PREFACE
1. Jean Massin, Marat (Paris: Club français du livre, 1970); Olivier Coquard, Marat (Paris: Fayard, 1993).
2. Louis Gottschalk, Jean Paul Marat: A Study in Radicalism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967); Clifford D. Conner, Jean Paul Marat: Scientist and Revolutionary (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1997).
INTRODUCTION
1. Victor Hugo, Œuvres complètes (Paris, 1910), vol. XV, 524. (All translations from the French are by the present author unless otherwise noted.)
2. The revisionist school of thought was initiated by Alfred Cobban’s “Myth of the French Revolution” lecture in May 1954; see Cobban, The Social Interpretation of the French Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1964). For Lefebvre’s interpretation, see especially The French Revolution (New York: Columbia University Press, 1962).
3. Sidney L. Phipson, Marat: His Career in England and France Before the Revolution (London: Methuen, 1924), 16, 48, 86.
4. Ibid., v.
5. Ibid., 134.
6. Ibid., 83.
7. Correspondance, 1–2.
8. See, for example, J. M. Thompson, Leaders of the French Revolution (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988), 167.
9. Robert Darnton, “Marat n’a pas été un voleur,” Annales historiques de la Révolution française 38 (1966), 447–50.
10. Douglas McKie, Antoine Lavoisier, Scientist, Economist, Social Reformer (New York: Schuman, 1952), 318.
11. Charles W. Burr, “Jean Paul Marat, Physician, Revolutionary, Paranoaic,” Annals of Medical History III (1919), 248–61.
12. See, for example, Norman Hampson, Will and Circumstance: Montesquieu, Rousseau and the French Revolution (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1983), 119.
13. Burr, “Jean Paul Marat,” 260.
14. Ibid., 259.
15. Ibid., 257.
16. L. F. Maury, L’Ancienne Académie des Sciences (Paris: Didier, 1864), 174.
17. For a thorough account of Marat’s scientific career, go to this website: www.MaratScience.com
18. In addition to Louis Gottschalk’s biography, see also Gérard Walter, Marat (Paris: Albin Michel, 1933).
CHAPTER 1
1. Fabre d’Eglantine, Portrait of Marat (Paris: Maradan, 1794).
2. The definitive source of information on the Mara family is Charlotte Goëtz, Marat en famille: La saga des Mara(t), 2 volumes (Bruxelles: Pôle Nord, 2001).
3. Marat’s letter of May 14, 1776, in Darnton, “Marat n’a pas été un voleur.”
4. The text of the declaration is in Alfred Bougeart, Marat, l’ami du people (Paris: Libraire Internationale, 1865), vol. I, 350.
5. “A Portrait of the People’s Friend, Drawn by Himself” in JRF, no. 98, January 14, 1793. The two quotations that follow are from the same source.
6. Marat, Les Aventures du jeune comte Potowski (Paris: Chlendowski, 1848). A “bicentennial edition” was published in 1989 (Monaco: Renaudot, 1989).
7. Lettre à Roume de Saint-Laurent (November 20, 1783), Correspondance, 23–44.
8. Ibid.
9. Gazette de politique et de literature, May 5, 1777.
10. Diderot, Eléments de physiologie, in Œuvres complètes (Paris: Garnier, 1875), vol. XI, 378.
11. AP no. 455, May 11, 1791.
12. PRF no. 147, November 19, 1793.
13. It was reported as hearsay by Jacques Pierre Brissot, who had become Marat’s bitter enemy. See Jacques Pierre Brissot de Warville, Mémoires, 1754–1793 (Paris: Picard et Fils, 1912), vol. I, 196.
14. See the letters to Marat from Lyttleton, Collignon and La Rochette in Correspondance, 45–50.
15. Gottschalk, Jean Paul Marat, 19.
16. Massin, Marat, 39.
17. For an in-depth analysis of the antecedents of Marat’s ideology, particularly with regard to the British commonwealth tradition, see Rachel Hammersley, “Jean-Paul Marat’s The Chains of Slavery in Britain and France, 1774–1833,” The Historical Journal, vol. 48, no. 3 (September 2005).
18. Marat, Chains of Slavery, 210.
19. Ibid., 68.
20. Ibid., 108.
21. Ibid., 124.
22. Ibid., 68.
23. Hammersley demonstrates not only that Marat utilized the ideas he formulated in Chains of Slavery in France between 1789 and 1793, but that others continued to do so for several decades after his death.
