Jean-Paul Marat (24 May 1743 – 13 July 1793) was a French Jacobin radical journalist who wrote for the newspaper "L'Ami du peuple". Marat was a defender of the radicals during the Reign of Terror and took part in the persecution of the Girondists, so on 13 July 1793 Charlotte Corday killed him in his medicinal bath in Sorbonne, Paris.
Biography[]
Jean-Paul Marat was born on 24 May 1743 in Boudry, Principality of Neuchatel, Prussia (present-day Boudry, Switzerland). He was of Swiss and Italian descent, and was a Calvinist convert. Marat was originally a physician, treating the future King Charles X of France at one time. Ironically, he lived in the sewers and had to live in medicinal baths to preserve his skin. Marat only emerged once, during the storming of the Tuileries Palace in 1792. Marat lived in the sewers during the French Revolution, avoiding royalist assassination. Marat contributed to the revolution through his radical journalism, sympathetic to the Jacobin Club, with his paper L'Ami du peuple ("Friend of the People"). Marat later took part in the persecution of the Girondists, a moderate faction in the National Convention, and ratted them out.
Death[]
Marat dead in his bath
His persecution of the Girondins led to his downfall. Minor noblewoman Charlotte Corday entered a building in the Sorbonne District with a list: Philippe A., Raphael M., Olivier C., Vincent M., Isaak M., Denis S., Edouard K., Nicholas L., Christophe M., and Emile H. Their names were neatly written as Girondin traitors on a piece of paper, and Corday claimed that she would rat them out to Marat. She entered the room where Marat was bathing in his medicinal waters, and stabbed him above the chest with a kitchen knife. Jacques-Louis David painted a famous picture of his death scene.