Talk:Jean-Paul Marat

message: Marat was not very active as a politician he was mainly a journalist. (Unsigned: Sep 23, 2002
User:Ericd)
Lenin was just a journalist until he bacame the Chairman of the Council of Peoples Commissars (head of Soviet Russia). This has to do with the revolutionary aspects of the work done by Marat. Once the the "Legislative Assembly" became the "National Convention", Marat enetred formal politics, until then he was, I believe, in hiding (just like Lenin).
--130.161.31.26 19:41, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Journalist

message: I cut the following recent addition:
: The September massacres (Sept.2 to Sept.8, 1792) were perpetrated by the dregs of Marseille. These had been made to come to Paris by the Girondins, but seeing that these were on the way out, offered their services to the Jacobins. On the way up from Marseille they sang the marching song of the Rhine army which then became known as the Marseillaise.
: the reference denying Marat is by a avowed communist - is NOT valid. is POV  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.174.191.14 (talk) 08:14, 20 October 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  September massacres 

message: The lead of the article refers to Marat as a Jacobin and links that word to Jacobin Club. He was certainly a Jacobin in the broad sense of the word (Jacobinism), but I'm pretty certain he was never a member of the Jacobin Club. I'll give at least a week for someone to come up with a citation for that claim, but if no citation is forthcoming, I will change this. - Jmabel | Talk 05:29, 17 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Even if he wasn't technically a member of the Jacobin Club, I think it's still important to identify Marat as a Jacobin, especially since the various denotations of the word often lead to confusion.  I mean, it's more useful for the lay reader to link Marat to the Jacobin Club than to leave the impression that Marat was some kind of generic Jacobin.  These Revolutionary clubs didn't have formal rolls, did they?  I had the impression that they were places where the various factions showed up from time to time.  For example, the article also identifies Marat with the Cordeliers Club, his "base of operations".  It sounds like this outfit was to the left even of  the Jacobins, calling Robespierre "too moderate".  So, maybe Marat wasn't a Jacobin after all !  Hmm...maybe a new section is advisable, where Marat is contrasted with the likes of St. Just and Robespierre. — J M Rice 22:10, 17 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Exactly as J M Rice and I said above: he was certainly a Jacobin in the broad sense of the word, and was never a formal member of the club. I'll try to edit to make that clear. - Jmabel | Talk 08:25, 11 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Jacobin 