24. Marat, Plan de legislation criminelle. There is a modern edition (Paris: Aubier Montaigne, 1974).
25. AP no. 169, 22 July 1790.
26. Marat, Plan de legislation criminelle, 59.
27. Ibid., 62.
CHAPTER 2
1. Marat, An Essay on Gleets, in Reprint of Two Tracts by Jean Paul Marat, M.D., ed., James Blake Bailey (London: Percival & Co., 1891).
2. The text of Marat’s diploma is in F. Chèvremont, Jean-Paul Marat (Paris, 1880), 363–5.
3. For one example, see William Buchan, Domestic Medicine; or, The family physician (Edinburgh, 1769).
4. An Essay on Gleets (October 1769) and An Enquiry into the Nature, Cause and Cure of a Singular Disease of the Eyes (January 1773), both in Reprint of Two Tracts by Jean Paul Marat, M.D.
5. See the discussion of Marat’s degree in Jean François Lemaire, “Le Dr. Jean-Paul Marat,” in MHdS.
6. Gazette de Santé, November 13, 1777, 189–90.
7. Gottschalk, Jean Paul Marat, 9.
8. Quoted by Robert Darnton, Literary Underground of the Old Regime (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1982), 26–7. Darnton’s source: Lenoir papers, Bibliothèque Municipal d’Orleans, ms. 1423.
9. Gazette de Santé, January 1, 1778.
10. David M. Vess, Medical Revolution in France, 1789–1796 (Gainesville: University Presses of Florida, 1975), 17.
11. Ibid.
12. Lemaire, “Le Dr. Jean-Paul Marat,” MHdS, 22.
13. See the extensive discussion of “Jacobin science” in Marshall Clagett, Critical Problems in the History of Science (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1959).
14. Marat’s three main works on fire, light, and electricity were, respectively, Recherches physiques sur le feu (Paris: Jombert, 1780), Découvertes sur la lumière (Paris: Jombert, 1780), and Recherches physiques sur l’électricité (Paris: Clousier, 1782).
15. Marat’s three main works on fire, light, and electricity were translated by Christian Ehrenfriend Weigel (Leipzig, S. L. Crusius, 1782–84).
16. See Norman Bernard Mandelbaum, “Jean-Paul Marat: The Rebel as Savant,” (unpublished dissertation, Columbia University, 1977), 511–13.
17. Jean Baptiste Lamarck, Réfutation de la théorie pneumatique (Paris: Agasse, 1796); le comte de Lacépède, Essai sur l’électricité naturelle et artificielle (Paris: Impr. de Monsieur, 1781); Baltazar Georges Sage, Institutions de physique (Paris, 1811).
18. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Zur Farbenlehre (Tübingen, 1810).
19. See Mandelbaum, “Rebel as Savant,” 382.
20. Marat, Mémoire sur l’électricité médicale (Paris: Méquignon, 1784).
21. This essay and the two for the Academy of Lyon were published in Marat’s Mémoires académiques (Paris: Méquignon, 1788).
22. See Mandelbaum, “Rebel as Savant,” 369–74.
23. See especially Claudius Roux, Marat et l’Académie de Lyon (Lyon: M. Audin, 1923).
24. Olivier Coquard, “Marat et les Académies de province,” in MHdS, 65–93.
25. Marat, Pamphlets, 255–96.
26. For Marat’s relationship with Franklin, see their correspondence from 1779 to 1783 in Revue historique de la Révolution, vol. III, 1912, 353–61, and Marat, Correspondance, 81–2.
27. Registres de l’Académie des Sciences, 1779, 97–100. Marat published it at the beginning of his Découvertes de M. Marat sur le feu, l’électricité, et la lumière (Paris: Clousier, 1779).
28. Marat published this report, followed by his own comments, at the beginning of his Découvertes sur la lumière.
29. C. C. Gillispie, Science and Polity in France at the End of the Old Regime (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980), 307–8.
