This, then, was the situation that, after the cataclysm of August 10, confronted the Commune, which now held the reins of power. On one side was a raging populace, intoxicated with the joy of new-found liberty to burn and to destroy, and, on the other, a great silent nation, amongst whom, as the protests following on the 20th of June had shown, a bitter hatred of the Revolution had arisen. For the silence that followed on the 10th of August was not, as the leaders well knew, the silence of assent but of momentary stupefaction, from which those of the nobles and clergy who remained in the country would make every effort to arouse the nation.
It was this that, in the opinion of the Commune, made the third Revolution necessary—the influence of the anti-revolutionaries could never be counteracted, therefore the anti-revolutionaries themselves must be destroyed.
Marat had all along understood this. Like Louis XV. he shrewdly diagnosed the disease from which the State was suffering. The other revolutionaries recognized the existence of the “ gangrene,” but overlooked the fact that it was of their own making. Marat alone traced it to its real cause. “ If,” he once said to Camille Desmoulins, “ the faults of the Constituent Assembly had not created for us irreconcilable enemies in the old nobles, I persist in believing that this great movement might have advanced in the world by pacific methods ; but after the absurd edict which keeps these enemies by force amongst us ( i.e. the decrees against emigration), after the clumsy blows struck at their pride by the abolition of titles, after violently extorting the goods of the clergy, I maintain there is now no way of rallying them to the Revolution … we must give up the Revolution or do away with these men. What I propose to you is not a vain rigour supported by laws. I want an armed expedition against foreigners, who have voluntarily placed themselves outside our government. We are in a state of war with intractable enemies ; we must destroy them.” [4]
In a word, the only remedy for the disease was amputation. Isnard, the Girondin, in one terrible phrase, had ten months earlier proposed the operation : “ Let us cut off the gangrened part, so as to save the rest of the body ! ” [5] But it was never the way of the
Girondins to carry their sanguinary theories into practice ; they only suggested, and then recoiled in horror when their words were interpreted by bolder men into action. Isnard, who had condensed in his proposal the whole system of the Terror, was later on to devote all his eloquence to denouncing that same system, when it had passed from the region of ideas into a frightful reality. The scheme of the philosopher Isnard was left to http://yamaguchy.netfirms.com/webster/frenchrev/fr_rev_06.html (3 of 61)5.4.2006 10:40:30
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the surgeon Marat to execute.
Jean Paul Marat, son of Jean Mara, a Spaniard, who had settled first in Sardinia, then in Switzerland, was born at Boudry, near Neuchâtel, and had spent many years in England, where he studied medicine, and practised for a time in Church Street, Soho. In 1777
Marat went to France, where he became brevet-surgeon to the Comte d’Artois’
bodyguard, but the office appears to have proved unremunerative, for he was obliged to supplement his income by compounding quack medicines for a few confiding aristocratic patients. [6] During his stay in London he had, however, already embarked on
his revolutionary career by the publication of a pamphlet entitled The Chains of Slavery, in which, posing as an Englishman, he endeavoured to stir up the nation against the Government.[7] Britain failed entirely to respond to this appeal and the pamphlet was a complete failure, but on the outbreak of the Revolution in France Danton, realizing Marat’s value as an agitator, took him into his employment.[8] Before long Marat’s seditious writings attracted the attention of Lafayette, who marched a regiment against the wretched dwarf, and so terrified him that he was obliged to retire below ground into hiding. During the weeks that Marat spent in the cellars of Paris, he had leisure to evolve further political schemes, in which it would be impossible to discover any consistent plan of government. He certainly did not advocate a republic, but either a monarchy under Louis XVI. or the Duc d’Orléans, or a dictatorship under a man of the people or himself. The only continuous theme we can find running through all his writings is the abolition of all class distinctions, for which purpose every resisting element in the community must be destroyed. The petty persecutions of the Orléanistes and the Girondins had only served to irritate the “ privileged classes ”; attacks on property had alienated the bourgeoisie, and nothing but wholesale massacre could now relieve the situation. This idea became an obsession ; by the end of his sojourn in the cellars Marat undoubtedly was mad. “ Marat,” said his admirer Panis, “ remained six weeks on one buttock in a dungeon ”; hence Panis regarded Marat as a prophet—a second St. Simeon Stylites.[9] It would be nearer the truth to describe him as a “ fakir.” The banks of the Ganges teem with prophets of this variety, victims of an idée fixe, who have spent long years in precisely this attitude, gazing at the tips of their noses or repeating the sacred incantation, “ Ram Sita Ram ! ” Like the monotonous chant of the fakir, Marat’s cry for “ heads ” was also a confession of faith, but it was none the less a symptom of insanity—the result of homicidal mania. The fact that at moments he could reason logically does not disprove this assertion ; lunatics are frequently sane to dulness on every point except their own particular mania.
