L'ami Du Peuple Quotes

Marat, in L’Ami du Peuple, declared that the only way to save the Revolution for the people was to slaughter the aristocrats en masse; yet if this happened the innocent might suffer with the guilty. Somehow, we no longer seemed to preach the brotherhood of man.

Jacques Duval became a close friend of Marat, editor of L’Ami du Peuple, one of the most widely read and popular newspapers in Paris, and he used to send this down to us every week, so that we could keep abreast of all that was said and done in the capital. I was not sure what to make of it myself; it was an inflammatory sheet, whipping its readers to violence, and urging them to take action against the “enemies of the people” if legislation should be slow. Michel and François read every word of it, and passed it on to the workmen too—a mistaken gesture.

Marat’s targets, who were attacked with equal venom if less scabrously in his paper L’Ami du peuple, were more diverse. Indeed, suspecting almost everyone and constantly complaining, ‘Nous sommes trahis’, Marat attacked the Assembly, the Feuillants, the royal family, the Ministers and municipality with fine impartiality. ‘In order to ensure public tranquillity,’ he once declared, ‘two hundred thousand heads must be cut off.