Marat

Marat, Jean Paul (1742-93), was born near Neufchatel. Marat took very little interest in politics until the eve of the Revolution, but like his father followed the profession of medicine. He had, however, very early read and admired Rousseau. He came to England" probably about 1770, and lived there some 10 years. He practised some time as a fashionable doctor yvhile living in Church Street, Soho, and was in 1775 created M.D. of St. Andrews. The unorthodoxy of his scientific views prevented the Academie des Sciences from admitting him to membership, and from March, 1789, when he published his Offrande a la Patrie, Marat was a politician only. Later in the same year he wrote a pamphlet against the English Constitution, and in September his journal, L'Ami du Peuple, began to appear, and soon exercised a considerable influence. Lafayette endeavoured to suppress it in the following year, and Marat had to flee the country, and even when he came back to pass many clays in the sewers of Paris. He had no party or even personal friends in the Convention, to which he was elected by Paris, but was supported by the mob. He was 'largely responsible for the September massacres, and the last year of his life was a successful struggle with the Girondins, whose war policy he had denounced. He was sent before the Revolutionary Tribunal and tried on April 22, 1793, but acquitted, and the Girondins never recovered their defeat. On July 13th he was assassinated by Charlotte Corday (q.v.).