After a good education under the direction of a relation who was a curé, and a period as an advocate at Bordeaux, he came to Paris, where he obtained introductions to the most distinguished writers of the time, and became a contributor to the Encyclopedie méthodique and the Mercure de France.

[1] Elected as a deputy to the Estates-General in 1789, Garat rendered important service to the popular cause by his narrative of the proceedings of the Assembly, in the Journal de Paris.

[1] Georges Danton named him minister of justice in 1792, and in this capacity entrusted to him what he called the commission affreuse of communicating to King Louis XVI his sentence of death.

Though himself uncorrupt, he overlooked the most scandalous corruption in his subordinates, and in spite of a detective service which kept him accurately informed of every movement in the capital, he failed to maintain order.

The crimes taking place during the period of the War of the Pyrenees, included mass deportation of civilians and property seizures in Labourd, ordered by the Republican authorities in Bayonne, spearheaded by Jean-Baptiste Cavaignac and Jacques Pinet, whom Garat despised.

The Constitution of Bayonne signed at the Castle of Marracq in that town in June 1808 prioritized an understanding with officials in Madrid and included the Southern Basque Country—Biscay and Navarre—in Spain, but left open the debate over its separate status.

The project of New Phoenicia was stalled, but as war events in Spain wore on the French Emperor opted for the attachment of all territories between the river Ebro and the Pyrenees to France (1810), divided into Catalonia, Aragon, Navarre, and Biscay.