30. Ibid., 328.
31. Ibid., 320–1.
32. Isaac Newton, Optique, traduit de l’anglais par Jean-Paul Marat (Paris: Christian Bourgois, 1989).
33. See Augustin Cabanès, Marat Inconnu (Paris: A. Michel, 1911), 91, 506–8.
34. For example, Gottschalk, Jean Paul Marat, 30–1.
35. Marat, l’Ami du Peuple, aux amis de la Patrie, in Pamphlets, 309–12; Les Charlatans modernes, in Pamphlets, 292.
36. Lettre au Président de l’Assemblée Nationale (May 1790), Correspondance, 142.
CHAPTER 3
1. Correspondance, 96.
2. The precise identification of Marat’s skin disease has long been a subject of speculation. In 1900, Ernest Belfort Bax declared that there is “no doubt whatever that it was the skin disease known as pruritus” (Ernest Belfort Bax, Jean Paul Marat: The People’s Friend [London: Grant Richards, 1900], ch. 5). In 1979, J. E. Jelinek identified it as dermatitis herpetiformis (Jelinek, “Jean-Paul Marat: The differential diagnosis of his skin disease,” American Journal of Dermatopathology, vol. 1, no. 3 [1979], 251–2). Other guesses have included scrofula, skin cancer, and psoriasis.
3. Correspondance, 142.
4. This is the “Lefebvre Thesis.” See Georges Lefebvre, The Coming of the French Revolution (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1947).
5. Offrande à la patrie, in Pamphlets, 1–35.
6. Ibid., 21, 31.
7. Ibid., 22.
8. Ibid., 15, 28.
9. Ibid., 20.
10. Supplément de l’Offrande à la patrie, in Pamphlets, 37–70.
11. Ibid., 49–50.
12. Ibid., 39–40.
13. Ibid., 70.
14. AP no. 36, November 12, 1789.
15. Ibid.
16. AP no. 20, September 30, 1789.
17. See Massin, Marat, 91.
18. According to one study of the printing business at the time of the Revolution, “The lower limit of economic viability for a periodical in the eighteenth century seems to have been a press run of about 300 copies” (Harvey Chisick, “Production, Distribution and Readership of a Conservative Journal of the Early French Revolution: The Ami du Roi of the Abbé Royou,” Memoirs of the American Philosophical Society, vol. 198 [Philadelphia, 1992], 19). Marat’s press runs were far higher, meaning that he had the possibility of doing much better than merely breaking even. Furthermore, although there are no figures available to directly determine the profitability of Marat’s journal, another journal, “comparable in format and circulation to L’Ami du peuple” (Coquard, Marat, 464), earned an annual profit of about 62,000 livres (Gilles Feyel, “Les frais d’impression et de diffusion de la presse parisienne entre 1789 et 1792,” La Révolution du journal, 1788–1794, Centre national de la recherche scientifique [CNRS] [Paris, 1989]). Marat’s personal “net worth” at the time of his death was virtually nil, so if the paper’s income was exceeding its expenses, he was most likely putting the surplus toward expanding his printing capacity.
19. J.-B.-C. Delisle de Sales, Essai sur le journalisme depuis 1735 jusqu’à l’an 1800 (Paris: impr. de Colas, 1811), 96–7.
20. Chisick, “Production, Distribution and Readership of a Conservative Journal,” 66.
21. Lise Andries, “Radicalism and the Book in Paris During the French Revolution,” CNRS (Paris, 2006).
22. AP no. 11, September 21, 1789.
23. Marat, La Constitution ou Projet de déclaration des droits de l’homme et du citoyen (Paris: Buisson, 1789).
24. Ibid., 7.
25. Ibid., 13–15.
26. Actes, vol. I, 206.
27. George Rudé, The Crowd in the French Revolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972), 178. Rudé’s book remains the best source of information on the sans-culottes. Another worthy source is Albert Soboul, The Sans-Culottes (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980).
28. AP no. 667, July 7, 1792.
29. Actes, vol. II, 69.
30. Lettre aux représentants de la Commune (September 25, 1789), Correspondance, 104.
31. Actes, vol. II, 103–4.
32. AP no. 25, October 5, 1789.
33. See Rudé, The Crowd in the French Revolution, 76.
34. AP no. 29, November 5, 1789.
35. AP no. 34, November 10, 1789.
36. AP no. 35, November 11, 1789.
37. Ibid.
38. Actes, vol. II, 202.
39. AP no. 27, October 7, 1789.
40. Le Père Duchesne no. 82, September 30, 1791.
41. AP no. 70, December 11, 1789.
42. AP no. 71, December 19, 1789.
43. Ibid.
44. Appel à la Nation, ca. April 1790, in Pamphlets, 122.
45. AP no. 83, December 31, 1789.
46. Ibid.
47. Actes, vol. III, 458.
48. Dénonciation contre Necker, in Pamphlets, 97.
49. See Actes, vol. III, 517, 520–5, 528, 540–51.
50. Appel à la Nation, in Pamphlets, 121–64. The other two pamphlets were Lettre sur l’ordre judiciaire (Correspondance, 135–40) and Nouvelle dénonciation contre Necker (Pamphlets, 165–96).
