant, Will and Ariel. The Age of Napoleon. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1975. pg. 21
  8. ^ Taine, Hippolyte. The French Revolution, Volume 3. Kessinger Publishing, 2004. pg. 118
Wikimedia Commons has media related to:

This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition article "Marat, Jean-Paul", a publication now in the public domain.'The 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica, in turn, gives the following references:

    • A. Vermorel, Jean Paul Marat (1880)
    • François Chèvremont, Marat: esprit politique, accomp. de sa vie (2 vols., 1880)
    • Auguste Cabanès, Marat inconnu (1891)
    • A. Bougeart, Marat, l'ami du peuple (2 vols., 1865)
    • Jean Maurice Tourneux, Bibliographie de l'histoire de Paris pendant la revolution francaise (vol. ii., 1894; vol. iv., 1906)
    • Ernest Belfort Bax, J. P. Marat (1900)
  • The Correspondance de Marat has been edited with notes by C. Vellay (2006)

Edited by Pôle Nord - Brussels:

1) 1989-1995 : Jean-Paul Marat, Œuvres Politiques (ten volumes 1789-1793 - Text: 6.600 p. - Guide: 2.200 p.)

2) Collection "Chantiers Marat":

2001: "Marat en famille - La saga des Mara(t)" (2 volumes) - New approach of Marat's family.

2006: "Plume de Marat - Plumes sur Marat" (2 volumes) : Bibliography (3.000 references of books and articles of and on Marat)

External links


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Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Jean-Paul Marat".  Read more

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