Charlotte Corday

Charlotte Corday (July 27, 1768–July 17, 1793), more fully Marie Anne Charlotte Corday d'Armont, killed Jean-Paul Marat in 1793.

Related Topics:
July 27 - 1768 - July 17 - 1793 - Jean-Paul Marat

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Corday was a member of an aristocratic but poor family. She was educated at the Abbaye aux Dames, a convent in Caen, Normandy. She approved of the French revolution, and was an enthusiastic supporter of the Girondists.

Related Topics:
Caen - Normandy - Girondist

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Jean-Paul Marat (1743–1793) was a member of the radical Jacobin faction that initiatied the mass atrocities and beheadings known as the Reign of Terror, which followed the early stages of the Revolution. He was a journalist, exerting power through his newspaper, The Friend of the People (L'ami du peuple).

Related Topics:
Jean-Paul Marat - Jacobin - Reign of Terror

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In 1789, when Marat had 22 Girondists arrested, Charlotte Corday began to consider killing him. The execution of King Louis XVI (21 January 1793) and the denunciation of Marat by Jacques Pierre Brissot, a leading Girondist, helped her finally decide to do so.

Related Topics:
1789 - Louis XVI - 21 January - 1793 - Jacques Pierre Brissot

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Carrying a copy of Plutarch's Parallel Lives under her arm, she travelled from Caen to Paris on July 9, and stayed at the Hotel de Providence. She bought a table knife at the Palais-Royal, and wrote her Speech to the French who are Friends of Law and Peace, explaining her actions. She went to Marat offering to inform him about a planned Girondist uprising in Caen. She was initially turned away, but on a second attempt on 13 July Marat admitted her into his presence (he conducted most of his affairs from a bathtub because of a debilitating skin condition).

Related Topics:
Plutarch - Paris - July 9 - 13 July - Bathtub

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Marat copied down the names of the Girondists as Corday dictated them to him. She pulled the knife from her scarf and plunged it into his chest, piercing his lung, aorta and left ventricle. He called out, A moi, ma chère amie! ("To me, my dear friend"), and died.

Related Topics:
Lung - Aorta - Left ventricle

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This is the moment memorialized by Jacques-Louis David's painting The Death of Marat.

Related Topics:
Jacques-Louis David - ''The Death of Marat''

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A political cover-up was attempted prior to the trial; Chaveau-Lagarde, who previously had represented Marie-Antoinette, was appointed as defence for Charlotte Corday. The president of the Tribunal ordered him to enter a plea of insanity on his client's behalf, in order to remove any notion of patriotic idealism from the act. Chaveau-Lagarde, who more than understood Corday's actions, although unable to disobey the Tribunal made a mockery of it with a well-honed piece of equivocal verbiage.

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At trial, Corday testified that she had carried out the assassination alone, saying "I killed one man to save 100,000." It was likely a reference to Maximilien Robespierre's words before the execution of King Louis XVI. Four days after Marat was killed, she died under the guillotine.

Related Topics:
Maximilien Robespierre - Guillotine

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The assassination did not stop the Jacobins or the Terror: Marat became a martyr, and busts of Marat replaced crucifixes and religious statues that were no longer welcome under the new regime. The anti-female stance of many revolutionary leaders was increased by Corday's actions. The Revolution now turned with full force on Marie Antoinette, the king's imprisoned widow.

Related Topics:
Assassination - Crucifix - Marie Antoinette

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The enthusiasm for Marat lasted about two years, by which time his actions had been popularly reassessed, and Charlotte reevaluated as someone who had given her life to rid her country of a monster.

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In Peter Weiss's Marat/Sade, the assasination of Marat is presented as a play, written by the Marquis de Sade, for to be performed by inmates of the asylum at Charenton, for the public.

Related Topics:
Peter Weiss - Marat/Sade - Marquis de Sade

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