Assassinated in the Tub: The Rise and Fall of French Revolutionary Extremist Marat

Author

Epoch Magazine
July 11, 2025

“The Death of Marat” by Guillaume-Joseph Roques (1793). (Public Domain)

Commentary

The following is the scathing description by 19th-century Scottish encyclopedist Robert Chambers of newspaper publisher Jean-Paul Marat, one of the primary figures in the French Revolution:

“The sanguinary fanaticism of the French Revolution has no representative of such odious and repulsive figure as Marat, the original self-styled ‘Friend of the People.’ By birth a Swiss, of Calvinistic parents, he had led a strange skulking life for five-and-forty years—latterly, a sort of quack mediciner—when the great national crisis brought him to the surface as a journalist and member of the Convention. Less than five feet high, with a frightful countenance, and maniacal eye, he was shrunk from by most people as men shrink from a toad; but he had frantic earnestness, and hesitated at no violence against the enemies of liberty, and so he came to possess the entire confidence and affection of the mob of Paris. His constant cry was for blood; he literally desired to see every well-dressed person put to death. Every day his paper, ‘L’Ami du Peuple,’ was filled with clamorous demands for slaughter, and the wish of his heart was but too well fulfilled.”

Portrait of Jean-Paul Marat (1743–1793). (Public Domain)

Chambers’ distaste for Marat has been widely shared by many English-language historians ever since. But Marat was not always the bloodthirsty newspaper editor, covered in sores and compelled to spend his days in a soothing tub. In the 1770s, during his years in England, he published several well-received tracts of political theory, such as “A Philosophical Essay on Man,” and “Chains of Slavery.” As a dedicated amateur scientist he involved himself in experiments on the nature of light and electricity, and for a time he was a well-paid court physician.

When the French Revolution broke out in 1789, Marat attached himself to the more radical elements, using his newspaper L’Ami du Peuple to attack a wide range of conservative and moderate policies and politicians and to call for the death of his opponents. He made enemies very easily and was often forced into hiding; he was temporarily in exile in England but most famously was compelled to go underground to lurk in the Parisian sewer system, which may well have aggravated his serious case of dermatitis.

In the last half of 1792, revolutionary fervour grew; Marat’s fiery rhetoric laid the groundwork for the infamous massacres of prisoners in September. By the summer of 1793, the royal family and hundreds of other enemies of the new regime had been sent to the guillotine. Marat, who had been elected to the National Convention, clamoured for more executions.

There was still at this time a moderate wing of the Revolution, nicknamed the Girondins, whom Marat despised as enemies of republicanism. They succeeded in bringing charges against him, which saw him briefly imprisoned before his acquittal, but revolutionary infighting soon resulted in the moderates being overthrown and more radical factions in gaining power. The Girondins who did not flee soon found themselves under the blade.

On July 13, while Marat was soaking in his bath, he was assassinated by Charlotte Corday, a young woman from the provinces and a supporter of the clique which Marat had attacked. She had inveigled her way into the house where Marat was staying by claiming to have a list of traitors which she wished to denounce. Marat vowed that such foes would soon be arrested. Giving him the document, she plunged a 5-inch kitchen knife into his chest.

Charlotte Corday, painted at her request by Jean-Jacques Hauer, a few hours before her execution on July 17, 1793. (Public Domain)

His assassination made Marat an instant revolutionary martyr. The famous painting of the murdered man in his tub was by fellow radical Jacques-Louis David, who was called upon to stage the dead man’s lying in state. His eulogy was delivered by the Marquis de Sade (not yet the byword for sexual perversion that he would become). It stated, “Like Jesus, Marat loved ardently the people, and only them. Like Jesus, Marat hated kings, nobles, priests, rogues and, like Jesus, he never stopped fighting against these plagues of the people.”

The unrepentant Corday was guillotined a few days later, saying “I killed one man to save 100,000.” Radicals expressed their grief by becoming more violent in speech and action; the Reign of Terror was not long in coming. As long as the extremists were in power, Marat was a national hero—but after the 1794 Thermidorian Reaction which overthrew Maximilien Robespierre and other radicals, Marat’s reputation plunged and his bust was thrown into the sewer.