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Person1743 – 1793

Jean-Paul Marat

Also called: Marat

Physician turned journalist and Convention deputy whose paper L’Ami du peuple urged radical revolution; assassinated by Charlotte Corday in 1793

Born in 1743 at Boudry in the principality of Neuchâtel, then ruled by the King of Prussia, he practised medicine in Britain, writing scientific and political works, and returned to France as physician to the Comte d’Artois’s guards. From September 1789 his paper L’Ami du peuple denounced nobles and moderates as “enemies of the people” and demanded violent punishment, forcing him into hiding several times. Elected to the Convention for Paris in 1792, he fought the Girondins; acquitted by the Revolutionary Tribunal in April 1793, he helped drive them out in June. He was assassinated in his bath by Charlotte Corday on 13 July 1793.

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2 related events

  1. 1
    1792National Convention and the Proclamation of the Republicparticipant

    Elected by universal male suffrage, the National Convention abolished the monarchy at its first sitting and began counting days from “Year I of the Republic”.

  2. 2
    1793Assassination of Maratrelated figure

    Charlotte Corday, a Girondin sympathiser, stabbed Marat in his bath; David’s The Death of Marat made him a martyr of the Revolution.

People who appear alongside

  • Maximilien Robespierre1758 – 1794

    Jacobin leader who dominated the Committee of Public Safety during the Reign of Terror and was guillotined after the Thermidorian Reaction of 1794

  • Georges Danton1759 – 1794

    Revolutionary orator who led France as Minister of Justice in the crisis of 1792 and was guillotined in 1794 after calling for an end to the Terror

  • Charlotte Corday1768 – 1793

    Norman supporter of the Girondins who stabbed Marat to death in Paris on 13 July 1793 and was guillotined four days later

  • Jacques-Louis David1748 – 1825

    Neoclassical painter and Convention deputy who painted The Tennis Court Oath and The Death of Marat, staged the revolutionary festivals and later became Napoleon’s court painter

Themes this person appears in

  • The French Revolution1787 – 1799

    From the Assembly of Notables and the Estates-General to the coup of 18 Brumaire — twelve years that toppled the absolute monarchy, founded a republic, passed through Terror and reaction, and ended with Napoleon