L'Ami du peuple (, 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 and was an outspoken critic 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. Inception 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 12 September 1789. After several issues, the name was changed to L’Ami du peuple. Early struggles The journal was printed in octavo format, and was 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. Marat, with no source of independent income, used much of his own savings to print L’Ami du peuple. In early 1792, after returning from a two-month stay in England, he could not afford to continue the journal. With the financial support of his new common-law wife, Simone Evrard, he was able to renew publication. After the suspension of the monarchy on August 10, 1792, the