51. Appel à la Nation, in Pamphlets, 160–1.
52. Ibid., 155.
53. Soc. Jac., vol. V, 226.
54. For an extensive list of printers and booksellers that produced and distributed Ami du peuple at one time or another, see Coquard, Marat, 256–8.
55. AP no. 170, July 23, 1790.
56. Lettre à Camille Desmoulins (May 1791), Correspondance, 208. Also, AP no. 455, May 11, 1791.
57. Lettre à Camille Desmoulins (June 24, 1790), Correspondance, 151–3.
58. AP no. 474, May 30, 1791. Besides Desmoulins and Fréron, the others were Pierre Jean Audouin, Journal universel; Louis Marie Prudhomme, Les Révolutions de Paris; and Pierre François Robert, Mercure national.
59. Rév. France/Brabant no. 69.
60. Lettre à Camille Desmoulins (May 1791), Correspondance, 203.
61. Correspondance, 153–8. Marat published a revised version of this article in AP no. 149, June 30, 1790.
62. The article, from AP no. 147, June 28, 1790, was a denunciation of Lafayette.
63. AP no. 149, June 30, 1790.
64. Rudé, The Crowd in the French Revolution, 178.
65. The numerical proportion of wageworkers among the “working classes” in late-eighteenth-century Paris is difficult to determine (not least because the ways workers gained their livelihoods are often difficult to categorize), but it was certainly much smaller than it would become during and after the Industrial Revolution. One reasonable estimate put the number of “wage-earners and their families” in Paris in 1791 at slightly less than 300,000 (Rudé, The Crowd in the French Revolution, 17), which would suggest that wageworkers themselves accounted for a small fraction of the city’s population. With regard to the wageworkers’ social weight, however, their lack of concentration and organization was more significant than their numerical strength. They were scattered among tens of thousands of small workplaces and prevented by law and tradition from organizing unions or other types of associations to defend their interests.
66. AP no. 156, July 7, 1790.
67. Pamphlets, 197–200.
68. Le Junius Français, no. 1, June 2, 1790.
69. See, for example, “Address to All the Passive Citizens of the Capital,” AP no. 172, July 25, 1790.
70. Pamphlets, 201–9.
71. Ibid.
72. Rév. France/Brabant no. 37.
73. Quoted in Œuvres, 132–3.
74. In Pamphlets, 219–27, 229–35, and 237–45, respectively.
75. Le Junius Français, no. 10, June 13, 1790.
76. AP no. 198, August 22, 1790.
77. AP no. 200, August 24, 1790.
78. Pamphlets, 244.
79. Rév. France/Brabant no. 41.
80. Rév. France/Brabant no. 47.
81. AP no. 207, August 31, 1790, and no. 278, November 12, 1790.
82. AP no. 224, September 18, 1790.
83. AP no. 374, February 17, 1791.
84. AP no. 342, January 16, 1791.
85. AP no. 384, February 27, 1791.
86. See Desmoulins’s account in Rév. France/Brabant no. 63.
87. AP no. 419, April 4, 1791.
88. The historian J. M. Thompson called Marat “the one man unkind and clear-sighted enough to denounce [Mirabeau] when he died” (Leaders of the French Revolution [Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988], 39).
89. AP no. 496, June 21, 1791.
90. AP no. 503, June 27, 1791.
91. Le Père Duchesne no. 60, July 3, 1791.
CHAPTER 4
1. AP no. 524, July 20, 1791.
2. AP no. 549, September 8, 1791.
3. AP nos. 555 and 557, September 20 and 22, 1791.
4. AP no. 555, September 20, 1791.
5. AP no. 556, September 21, 1791.
6. AP nos. 557, 558, and 559 (September 22, 23, and 25, 1791).
7. AP no. 560, September 27, 1791.
8. Charavay, Assemblée Électorale de Paris (Paris, 1890), vol. II, 168.
9. AP no. 568, October 6, 1791.
10. Rudé, The Crowd in the French Revolution, 102.
11. AP no. 667, July 7, 1792.
12. AP no. 582, October 25, 1791.
13. AP no. 622, December 10, 1791.
14. AP nos. 625 and 626, December 14 and 15, 1791.
15. See AP no. 627, April 12, 1792.
16. AP no. 648, May 3, 1792.
17. Robespierre, Œuvres (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1958), vol. IX, 80.
18. AP no. 628, April 13, 1792.
19. AP no. 634, April 19, 1792.
20. AP no. 639, April 24, 1792.
21. Ibid.
22. AP no. 646, “April 31,” 1792. April 31 was a typographical error in the masthead; the issue appeared on May 1. Marat did not refer directly to the death of General Dillon until AP no. 649, May 6, 1792.
