Jean-Paul Marat

Jean-Paul Marat (24 May 1743 – 13 July 1793) was a French scientist, doctor, political writer, journalist, and politician. Before the French Revolution, he worked in medicine and science, writing about optics, electricity, political theory, and criminal law. During the Revolution, he became a highly active, extreme, and divisive journalist. His newspaper, *L'Ami du peuple* (The Friend of the People), gave quick reactions to political events and also published complaints from ordinary citizens, whom he claimed to defend against officials and others he saw as unjust or abusive. In 1791, the paper reached a peak of activity, with around 500 issues released.

Marat was closely tied to the sans-culottes and the radical politics of Paris. He did not work alone; a small group of loyal supporters helped him, including two sisters, a cook, and a typesetter who lived in his house. When printers refused to handle his most controversial writings, he set up his own press and kept publishing despite repeated government attempts to shut him down. He often moved homes and printing setups, spending long periods in hiding—later saying he lived underground for seven months. His presses were seized or destroyed several times, but he always resumed publication. On 23 August 1792, he received four presses from the former royal printing house for his work.

In September 1792, Marat was elected to the National Convention and sided with the Montagnards against the Girondins. His journalism became known for increasingly violent demands to punish or even preemptively kill those he considered enemies of the Revolution. He often justified this violence as a way to prevent even more bloodshed, sometimes calculating how many lives might be sacrificed to save many more. His writings and actions remain central to debates about political violence during the Revolution, including the September Massacres. In 1793, he actively took part in the conflict that led to the fall of the Girondins.

On the evening of Saturday, 13 July 1793, Marat was killed by Charlotte Corday, a supporter of the Girondins, while he was bathing to treat a painful skin condition. Corday blamed Marat for much of the violence and political chaos in France and believed that killing him would help restore peace.

Marat’s death dramatically changed his public image. His body was displayed at the Cordeliers, and Jacques-Louis David helped organize the funeral. On 16 July, a large procession carried his body through Paris to the former Cordeliers convent, where he was buried in the garden; a monument was later built over his grave. Popular societies, Parisian sections, and the Montagnards increasingly portrayed him as the murdered *Ami du peuple* and a martyr of the Revolution. David gave this image its most lasting form in his painting *The Death of Marat*.

Marat’s remains were moved to the Panthéon in September 1794, but during the Thermidorian Reaction his public cult quickly faded, and he was removed from the Panthéon in February 1795.

Marat’s early education took place in Neuchâtel, where he studied under Jean-Élie Bertrand, who later founded the Société typographique de Neuchâtel. At age 17, he applied to join Jean-Baptiste Chappe d’Auteroche’s expedition to Tobolsk to measure the transit of Venus, but was rejected. His first patronage came from the wealthy Nairac family in Bordeaux, where he stayed for two years. He then moved to Paris and studied medicine without earning any formal qualifications. After moving to France, he changed his surname from Mara to the French form “Marat.”

He worked informally as a doctor after moving to London in 1765, fearing he would be “drawn into dissipation.” There he befriended the Royal Academician artist Angelica Kauffman. His social circle included Italian artists and architects who met in coffee houses around Soho. Highly ambitious but lacking patronage or qualifications, he worked to insert himself into the intellectual scene.

Marat later described intellectual ambition as a key part of his character. In an autobiographical account, he recalled that as a child he had successively wanted to become a schoolmaster, professor, author, and, by age twenty, a “creative genius.” He said the “love of glory” was the one passion that stayed with him throughout his life.

After moving to Britain, Marat practiced medicine while also writing on philosophy and politics. In 1772 he anonymously published *An Essay on the Human Soul*, followed in 1773 by the two-volume *A Philosophical Essay on Man*. Around this time he lived in Newcastle upon Tyne, where he became familiar with British radical politics. His *Chains of Slavery*, published in London in 1774, examined how rulers could undermine political liberty. Written during the agitation surrounding John Wilkes and the British general election of 1774, it attacked political corruption, limits on representation, patronage, standing armies, censorship, and other government tools. Marat argued that sovereignty ultimately belonged to the people, not the monarch—an idea influenced by Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

In 1774, Marat traveled to Amsterdam to arrange the publication of a French version of his philosophical work with the Geneva-born publisher Marc-Michel Rey, who was Rousseau’s main publisher.