Jean-Paul Marat - "Friend of The People"

"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 175 years, Marat devoted himself entirely to politics. 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 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 Paris, including the Corps Municipal, the Constituent Assembly, the ministers, and the Cour du Châtelet. In January 1790, he moved to the radical Cordeliers section, the Club des Cordeliers, then under the leadership of the lawyer Danton, was nearly arrested for his aggressive campaign against the marquis de La Fayette, and was forced to flee to London, where he wrote his Dénonciation 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. Marat faced the problem counterfeiters distributing falsified versions of L'Ami du peuple, which led him to call for police intervention. Ironically, Marat’s L'Ami de peuple was originally an illegal publication itself. However, effective police intervention resulted in the suppression of the fraudulent issues, leaving Marat the continuing sole author of L'Ami de peuple. Fearing reprisal, Marat went into hiding in the Paris sewers, where he almost certainly aggravated a debilitating chronic skin disease (dermatitis herpetiformis).

During this period, Marat made regular attacks on the more conservative revolutionary leaders. In a pamphlet from 26 July 1790, entitled "C'en est fait de nous" ("We're done for!"), he wrote:

Five or six hundred heads would have guaranteed your freedom and happiness but a false humanity has restrained your arms and stopped your blows. If you don’t strike now, millions of your brothers will die, your enemies will triumph and your blood will flood the streets. They'll slit your throats without mercy and disembowel your wives. And their bloody hands will rip out your children’s entrails to erase your love of liberty forever.