In appearance Marat was not unlike the malignant dwarfs one encounters in the villages of his native Switzerland. Under five feet high, with a monstrous head, the broken nose http://yamaguchy.netfirms.com/webster/frenchrev/fr_rev_06.html (4 of 61)5.4.2006 10:40:30
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of the degenerate, a skin of yellowed parchment, the aspect of “ the Friend of the People ” was more than hideous, it was supernatural. His portrait in the Carnavalet Museum is not the portrait of a human being but of an “ elemental,” a materialization of pure evil emanating from the realms of outer darkness. “ Physically,” says one who knew him, “ Marat had a burning and haggard eye like a hyena ; like a hyena his glance was always anxious and in motion ; his movements were short, rapid, and jerky ; a continual mobility gave to his muscles and his features a convulsive contraction, which even affected his way of walking—he did not walk, he hopped. Such was the individual called Marat.” [10] When to this outward appearance are added such mental peculiarities as “furious exaltation, perpetual overexcitement, chronic insomnia, folie des grandeurs, the mania that one is the victim of persecution,”[11] it is impossible to regard Marat as a
responsible human being. “ People feared to speak before Marat,” says his panegyrist Esquiros ; “ at the slightest contradiction he showed signs of fury, and if one persisted in one’s opinion he flew into a rage and foamed at the mouth.”
But, apart from all other evidence, Marat’s writings are clear enough proof of his insanity ; we have only to turn over the pages of L’Ami du Peuple or the Journal de la République Française to realize that we are listening to the ravings of a mind in delirium. For example :
“ Never go to the Assembly without having your pockets full of stones destined to throw at the rascals who have the impudence to preach maxims… .” [12] “ Citizens, erect 800
gibbets in the gardens of the Tuileries, and hang there all the traitors to the country … at the same time that you construct a vast pile in the middle of the basin of the fountain to roast the ministers and their agents.” [13] “ Citizens, let the fire of patriotism be rekindled in your bosoms and your triumph is assured ; rush to arms ; you know to-day which are the real victims that must be immolated for your salvation ; let your first blows fall on the infamous general (Lafayette) ; immolate the whole staff … immolate the corrupt members of the National Assembly … cut the thumbs off the hands of the former nobles who have conspired against you ; split the tongues of all the priests who have preached servitude… .”[14] “ It is not the retirement of the ministers, it is their heads we need… .” etc.
The number of heads demanded by Marat increased steadily as the Revolution proceeded ; in July of 1790 he asked only for 600 ; five months later no less than 10,000 would suffice him ; later the figures grew to 20,000, to 40,000, until by the summer of 1792 he explained to Barbaroux that it would be a really “ humane expedient ” to massacre 260,000 men in a day. “ Undoubtedly,” adds Barbaroux, “ he had a predilection for this number, for since then he has always asked for exactly 260,000
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heads ; only rarely he went to 300,000.” [15]
It would be unnecessary to enlarge on the theories of so obviously disordered a mind, were it not for the immensely important part played by Marat during the last year of his life. As Laclos had been “ the soul of the Orléaniste conspiracy,” and therefore of the first Revolution ; as Madame Roland was “ the soul of the Gironde,” and therefore of the second Revolution ; Marat was, as Bougeart truly says, “ the soul of the Commune,” and therefore of the third Revolution— of the Massacres of September and the Reign of Terror. For although Marat died before “ the Great Terror ” began, it was he who had inspired the system that produced it ; it was he who became the evil genius of Robespierre and of Danton, who stimulated the destructive fury of the Hebertistes, and let loose the horde of wild beasts that at the end of 1793 devastated the provinces of France.