passed with the rest of Syria into Egyptian hands in 1832, and in 1839 received fugitives from the defeat of Nizib, among whom was Moltke. Ibrahim Pasha was encamped near it when directed by his father, at the bidding of the powers, to stay his further advance. Since its reversion to Ottoman power (1840) the history of Marash has been varied only by Armenian troubles, largely connected with the fortunes of Zeitun, for the reduction of which place it has more than once been used as a base. There was less disturbance there in 1895–1896 than in other north Syrian towns. (D. G. H.)
MARAT, JEAN PAUL (1743–1793), French revolutionary
leader, eldest child of Jean Paul Marat, a native of Cagliari
in Sardinia, and Louise Cabrol of Geneva, was born at Boudry,
in the principality of Neuchâtel, on the 24th of May 1743. His
father was a designer, who had abandoned his country and his
religion, and married a Swiss Protestant. On his mother’s death
in 1759 Marat set out on his travels, and spent two years at
Bordeaux in the study of medicine, whence he moved to Paris,
where he made use of his knowledge of his two favourite sciences,
optics and electricity, to subdue an obstinate disease of the eyes.
After some years in Paris he went to Holland, and then on to
London, where he practised his profession. In 1773 he made
his first appearance as an author with a Philosophical Essay
on Man. The book shows a wonderful knowledge of English,
French, German, Italian and Spanish philosophers, and directly
attacks Helvetius, who had in his De l’esprit declared a knowledge
of science unnecessary for a philosopher. Marat declares
that physiology alone can solve the problems of the connexion
between soul and body, and proposes the existence of a nervous
fluid as the true solution. In 1774 he published The Chains of
Slavery, which was intended to influence constituencies to return
popular members, and reject the king’s friends. Its author
declared later that it procured him an honorary membership of
the patriotic societies of Carlisle, Berwick and Newcastle. He
remained devoted to his profession, and in 1775 published in
London a little Essay on Gleets, and in Amsterdam a French
translation of the first two volumes of his Essay on Man. In
this year he visited Edinburgh, and on the recommendation of
certain Edinburgh physicians was made an M.D. of St Andrews.
On his return to London he published an Enquiry into the Nature,
Cause, and Cure of a Singular Disease of the Eyes, with a dedication
to the Royal Society. In the same year there appeared the
third volume of the French edition of the Essay on Man, which
reached Ferney, and exasperated Voltaire, by its onslaught on
Helvetius, into a sharp attack which only made the young author
more conspicuous. His fame as a clever doctor was now great,
and on the 24th of June 1777, the comte d’Artois, afterwards
Charles X. of France, made him by brevet physician to his guards
with 2000 livres a year and allowances.
Marat was soon in great request as a court doctor among the aristocracy; and even Brissot, in his Mémoires, admits his influence in the scientific world of Paris. The next years were much occupied with scientific work, especially the study of heat, light and electricity, on which he presented memoirs to the Académie des Sciences, but the academicians were horrified at his temerity in differing from Newton, and, though acknowledging his industry, would not receive him among them. His experiments greatly interested Benjamin Franklin, who used to visit him and Goethe always regarded his rejection by the academy as a glaring instance of scientific despotism. In 1780 he had published at Neuchâtel a Plan de législation criminelle, founded on the principles of Beccaria. In April 1786 he resigned his court appointment. The results of his leisure were in 1787 a new translation of Newton’s Optics, and in 1788 his Mémoires académiques, ou nouvelles découvertes sur la lumière.
His scientific life was now over, his political life was to begin; in the notoriety of that political life his great scientific and philosophical knowledge was to be forgotten, the high position he had given up denied, and he himself scoffed at as an ignorant charlatan, who had sold quack medicines about the streets of Paris, and been glad to earn a few sous in the stables of the comte d’Artois. In 1788 the notables had met, and advised the assembling of the states-general. The elections were the cause of a flood of pamphlets, of which one, Offrande à la patrie, was by Marat, and, though now forgotten, dwelt on much the same points as the famous brochure of the Abbé Siéyès: Qu’est-ce que le tiers état? When the states-general met, Marat’s interest was as great as ever, and in June 1789 he published a supplement to his Offrande, followed in July by La constitution, in which he embodies his idea of a constitution for France, and in September by his Tableau des vices de la constitution d’Angleterre, which he presented to the Assembly. The latter alone deserves remark. The Assembly was at this time full of anglomaniacs, who desired to establish in France a constitution similar to that of England. Marat had seen that England was at this time being ruled by an oligarchy using the forms of liberty, which, while pretending to represent the country, was really being gradually mastered by the royal power. His heart was now all in politics; and he decided to start a paper. At first appeared a single number of the Moniteur patriote, followed on the 12th of September by the first number of the Publiciste parisien, which on the 16th of September took the title of L’Ami du peuple and which he edited, with some interruptions, until the 21st of September 1792.
The life of Marat now becomes part of the history of the French Revolution. From the beginning to the end he stood alone. He was never attached to any party; the tone of his mind was to suspect whoever was in power. About his paper, the incarnation of himself, the first thing to be said is that the man always meant what he said; no poverty, no misery or persecution, could keep him quiet; he was perpetually crying, “Nous sommes trahis.” Whoever suspected any one had only to denounce him to the Ami du peuple, and the denounced was never let alone till he was proved innocent or guilty. Marat began by attacking the most powerful bodies in Paris—the Constituent Assembly, the ministers, the corps municipal, and the court of the Châtelet. Denounced and arrested, he was imprisoned from the 8th of October to the 5th of November 1789. A second time, owing to his violent campaign against Lafayette, he narrowly escaped arrest and had to flee to London (Jan. 1790). There he wrote his Dénonciation contre Necker, and in May dared to return to Paris and continue the Ami du peuple. He was embittered by persecution, and continued his vehement attacks against all in power, and at last, after the day of the Champs du Mars (July 17, 1790), against the king himself. All this time he was in hiding in cellars and sewers, where he was attacked by a horrible skin disease, tended only by the woman Simonne Evrard, who remained true to him. The end of the Constituent Assembly he heard of with joy and with bright hopes for the future, soon dashed by the behaviour of the Legislative Assembly. When almost despairing, in December 1791, he fled once more to London, where he wrote his École du citoyen. In April 1792, summoned again by the Cordeliers’ Club, he returned to Paris, and published No. 627 of the Ami. The war was now the question, and Marat saw clearly that it was to serve the purposes of the Royalists and the Girondins, who thought of themselves alone. Again denounced, Marat had to remain in hiding until the 10th of August. The early days of the war being unsuccessful, the proclamation of the duke of Brunswick excited all hearts; who could go to save France on the frontiers and leave Paris in the hands of his enemies? Marat, like Danton, foresaw the massacres of September. After the events of the 10th of August he took his seat at the commune, and demanded a tribunal to try the Royalists in prison. No tribunal was formed, and the massacres in the prisons were the inevitable result. In the elections to the Convention, Marat was elected seventh out of the twenty-four deputies for Paris, and for the first time took his seat in an assembly of the nation. At the declaration of the republic, he closed his Ami du peuple, and commenced, on the 25th, a new paper, the Journal de la république française, which was to contain his sentiments as its predecessor had done, and to be always on the watch. In the Assembly Marat had no party; he would always suspect and oppose the powerful, refuse power for himself. After the battle of Valmy, Dumouriez was the