message: There were a large number of recent anonymous edits, without citation or summary. Some of them look fine to me, some I have questions about and would appreciate explanation. I'm going to list the questionable changes here, hoping that someone more expert than I on Marat can sort out which of these should stay.
* "Upon his mother's death in 1759, Marat set out on his travels and spent two years at Bordeaux in the study of medicine" became just "Marat set out on his travels and may be spent two years at Bordeaux." Is there any question about his mother's death? Is there question about him studying medicine in Bordeaux at that time? My 1955 Britannica (I know, I know) states both of these as fact.
* Similarly, the '55 Britannica gives De l'esprit by Helvetius, changed now to De l'Homme. The latter is presumably the posthumous and minor De l'homme, de ses facultés intellectuelles et de son éducation. I'm not sure of the exact date of publication, but I suspect it was not yet published at the time of Marat's essay that is described here as directly attacking it.
* "Despite his anti-royalist writing, his reputation as a clever doctor won him, in 1777, a position as physician to the guards of the comte d'Artois…" Why struck? Seems appropriate to me.
* "His pamphlet Offrande à la patrie": why drop "pamphlet"? In the new wording, it can readily be mistaken for a book.
* Now we come to the really odd part; bolding here indicates insertions: "Marat often attacked the most influential and powerful groups in France, including the Corps Municipal, the Constituent Assembly, the ministers, and the Cour du Châtelet. This resulted in his imprisonment from October 8 to November 5, 1789. In January 1790, he was again nearly arrested for his aggressive campaign against the Marquis de La Fayette, and escaped by fleeing to LondonThis resulted in prosecutions as early as october 1789. He took refuge in London, where he wrote a Denonciation contre Necker ("Denunciation of Jacques Necker," an attack against the minister of Louis XVI). In May he returned to Paris to continue the publication of L'Ami du peuple, and attacked many of France's most powerful citizens. Fearing reprisal, Marat was forced to hide in the Catacombs, where he contracted a debilitating chronic skin disease (scrofula). In 1790, he married 27 year old Simone Évrard, the sister-in-law of Jean Antoine Corne, the typographer of L'Ami du peuple. wrote a lot of articles against war and underhand dealings to disorganise the national guard, first line of defence of liberty. Fearing reprisal, Marat was often forced to hide. Offhand, all of thes changes look wrongheaded to me.
*The very concrete "Marat, long a supporter of the abolition of the Bourbon Monarchy, subsequently attacked more moderate revolutionary leaders. In July 1790, he wrote, 'Five or six hundred heads cut off would have assured your repose, freedom and happiness. A false humanity has held your arms and suspended your blows; because of this millions of your brothers will lose their lives.'" was replaced by "Marat was surprisingly indifferent to the institution of monarchy and unmoved by the existence of noble 'titles' (he regards their abolition in June 1790 as a needless provocation). He condemned the National Assembly’s decision to sell the property of th Church to fund the state’s debts, arguing that the land in question would be better used to meet the needs of the propertyless poor. He opposed the abolition of guilds, warning that unlimited competition would force down the quality of products. Marat’s republicanism was a system consisting of mix of popular sovereignity, patriot king, moderate prosperity and a common concern for the public good." Some of what was added may belong; I cannot fathom the reason for the removals.
*Removed for no apparent reason: "In December 1791, he again fled to London and wrote another book École du citoyen ("School of the Citizen")."
*Removed for no apparent reason: "Subsequently, Marat took his seat at the Paris Commune, and demanded a trial be held to judge the royalists in prison. When no trial was convened, he advocated the September Massacres in which thousands of political prisoners were murdered, and joined the commune's comité de surveillance (Surveillance Committee), whose declared role was to root out counter-Revolutionaries (Marat composed the death lists from which those suspected of political crimes). One of his victims may have been the chemist Antoine Lavoisier." I think this was overstated—I don't believe Marat's involvement in the September Massacres is nearly so clearcut, and I'd like to see a citation on this one way or the other—but I don't think it should go totally unmentioned. (After writing this, I looked again at my 50-year-old Britannica: they concur that he demanded a "demanded a tribunal… No tribunal was formed, and the massacres in the prisons were the inevitable result," which seems to me to be on the mark.
I'll allow at least a few days for comment on this, but if no one has anything substantive to say, I'll probably make a lot of restorations and a few reversions. - Jmabel | Talk 03:57, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Unsummarized recent edits 

message: Just to let you know (now that I am registered) that it was me who made the most recent changes. I provided the source in the summary (Cock and de Goetz, 1995 - by far the most uptodate) which is far superior to the EB used previously. I will try and return to correct other errors when I have time. I am currently working on a biography so would like to think I had a pretty good idea of what is factual and what not. Any queries etc. I am more than happy to answer here or elsewhere [Matador]
*Thanks. I noticed that you had added a well-written amplification of the entry. I rewrote much of this a while back and have subsequently reverted it a few times, since for some reason this article tends to attract strange and not always helpful attention. The current version, however, is superior to my efforts and I look forward to the further development of this article. If you could provide sources that would be useful (check the MOS for the house style). Cheers, Eusebeus 13:22, 20 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Recent Revisions 

message: I notice that this article uses Girondin, which is, of course, the correct French-language term, but I believe that Wikipedia's other articles on the French Revolution generally favor the English Girondist. - Jmabel | Talk 20:34, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: This is the first I have heard of this.  Every English language source on the French Revolution I have seen up to now uses Girondin.  PatGallacher (talk) 02:53, 27 November 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Girondin / Girondist 

