L'Ami du peuple

L'Ami du peuple (French: [lami dy pœpl], The Friend of the People) was a newspaper written by Jean-Paul Marat during the French Revolution. “The most celebrated radical paper of the Revolution”, according to historian Jeremy D. Popkin,L’Ami du peuple was a vocal advocate for the rights of the lower classes against those Marat believed to be enemies of the people, which he had no hesitation mentioning in his writings. These papers were considered dangerous because they often ignited violent and rebellious behavior.

As an elector for the District of the Carmes Déchaussés in 1789, Marat tried to persuade the electoral assembly to publish a journal to keep their electorate informed of current political events. When they did not take up his proposal, Marat resigned his post as elector in order to concentrate on writing a journal himself, at first entitled Le Publiciste parisien. The first issue was published September 12, 1789. After several issues, the name was changed to L’Ami du peuple.

The journal was printed in octavo format, usually eight pages long, although occasionally expanding to twelve or sixteen pages. Marat ordinarily published L’Ami du Peuple on a daily basis, but there are several gaps in its publication due to Marat’s several times going into hiding to avoid arrest, during which he did not print his journal. His continual attacks against Jacques Necker, Jean Sylvain Bailly, the comte de Mirabeau, the Paris Commune, the marquis de Lafayette, the National Constituent Assembly, the Legislative Assembly, the National Convention, the émigrés, and King Louis XVI himself caused several decrees of outlawry and accusation against him and attempts to suppress his journal. His press was destroyed and copies of L’Ami du peuple confiscated at least twice. On one occasion his printer was arrested and imprisoned, and the plates used to print an especially controversial issue—in which he threatened to tear out the heart of Lafayette, burn the King, and impale the deputies of the Assembly upon their seats—were destroyed.

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