Jean-Paul Marat (UK: , US: ; French: [ʒɑ̃pɔl maʁa]; born Mara; 24 May 1743 – 13 July 1793) was a French scientist, physician, political theorist, journalist, and politician. Before the French Revolution, he pursued a career in medicine and science and spent more than ten years abroad. He published works on subjects including optics, electricity, political theory, and criminal law. During the Revolution he became one of its most prolific, radical and controversial journalists. Through his newspaper L'Ami du peuple (The Friend of the People), Marat responded rapidly to political events but also publicized complaints and grievances brought to him by ordinary citizens, presenting himself as their advocate against officials and others whom he accused of injustice or abuse.
Marat became closely associated with the sans-culottes and the radical politics of Paris. Unable to find printers willing to publish some of his more controversial writings, he established his own printing press and continued to publish despite repeated attempts by the authorities to suppress his newspaper, spending periods in hiding.
Marat was elected to the National Convention in September 1792 and aligned with the Montagnards in their struggle against the Girondins. His journalism became notorious for increasingly violent calls for the punishment and sometimes the pre-emptive killing of those he regarded as enemies of the Revolution. Marat repeatedly justified such violence as a means of preventing greater bloodshed. His writings and political activity have consequently remained central to debates about political violence during the Revolution, including the September Massacres.
In early June 1793, he played an active part in the conflict that culminated in the fall of the Girondins. On 13 July 1793, Marat was assassinated by Charlotte Corday, a Girondin sympathizer, while taking a bath to alleviate a debilitating skin condition.
Marat's assassination transformed his political image. Jacques-Louis David took a leading role in organizing his funeral ceremonies, while popular societies, the sections of Paris, and the Montagnards increasingly represented him as the murdered Ami du peuple and as a martyr of the Revolution. His remains were transferred to the Panthéon in September 1794, but during the Thermidorian Reaction his public cult rapidly collapsed and he was removed from the Panthéon in February 1795.
Marat was born in Boudry and baptised on 8 June. His family remained there until 1752, when they moved to Peseux. In 1754, the family, by then with six children, moved to Neuchâtel. Marat received much of his early education at home from his father, who worked as a textile designer and teacher of languages, geography and history. The family's settlement was facilitated by governor George Keith. Marat also studied under Jean-Élie Bertrand, professor of belles-lettres and later a co-founder of the Société typographique de Neuchâtel.
At the age of 17, he applied to join the expedition of Jean-Baptiste Chappe d'Auteroche to Tobolsk to observe the transit of Venus, but was turned down.
Marat later portrayed intellectual ambition as a defining feature 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 the age of twenty, a "creative genius". He described the "love of glory" as the one passion that had remained with him throughout his life.
In 1760, Marat moved via Montpellier to Bordeaux, where he spent about two years. Later biographers associated his stay there with the wealthy Nairac family, sometimes describing him as a private tutor, but the details are uncertain. He then moved to Paris, where he continued his studies and pursued medical training without obtaining a formal qualification. He later francized his surname from "Mara" to "Marat".
In 1765, Marat moved to Soho, where he practised medicine despite lacking formal medical qualifications. In London, Marat became a close friend of the Italian painter Antonio Zucchi ; Joseph Bonomi the Elder became his patient. According to Joseph Farington's diary, Marat was a frequent guest at Zucchi's house and, being well read in classical literature, regularly suggested subjects for Zucchi's compositions. Zucchi also frequently took Marat with him when visiting Angelica Kauffman at her home in Golden Square.
Several of Marat's siblings also pursued careers abroad. His sister Albertine was a skilled maker of watch hands in Geneva and settled in Paris in September 1793. In 1784 his younger brother David settled in Saint Petersburg and later taught French at the Imperial Lyceum at Tsarskoye Selo, where Alexander Pushkin was among his pupils. His brother Jean-Pierre became a member of the Cordeliers, but returned to Geneva to become a watchmaker. His sister Marianne married Charles-Frédéric Oulevay, a specialist in preserving insects who, attempted to settle in Paris in late 1794 and unsuccessfully sought a post as an assistant naturalist.
Political, philosophical, and medical writing
Around 1770, Marat wrote a sentimental and political epistolary novel, Les Aventures du jeune comte Potowski, set in Poland before the First Partition. The novel already presented resistance to oppressive government as a right of the people. The autograph manuscript, comprising about 240 pages in Marat's hand, was preserved by his sister Albertine Marat, who later sold it to the writer Aimé-Martin. It was obtained for publication by Paul Lacroix, who edited the first complete book edition in 1848.
His Chains of Slavery, published in London in 1774, examined the means by which rulers could undermine political liberty. Published during the political agitation surrounding John Wilkes and the British general election of 1774, the book attacked political corruption, restrictions on representation and the use of patronage, standing armies, censorship and other instruments of government power. In May 1774, Marat wrote to Wilkes about the work, seeking to bring it to the attention of the British opposition.
In 1774, Marat travelled to Amsterdam to arrange the publication of a French version of his philosophical work with the Geneva-born publisher Marc-Michel Rey, Rousseau's principal publisher. During his stay in the Dutch Republic he met the writer and scholar Isaac de Pinto in The Hague, who provided him with a letter of introduction to a young professor in Utrecht, though the introduction appears to have led to little. Rey published the substantially expanded work as the three-volume De l'Homme, ou des principes et des lois de l'influence de l'âme sur le corps et du corps sur l'âme in 1775–76.
De l'Homme brought Marat into conflict with Voltaire. Marat criticized Helvétius and Voltaire in the work; Voltaire responded with a mocking critique of Marat's philosophical arguments. Marat remembered the dispute years later, claiming in 1791 that Voltaire had been angered by the treatment he received in De l'Homme.
Marat also continued to establish himself professionally as a physician. On the recommendation of two medical practitioners, he received an MD from the University of St Andrews in June 1775. He subsequently returned to London, where in November 1775 he published a medical tract on the treatment of gleet, followed by An Enquiry into the Nature, Cause, and Cure of a Singular Disease of the Eyes in January 1776. In the same year he visited his family in Geneva.
His medical reputation and the patronage of the Marquis de l'Aubespine, whose wife was among his patients, led to his appointment in June 1777 as physician to the bodyguard of the Comte d'Artois, the youngest brother of Louis XVI. The post paid 2,000 livres a year plus allowances.