On this day in history, July 13,1793, radical French Revolution leader, Jean-Paul Marat was murdered in his bathtub by Charlotte Corday. She admitted to killing him as revenge for his organization of the September Massacre where over one-thousand French prisoners were killed. 

Due to a skin condition, Marat spent many hours a day in the bathtub. Corday knew that she could both find him there defenseless. The nature of Marat’s death is remembered by a painting by his friend and fellow radical, Jacques-Louis David. 

The French Revolution began on July 14, 1789 with the storming of the Bastille, a political prison in Paris. Members of the Third-Estate–the lower-class citizens and bourgeoisie–stormed the prison as an act of protest for greater fairness and power for the majority. Given the absolute control of the French monarchy, this act truly was revolutionary. French citizens were motivated to protest: because of the stark inequality in the French political and economic systems and the influence of Enlightenment ideas. And the American Revolution, which concluded just six years prior in 1783, provided an inspirational example that change could happen.  

From 1789 to 1792, calls for change were mostly effective in France. A constitutional monarchy was established in 1791, the feudal land system came to an end, and the “Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen” was adopted. However, Marat and other radical Enlightenment thinkers were not satisfied. 

By 1793, Marat, Maximilien Robespierre, and the Committee of Public Safety sought justice and revenge against past oppression by use of the guillotine. The guillotine decapitated people swiftly. It was nicknamed at the time: “the national razor.” To radicals calling for blood, it was a product of Enlightenment ideals by bringing an equal and ‘humane’ way to execute thousands of people.To moderates, the guillotine was an instrument of violence and terror. 

By January 1793, radical voices under the Committee used mob rule to arrest and guillotine King Louis XVI and his wife, Marie Antionette. Their deaths were a radical overthrow of the government and hundreds of years of tradition. Their deaths were followed by hundreds more across France (although the exact number is not known) seen as enemies of revolution. 

Even after Marat’s murder there was still violence inflicted on his remains. In 1794, mobs stole his ashes and dumped his last physical remains into a sewer. And even a  plaster bust of his head was not safe. A hundred young men broke into a public theater where the bust was displayed and threw it into a fire. [1]  Marat was one of the most consistent radical voices, yet even the mob turned on him. It would not be until Robespierre died in July 1794 that more moderate voices would gain power. 

One of the many lessons of the French Revolution is that violence begets violence. 

King Jesus, who came to earth in human form to establish his kingdom of heaven on earth did not use violence. He loved. He served. He wept. He submitted to an unjust government and rulers. He obeyed the Father unto death. 

And Christ opposed violent means. While being arrested in the Garden of Gethsemane hours before His execution, Jesus rebuked one of His followers for using a sword and said: ‘“Put your word back into its place. For all who take the sword will perish by the sword. Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father[?]’” (Mat. 26:52-53). Jesus knew that a higher sense of justice and power was found in the Father, not in human violence. 

I believe that it is not a coincidence that the most radical and violent stage of the French Revolution was at the same time that radical leaders were leading a systematic attempt to rid France of Christians and the Christian influence. Churches were closed; clergy were persecuted; and atheism and secular “enlightened” ideas were prompted. 

Jesus has a better way. Violence is not it. For proof one only has to look at the nature of Marat’s death in the French Revolution. 

[1] Jeremy D. Popkin, A New World Begins: The History of the French Revolution (New York: Basic Books, 2019), 438.