#& sorry to shoehorn st just into this but who would i be if i didn't

[alittletoosaintjust]

“Marat’s death had other consequences equally unforeseen by the simple-minded girl who murdered him, and who went to the guillotine with a smile because she had rid the country of its worst oppressor. Instead of a monster whom people shunned, Marat became a martyr whom they worshipped. Plays, poems, and hymns were written in his honour. Children were baptized Brutus-Marat, Sansculotte-Marat, and Marat-le-Montagne. Streets and squares were called after him, and thirty-seven towns in different parts of France assumed his name. Someone forged and printed his farewell letter, with the trembling signature of a dying man. Several journalists paid him the compliment of issuing spurious imitations of his paper. Three small boys of ten to twelve read to their sectional committee a patriotic address, in which occurred the pious words, ‘O Marat, quit the elysian fields, and return to the midst of a people who adore thee!’ In some schools children were taught to make the sign of the cross at his name. His bust replaced the statue of the Virgin in the rue des Ours. It was seriously proposed that his body should be taken in solemn procession round the provinces, so that the whole nation might be able to join in the apotheosis of the great patriot.”

J. M. Thompson, Leaders of the French Revolution

“There is something terrible in the sacred love of the patrie; it is so exclusive that it sacrifices all, without pity, without fright, without human respect, to the public interest: it hastens Manlius; it sacrifices private affections; it drives Regulus to Carthage, throws a Roman in an abyss, and puts Marat in the Panthéon, victim of his own devotion.”

Louis-Antoine Saint-Just, Report against the Dantonists