message: This article states that Marat called out "À moi, ma chère amie!" before he died. However, the article on Corday states that he said  "Aidez, ma chère amie!" Maybe I'm being picky, but which is it? If we don't know, maybe we should at least choose one (maybe the one with the most sources?) in order to be consistent. intooblv (talk) 07:02, 20 May 2008 (UTC)
replies: text:  considering that "aidez, ma chère amie" is grammatically incorrect, I would favor the other option. The phrase "aidez ma chère amie" is correct (without the comma) but it means "help my dear friend", as if ordering a third party to help the dear friend. "Aidez-moi, ma chère amie" is correct. But "aidez, ma chère amie" is neither correct today nor was it 200 years ago. It looks as if somebody translated into French an English sentence, which, if it were "help, my dear friend" is itself barely correct. In general, when calling out for help an anglophone might say "help", a francophone would use a pronoun and say "aidez-moi", meaning "help me". But the imperative form "aidez" by itself is way too vague. It is an order to help, but it doesn't give any indication of whom should be helped (the person asking or a third party), which is why it is not used in French. In any case, "aidez, ma chère amie" is surely not what Marat said. Unless upon his expiration he became delirious and forgetful of the most elementary French grammatical and usage rules.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.57.14.131 (talk) 17:05, 15 June 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  What did he say? 

message: At the time of Marat's birth (1743), the principality of Neuchâtel belonged to the King in Prussia, Frederick I of Prussia, and it remained Prussian until 1848.
Therefore, Marat was not born a "Swiss" citizen, but a "Prussian".
Excerpt from Wikipedia Neuchâtel article :
*On September 12, 1814, Neuchâtel became the 21st canton, but also remained a Prussian principality. It took a bloodless revolution in the decades following for Neuchâtel to shake off its princely past and declare itself, on March 1, 1848, a republic within the Swiss Confederation. 
--Frania W. (talk) 13:57, 19 April 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Entirely correct. I changed it and added a reference just now. SteveStrummer (talk) 06:01, 20 December 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Nationality

message: Her name has been "corrected" to "Simone" a number of times, but according to the biography by historian Ernest Belfort Bax (Jean-Paul Marat; The People's Friend), Marat's wife's name was Simonne Evrard. This spelling is by far the most common in a GoogleBooks search, and citations include Thomas Carlyle (The French Revolution); Baroness Orczy (The League of  the Scarlet Pimpernel);  and G. Lenôtre (Paris in the Revolution). Other supporting citations include Jean-Paul Marat, a study in Radicalism (Gottschalk, 1927);  Jean Paul Marat: scientist and revolutionary (Conner, 1997); Women of the French Revolution (Stephens, 1922);  Nine women, drawn from the epoch of the French revolution (Serebriakova, 1969); and the Encyclopaedia Britannica. SteveStrummer (talk) 17:15, 31 August 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Wife's name Simonne

message: Seems quite an important one (from my point of view):
"Don’t be deceived when they tell you things are better now. Even if there’s no poverty to be seen because the poverty’s been hidden. Even if you ever got more wages and could afford to buy more of these new and useless goods which industries foist on you and even if it seems to you that you never had so much, that is only the slogan of those who still have much more than you. Don’t be taken in when they paternally pat you on the shoulder and say that there’s no inequality worth speaking of and no more reason to fight because if you believe them they will be completely in charge in their marble homes and granite banks from which they rob the people of the world under the pretense of bringing them culture. Watch out, for as soon as it pleases them they’ll send you out to protect their gold in wars whose weapons, rapidly developed by servile scientists, will become more and more deadly until they can with a flick of the finger tear a million of you to pieces."
It is found on several pages on the internet and it doesn't seem to be refuted, but i haven't found any academic references or date.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.125.190.223 (talk) 12:38, 14 October 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Perhaps I can find one. Will check. -Darouet (talk) 22:12, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

text: The words appear in a number of plays that feature Marat as one of the principle characters: by Trevor Griffiths for instance, and Peter Weiss. I'm not sure that these words were ever truly spoken by Marat (though of course they bear a resemblance to his sentiments). -Darouet (talk) 22:20, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

text: "new and useless goods which industries foist on you" - "weapons rapidly developed by servile scientists" - sounds totally anachronistic, it's 20th century talk. 31.54.33.97 (talk) 19:42, 1 February 2016 (UTC)
thread_title: Additional quote for inclusion?

