Jean-Paul Marat was a French political theorist, physician, and scientist who was a radical journalist and politician during the French Revolution. His journalism became renowned for its fierce tone, uncompromising stance towards the new leaders and institutions of the revolution, and advocacy of basic human rights for the poorest members of society, yet calling for prisoners of the Revolution to be killed before they could be freed in the September Massacres. He was one of the most radical voices of the French Revolution. He became a vigorous defender of the sans-culottes, publishing his views in pamphlets, placards and newspapers, notably his periodical L'Ami du peuple , which helped make him their unofficial link with the radical, republican Jacobin group that came to power after June 1793.
Marat was assassinated by Charlotte Corday, a Girondin sympathizer, while taking a medicinal bath for his debilitating skin condition. In death, Marat became an icon to the Jacobins as a revolutionary martyr, as portrayed in Jacques-Louis David's famous painting, The Death of Marat. For this assassination, Corday was executed four days later, on 17 July 1793.
✵ 24. May 1743 – 13. July 1793
