War was declared between the two. The Girondins
arraigned Marat and Robespierre for complicity in the September
massacres, and thereby precipitated their own fall. The triumphant
acquittal of Marat was the prelude to the ruin of the Girondins,
and the proscription of twenty-nine deputies followed at once as
the first step. These fled into the country, hoping to raise an
army that should yet save France, and several of the fugitives
made their way to Caen. Thence by pamphlets and oratory they
laboured to arouse true Republican enthusiasm. They were gifted,
able men, eloquent speakers and skilled writers, and they might
have succeeded but that in Paris sat another man no less gifted,
and with surer knowledge of the temper of the proletariat,
tirelessly wielding a vitriolic pen, skilled in the art of
inflaming the passions of the mob.
That man was Jean Paul Marat, sometime medical practitioner,
sometime professor of literature, a graduate of the Scottish
University of St. Andrews, author of some scientific and many
sociological works, inveterate pamphleteer and revolutionary
journalist, proprietor and editor of L'Ami du Peuple, and idol of
the Parisian rabble, who had bestowed upon him the name borne by
his gazette, so that he was known as The People's Friend.
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