message: I was somewhat surprised there was no mention of Lavoisier in connection with Marat -- the former's article does mention him.  There's mention uppage of some text involving him that was long-since removed  Should some sort of reference be re-included?  84.203.35.84 (talk) 21:43, 13 August 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Lavoisier? 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Hi I have just reverted a large number of good-faith changes to this article by User:Informatics411. The reasons are:
* Aside from occasional vandalism, the current version of the article has a stable consensus and the edits were large, substantially changing the tone.
* Contributions from recent scholarly history are constructive amendments, but these were not based on that. 
* Paraphrasing large sections of text from works that mainly reflect an author’s opinion about the subject is not appropriate for Wikipedia. Essentially it’s not Wikipedia’s business to relay to the reader what Loomis or any other commentator thought about Marat in the main body of an article. 
Among the changes I’ve reverted there may be specific changes that editors would welcome. Thanks Mccapra (talk) 16:20, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
thread_title: Recent changes reverted

message: Thanks for acknowledging these were "good-faith changes." 
I haven't participated in several years, so I may need a few edits to catch-up with needs. We need smaller bits I see. 
SO:
As Lefebvre acknowledges, nobody was put on trial for the killing of 1,500 people--but the detail from Lefebvre stops there. From Loomis we get: most of them trapped in small prison cells, in overcrowded groups and killed with clubs, spears, swords etc. Boys as young as 12; girls as young as 10. 
Loomis makes the case, with evidence: that Marat was "the mastermind" behind the September Massacre: he was the head of the committee of people who a) called for a roundup of political prisoners b) voted on 2 ways of killing them as "whole groups" once imprisoned i) turned down Marat's "burn them alive" proposal ii) then voted for another proposal to have them "butchered." 
I'm leaving out a lot, by the way. Early on the second day, one of the Surveillance Committee members wading into the killing (with some delight we are told) to admonish the hired mercenaries to NOT STEAL from the dead. These monies and wealth were to support the Commune!" he yells, telling them to not worry about being paid...
Now if all of this was just some spontaneous mob action which occurred out of the blue, how could someone know where to go and who to admonish to stop stealing?
Later on that same day, On the second day(3 Sept) Marat authored, signed and sent to the provinces a "circular" saying that what happened in Paris was a model for them (several sources acknowledge the document while differing on content). Finally, while a member of the National Convention, to the dismay of even his own party and the disgust of allied leaders, Marat defended the massacres.
Loomis backs up everything he says with contemporary sources. So far nobody else matches his level of detail; none of the other sources seem to address other than side issues/details, and steer clear of addressing Marat, himself. Which is odd as he is the subject, here.
Thanks for any comments.
Informatics411 (talk) 19:29, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: There is an article on the September Massacres which is already linked to this one.  This is a biography so we do not seek to itemise, in great detail, what a person did.  It may be that some of the material you want to add is better suited to that article. Mccapra (talk) 19:47, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
thread_title: Response

message: A large part of the section "Marat's Committee on Surveillance" appears to be pulled from Bax's "Jean-Paul Marat: The People’s Friend". The quality of this piece is . . . questionable, to say the least. The large blocks of text taken from this biography contain no citations in Bax's work itself. It is one thing if this text is copied from researched work, but it is just copying Bax's unevidenced assertions--no better than if I were to post an article on the Internet that says "the moon is cheese" and then cite it in Wikipedia. Is this the quality of evidence that should be used in a Wikipedia article?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 73.129.129.77 (talk) 15:55, 13 February 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: Seconded; this entire section of the article, including everything pulled from or citing Bax, seems to be written not with a view to giving biographical information about Marat or his activities on the committee, but with explaining how people other than Marat were responsible for the September massacres (the lady doth protest too much, methinks). There’s clearly some sort of historiographical debate here (whether or not Bax is an academically acceptable participant), but the section doesn’t at all try to say anything about the debate, it just wants to litigate for one side of it. It’s all written in a very emotive and certainly non-neutral style too: “the estimable Lefevbre maintains”, “That Marat personally and directly caused the death of a single individual during the September affair we have not a shadow of proof” “...an ebullition of popular fury, acquiesced in as a terrible necessity by all parties...” etc. PwnedDuck (talk) 10:03, 19 May 2021 (UTC)
thread_title: Question of Bias