23. Arch. Parl., vol. XLII, 706–14.
24. This was intended for publication as a placard on July 13, but Marat was unable to find a printer willing to handle it. It was published a few days later in AP nos. 674 and 675, July 18 and 20, 1792.
25. JRF no. 33, October 27, 1792. The letter was printed by Marat, but it was authenticated by Barbaroux in his Mémoires (Paris: Baudouin Frères, 1822), 62.
26. AP no. 634, April 19, 1792.
27. Women did not win the right to vote in France until after World War II.
28. Marat would be forced into hiding again in November 1792 and April 1793 but for only a few days on both occasions.
29. L’Ami du peuple aux français patriotes, in Œuvres, 216.
30. Ibid., 218–9.
31. AP no. 681, August 21, 1792.
32. Marat, l’ami du peuple, aux braves Parisiens, in Pamphlets, 301–3.
33. Marat, l’ami du peuple, à ses concitoyens, in Pamphlets, 305–8.
34. JRF no. 12, October 6, 1792.
CHAPTER 5
1. In Pamphlets, 305–8, 309–12, 313–17, and 325–34.
2. Marat, l’Ami du Peuple, aux Amis de la Patrie, in Pamphlets, 309–12.
3. Ibid.
4. Robespierre, Œuvres, vol. VIII, 463 (note).
5. Charavay, Assemblée Électorale de Paris, vol. III, 123.
6. Arch. Parl. (April 10, 1793), vol. LXI, 525.
7. JRF no. 1, September 25, 1792.
8. Soc. Jac., vol. IV, 378 and 383.
9. AP no. 667, July 7, 1792. Emphasis added.
10. Soc. Jac. (session of December 23, 1792), vol. IV, 613.
11. Mon. univ. no. 271, September 27, 1792.
12. Ibid.
13. Ibid.
14. Ibid.
15. JRF no. 20, October 14, 1792.
16. JRF no. 60, November 29, 1792.
17. Soc. Jac., vol. IV, 383–4.
18. Ibid., 387.
19. Ibid., 393.
20. See Marat’s report to the Jacobin Club on October 17, 1792: Soc. Jac., vol. IV, 399–401. See also Marat’s account of the confrontation with Dumouriez in JRF no. 27, October 21, 1792.
21. Mon. univ. no. 293, October 19, 1792.
22. Mon. univ. no. 300, October 26, 1792.
23. JRF no. 33, October 27, 1792.
24. Mon. univ. no. 343, December 8, 1792.
25. Mon. univ. no. 20, January 20, 1793.
26. JRF no. 105, January 23, 1793.
27. Mon. univ. no. 45, February 14, 1793.
28. Ibid.
29. Marat’s denunciation of ultraradicalism can perhaps bear comparison with Lenin’s harsh polemics against what he called “infantile leftwing communists.” V. I. Lenin, “Left-Wing” Communism, An Infantile Disorder (Moscow, 1920).
30. JRF no. 81, December 22, 1792.
31. JRF no. 133, February 25, 1793.
32. P. J. B. Buchez and P. C. Roux, Histoire parlementaire de la Révolution française (Paris, 1834–38), vol. XXV, 74–5. See also, Arch. Parl., vol. LX, 125.
33. Buchez and Roux, Histoire parlementaire, 75.
34. On March 14, 1793 Marat’s daily periodical underwent a final name change, from Journal de la République Française (JRF) to Publiciste de la République Française (PRF).
35. Soc. Jac., vol. V, 108.
36. Mon. univ. no. 90, March 31, 1793.
37. Mon. univ. no. 91, April 1, 1793.
38. Soc. Jac., vol. V, 117.
39. See Dumouriez’s letters in Mon. univ. no. 95, April 5, 1793.
40. Quoted by Massin, Marat, 256.
41. Soc. Jac., vol. V, 125–6.
42. Ibid., 126–8.
43. Arch. Parl. (April 12, 1793), vol. LXI, 637–44.
44. Soc. Jac., vol. V, 133.
45. Mon. univ. no. 107, April 17, 1793.
46. Lettre à la Convention (April 17, 1793), Correspondance, 251–6. Also, PRF no. 171, April 18, 1793.
47. Arch. Parl. (April 20, 1793), vol. LXIII, 29–31.
48. Marat announced his surrender in PRF no. 176, April 23, 1793.
49. Restif de la Bretonne, Les Nuits de Paris (New York: Random House, 1964), 336. Translation by L. Asher and E. Fertig.
