Jean Paul Marat: Tribune of the French Revolution (Revolutionary Lives)

This book is a sad attempt at rehabilitating one of history's monsters. I’m much more interested in the brave woman who killed him. Rather than a conventional review, I’m simply pasting a passage from Claude Arnaud’s remarkable biography of Chamfort, a true hero of the revolution. “Charlotte Corday had become Chamfort’s model, his saint, his Joan of Arc. Having arrived from Caen knowing no one, rebuffed twice before managing to approach Marat, she performed the one act of which Chamfort would have been proud. She was tragedy come to life. Chamfort read and reread her letter to Barbaroux—‘the most sublime work ever to issue from this earth’—swearing to keep it always on his person. To the judges who would interrogate him, he replied: She didn’t kill, she rescued the ‘packet’ of twenty thousand heads demanded by Marat. She didn’t betray the Republic, she saved it from a monster who was wreaking havoc on it. Unlike the men of the Gironde, she showed herself to be equal to the greatest heroes of antiquity—the tyrant slayers.”Of course, Chamfort was immediately arrested by the Terror. Corday was guillotined 4 days after the assassination. Oh, that Stalin and Hitler would have had their own Corday.

Excellent and unbiased account, but not a biography of his personal life.

Good, concise biography. Well worth a read.

I would argue that the previous reviewers of this book despite their appearances to the contrary have nothing more than a base and shallow version of Jean-Paul Marat. They refer to him as "blood-thirsty" and a "scumbag," which are both not true, regardless of credentials. Let me put Marat in his historical context: for 1000 years before Marat, France (or portions thereof) had been ruled by a succession of Kings, emperors, foreign powers, and their supporting nobility. In that thousand years France, and indeed most of Europe was worked by nameless serfs and peasants who died by the thousands, hundred of thousands, and eventually millions. They starved, they were conscripted, incarcerated, and similarly abused to fill the coffers of that nobility. Look at the previous reviewer who refers to Marat as "a rabble rouser" or the other who refers to him as "a child killer." Did not Louis XIVth, that glorious "Sun King" kill children, or lead the rabble to three wars on three continents? What did Louis do to his rivals, the children of his rivals, the children of the French, German, Spanish, and East and West Indian? I dare say he did not treat them with love and generosity. Never you mind that it's a complete fabrication that Marat killed children, and I was unable to find any support for the raging egomaniac also mentioned, but let's concentrate on the "rabble rouser" Marat.This book shows Marat being a supporter, of the onset of the Revolution, a participant with his L'ami du Peuple, whilst Paris erupted on its own. Marat never led that dreaded "rabble," which let me reiterate again, were the victims of one thousand years of royalist terror, and had finally had enough. That being said this is the fundamental flaw in the other reviews of this book and Marat in general, to assume that millions of Parisians have no agency, or thought whatsoever, except to listen to the next great man, and be led accordingly. Clifford Conner does an excellent (although brief) job of reconstructing how the French Revolution, Jean-Paul Marat, and actual people acted. There is not a faceless "rabble" or "mob" as the other reviewers shallowly call the people of France. Furthermore, it is refreshing to have Conner show Marat as he actually was: a man and physician who was dedicated to articulating and healing the damaging effects of the thousand years of absolutism, and feudalism to create a more just world. Conner also details how Marat was stalked, violently harassed, often arrested for his support of democracy, and a more equitable economy. Meanwhile, it was only in response to royalist politicking, and attempts at restoring the monarchy that Marat urged capital punishment, this mind you after Washington's "darling" Lafayette opened fire on French civilians where he killed unarmed women, and children (needless to say not mentioned in the other reviews of the book).The violence that Marat encouraged, while not good, was a violence justifiable at its time for the preservation of the French Republic, just as the American Revolution required a rather savage war for independence to give birth to the United States. My caveat for this book is to remember that the oft-derided masses of the French Revolution were groups of individual people who had been subjected to the worst possible tyrannies: war, famine, intractable poverty presided over by an absolute monarchy so conservative that any talk of what we would call "social justice" was anathema to them. The real perpetrators of violence as Clifford Conner shows were not Marat, nor the revolutionaries, but those members of the ancien regime.

Due to the surprising dearth of books dedicated to Marat, I suppose one should be thankful that Clifford D. Conner has at least filled his slight 150-page tomb, Jean Paul Marat, with equally slight facts concerning Marat's life: dates and bare-bones events. Any book about Marat should include Marat's life and his times, and weigh-in at the 600-page level. Alas for those of us who yearn for realistic information concerning the French Revolution, Conner defends Marat's despicable reign, accusing Marat's accusers of `'denigrating every aspect of his life.'' In reality, of course, Marat was a scumbag whose writings inspired the illiterate French masses to murder thousands, many of whom were children (and this despite the fact that Marat was sincerely dedicated to the underdog). You'll learn just as much about the real Marat by reading Lawday's Danton and Scurr's Robespierre. But I'm being harsh. If Conner wants to write a short volume, that his business; if he wants to show indulgence to a child killer, that's his problem. The book remains, nonetheless, the most detailed work devoted just to Marat that I've read. We don't know why Marat did what he did, we know nothing of his motivations, but we do learn what happened, when and where. Just the `'whys'' go unanswered. My own books can be found on Amazon under Michael Hone.

Brilliant book. Easy read and busting all the myths about how bloodthirsty and paranoid Marat was. Book that shows how much People's Friend cared for social and economic justice and how he became a spokesman for the poorest people in the society.

Due to the surprising dearth of books dedicated to Marat, I suppose one should be thankful that Clifford D. Conner has at least filled his slight 150-page tomb, Jean Paul Marat, with equally slight facts concerning Marat's life: dates and bare-bones events. Any book about Marat should include Marat's life and his times, and weigh-in at the 600-page level. Alas for those of us who yearn for realistic information concerning the French Revolution, Conner defends Marat's despicable reign, accusing Marat's accusers of `'denigrating every aspect of his life.'' In reality, of course, Marat was a scumbag whose writings inspired the illiterate French masses to murder thousands, many of whom were children (and this despite the fact that Marat was sincerely dedicated to the underdog). You'll learn just as much about the real Marat by reading Lawday's Danton and Scurr's Robespierre. But I'm being harsh. If Conner wants to write a short volume, that his business; if he wants to show indulgence to a child killer, that's his problem. The book remains, nonetheless, the most detailed work devoted just to Marat that I've read. We don't know why Marat did what he did, we know nothing of his motivations, but we do learn what happened, when and where. Just the `'whys'' go unanswered.

A condensed version of hardbook but excellent overview of French Revolution and Jean Paul-Marat as both Scientist and Revolutionary.