message: Was he a Physician or a Physicist? In the French version says Physicist and I read in a book form Carlo Rovelli, The Order of Time, that in fact he considered himself above all a Physicist.
--88.214.163.55 (talk) 20:42, 27 May 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: He was both. He earned an MD degree in 1775 and eventually served as a physician for the bodyguard of the Compte d'Artois. He also studied physics and published multiple works, most of which are already detailed in the Wikipedia page.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by HIS30321wafffle (talk • contribs) 17:05, 12 June 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Physician 

message: “ Yet others argue that the collective mentality that made them possible resulted from circumstances and not from the will of any particular individual”. So apparently we have now excuses for massacres and genocides. This phrase is absurd, some could use that for “justification” of many genocide perpetrators, like when WWII put some countries in desperate situations, so should we use that kind of argument to alleviate their guilty related to atrocities? This individual in the article was a monster, a human rights infringement leader, a genocide leaning agitator. They (Jacobins) persecuted oppositors just because they were against the atrocities and exaggerated the Girondins’ stances as ‘traitors’, like some tribe purging members who are against an all out genocide. It’s absurd to bring this kind of statement to a serious article even if it’s sourced, well anyone can write anything and be the source of articles in Wikipedia. That doesn’t meant that such irresponsible statements should be added here. Maybe it’s because he was a typical leftist, and academic left LOVES monsters if they’re from the left, like Stalin. Reign of terror!
Counter to "absurd statements":
Calling the September Massacres a genocide is horrifically inaccurate. A genocide is the systemic annihilation of a people group based on ethnicity, culture, or other arbitrary trait. While horrible and bloody, the September Massacres were nowhere near this level of systemic atrocity and to equate them with such is misleading at best and disrespectful at worst.
A journalist and advocate who never killed anyone, whose worst crime was using the inflammatory and purposefully hyperbolic language that was common in publications at that time (see Hebert's Pere Duchesne and even Desmoulins's Vieux Cordeliers) should not be compared to a dictator like Stalin. They are not remotely in the same category. You can have a personal opinion on whether Marat's rhetoric contributed to the buildup that led to the massacres, and criticisms in this regard are valid, but using this to conflate him with a dictator who mass-killed his personal opponents to consolidate his power and influence is not academically sound.
About the Girondins: Opinions differ on whether they were technically guilty of some or all of what they were accused of, and to what extent they should've been held liable for events that took place because of poor decisions on their part. But, even ignoring that the Girondins themselves were an offshoot of the broader Jacobin club, their arrests and executions had nothing to do with them being "anti-genocide" or even anti-September Massacres. Their arrest was due to their poor performance during a war that they declared and the fact that many of them tried to abandon their posts and flee the area when public opinion turned against them. Is this deserving of a death sentence? Likely not, but times in the 18th century were very different than times now, and to say that the non-Gironde Jacobins "persecuted" them for "opposing genocide" is not correct.
With all due respect, I do not believe I or any other similar editors are the ones bringing "absurd statements" to this post. Marat certainly had flaws- everyone has flaws- and you are within your right to dislike him or any of the policies he supported. But this is meant to be an unbiased article. Calling someone a monster (loaded language), a human rights infringer (inaccurate) or a genocide agitator (he was an agitator, but most definitely not for genocide) does not exactly ring with academic neutrality.
The left/leftists are those who agree with economically (and almost always socially) progressive policies. Stalin does not even fit the bill as a leftist, rather he was a centrist authoritarian playing as a leftist in order to gain power in a volatile young state, and he purposefully stalled leftist programs in order to keep control of a command economy. The vast, vast majority of the left condemns Stalin wholeheartedly. The academic left doesn't love monsters, we love unbiased historiography and facts that actually line up rather than sensationalized versions of people that seem to belong in a contemporary action film.
The sans-culottes who participated in the massacre may have been inspired by Marat, but there is no evidence to suggest that Marat intended or ordered the massacres. It was his style to write in hyperbole- perhaps poor judgement on his part- but there were in fact numerous other circumstances, such as economic problems and likely-unfounded rumors of a prison plot that incited the violence.
I hope this is to your satisfaction. CherryPigeon (talk) 01:00, 9 March 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Absurd statements 

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