50. Buchez and Roux, Histoire parlementaire, vol. XXVI, 114. The transcript of the proceedings is reproduced on pages 114–30.
51. Bernard Vincent, Thomas Paine ou la Religion de la liberté (Paris: Aubier, 1987), 272–9.
52. Edmund Burke, Reflections on the French Revolution (London, 1790).
53. A. J. Ayer, Thomas Paine (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 124.
54. Buchez and Roux, Histoire parlementaire, vol. XXVI, 129.
55. Six are reproduced in Coquard, Marat, 515–6.
56. Mon. univ. no. 116, April 26, 1793.
57. Mon. univ. no. 147, May 27, 1793.
58. Soc. Jac., vol. V, 207–8.
59. Mon. univ. no. 148, May 28, 1793.
60. Alphonse Esquiros, Histoire des Montagnards (Paris: Lecou, 1847), 350–3. Esquiros said his account was based on notes written by Marat that had been given to him by Marat’s sister, Albertine Marat.
61. PRF no. 209, June 6, 1793.
62. Buchez and Roux, Histoire parlementaire, vol. XXVII, 356–7. See also, Mon. univ. no. 155, June 4, 1793.
63. Arch. Parl., vol. LXV, 689.
64. Mon. univ. no. 156, June 5, 1793.
65. PRF no. 209, June 6, 1793.
66. Arch. Parl., vol. LXV, 706. See also, Mon. univ. no. 156, June 5, 1793.
67. Lettre à la Convention (June 3, 1793), Correspondance, 259–60.
68. Lettre à Thuriot (July 5, 1793), Correspondance, 275. Also, Arch. Parl., vol. LXVIII, 278.
69. PRF no. 233, July 4, 1793.
70. PRF no. 224, June 23, 1793.
71. See Chabot’s initial report to the Convention on the inquiry into Marat’s assassination and the discussion on it in Arch. Parl. (July 14, 1793), vol. LXVIII, 710 et seq. (especially 728–9).
72. One of them, Charles Eléonore Valazé, committed suicide before he could be executed.
73. PRF no. 242, July 14, 1793.
74. “Procès-verbal d’apposition et de levée des scellés chez Jean-Paul Marat, 13–25 juillet 1793.” In François Chevremont, Jean-Paul Marat, esprit politique accompagné de sa vie scientifique, politique et privée (Paris, 1880), vol. II, 503–4. The sou was a French coin worth one-twentieth of a livre. According to George Rudé, “In Paris in 1789, a labourer’s daily wage might be 20 to 30 sous, a journeyman mason might earn 40 sous, and a carpenter or locksmith 50 sous” (Rudé, The Crowd in the French Revolution, 21).
CONCLUSION
1. Jacques Louis David’s masterpiece La Mort de Marat, depicting the assassinated Marat lying lifeless in his tub, has become one of the most familiar images of the French Revolution.
2. Le Publiciste de la République Française, par l’Ombre de Marat, July 16, 1793.
3. L’Ami du peuple, par Leclerc, July 20, 1793.
4. See Père Duchesne nos. 264, 268, and 275.
5. Arch. Parl., vol. LXX, 527–8.
6. See Morris Slavin’s detailed study, The Hébertistes to the Guillotine (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1994).
7. See Georges Lefebvre, The Thermidorians (New York: Vintage, 1964), Chapter 7.
8. Arno J. Mayer, The Furies: Violence and Terror in the French and Russian Revolutions (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000), 95.
9. The “violence of the status quo” has been defined in part as “the agony of millions who in varying degrees suffer hunger, poverty, ill-health, lack of education, non-acceptance by their fellow men.” (Jim Bristol, Non-violence: Not First for Export [American Friends Service Committee, 1972]).
10. Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1889).
11. See François Gendron, The Gilded Youth of Thermidor (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1993).
12. Frederick Engels, “Marx und die ‘Neue Rheinische Zeitung’ 1848–49,” Der Sozialdemokrat, no. 11 (March 13, 1884). On the other hand, Marx is reported to have held Marat’s Chains of Slavery in high esteem (Massin, Marat, 39).
13. JRF nos. 39 and 40, November 7 and 8, 1792.