| Charlotte Corday | |
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 | |
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Real Name |
Marie-Anne Charlotte de Corday d'Armont |
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Born |
27 July, 1768 |
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Died |
17 July, 1793 |
Origin[]
Marie-Anne Charlotte de Corday d'Armont, known simply as Charlotte Corday, was a figure of the French Revolution who assassinated revolutionary and Jacobin leader Jean-Paul Marat on 13 July 1793. Born in Normandy to a minor aristocratic family, Corday was a resident of Caen and a sympathiser of the Girondins, a moderate faction of French revolutionaries in opposition to the Jacobins. She held Jean-Paul Marat responsible for the September Massacres of 1792 and, believing that the Revolution was in jeopardy due to the more radical course the Jacobins had taken, decided to assassinate Marat. On 13 July 1793, having travelled to Paris and obtained an audience with Marat, Corday fatally stabbed him with a knife while he was taking a medicinal bath. Corday was immediately arrested, found guilty by the Revolutionary Tribunal and on 17 July 1793, four days after Marat's death, executed by the guillotine on the Place de Grève.
Born in Saint-Saturnin-des-Ligneries, a hamlet in the commune of Écorches, in Normandy, Charlotte Corday was a member of a minor aristocratic family. She was a fifth-generation descendant of the dramatist Pierre Corneille. Her parents were cousins. While Corday was a young girl, her older sister and their mother, Charlotte Marie Jacqueline Gaultier de Mesnival, died. Her father, Jacques François de Corday, Seigneur d'Armont, unable to cope with his grief over their deaths, sent Corday and her younger sister to the Abbaye aux Dames convent in Caen, where the former had access to the abbey's library and first encountered the writings of Plutarch, Rousseau and Voltaire. After 1791, she lived in Caen with her cousin, Madame Le Coustellier de Bretteville-Gouville. The two developed a close relationship, and Corday was the sole heir to her cousin's estate.
After the revolution radicalised further and headed towards terror, Charlotte Corday began to sympathise with the Girondins, She admired and grew up with them while living in Caen. By respecting her political principles and way of thinking, she believed they could save France. The Girondins represented a more moderate approach to the revolution and they, like Corday, were sceptical about the direction the revolution was taking. The Girondins and Corday sought a more moderate approach to the revolution, being skeptical of the direction of the revolution. Opposing the Montagnards, who had a more radical stance. Thanks to the radical opposition and the influence of the Girondins, Corday made the decision to murder one of the most outspoken and popular Montagnard radicals, Jean-Paul Marat. Corday's action aided in restructuring the private versus public role of the woman in society at the time. The idea of women as second class or less than was challenged, and Corday was considered a hero to those who were against the teachings of Marat. There have been suggestions that her act incited the banning of women's political clubs, and the executions of female activists such as the Girondin Madame Roland.
Jean-Paul Marat was a member of the radical Jacobin faction that had a leading role during the Reign of Terror as a journalist. Corday's decision to kill Marat was stimulated not only by her revulsion at the September Massacres, for which she held Marat responsible, but by her fear of an all-out civil war.
On 9 July 1793, Corday left her cousin, carrying a copy of Plutarch's Parallel Lives, and went to Paris, where she took a room at the Hôtel de Providence. She bought a kitchen knife. During the next days, she wrote her Adresse aux Français amis des lois et de la paix to explain her motives for assassinating Marat. Corday initially planned to assassinate Marat in front of the entire National Convention, but because of Marat's skin disease. She was then forced to change her plan. She went to Marat's home before noon on 13 July, claiming to have knowledge of a planned Girondist uprising in Caen; she was turned away by Catherine Evrard, the sister of Marat's fiancée Simonne. On her return that evening, Marat admitted her. At the time, he conducted most of his affairs from a bathtub because of his skin condition. Marat wrote down the names of the Girondins that she gave to him; she then pulled out the knife and plunged it into his chest. In response to Marat's dying shout, Simonne Evrard rushed into the room. She was joined by a distributor of Marat's newspaper, who seized Corday. Two neighbours attempted to revive Marat. Republican officials arrived to interrogate Corday, and to calm a hysterical crowd who appeared ready to lynch her.
Charlotte Corday sent a farewell letter to her father which was intercepted and read during the trial, the letter helping to establish that Marat's murder was premeditated. Corday underwent three separate cross-examinations. She stressed that she was a republican and had been so even before the Revolution, citing the values of ancient Rome as an ideal model. The focus of the questioning was to establish whether she had been part of a wider Girondist conspiracy. Charlotte Corday asked for Gustave le Doulcet, an old acquaintance, to defend her, but he did not receive the letter she wrote to him in time, so Claude François Chauveau-Lagarde was appointed instead to assist her during the trial. It is believed that Antoine Quentin Fouquier-Tinville voluntarily delayed the letter, however, it is said that Corday thought that Le Doulcet refused to defend her and sent to him a last letter of reproach just before going to the scaffold.
On 17 July 1793, four days after Marat was killed, Corday was executed by the guillotine in the Place de Grève wearing the red overblouse denoting a condemned traitor who had assassinated a representative of the people. Standing alone in the tumbril amid a large and curious crowd she remained calm, although drenched by a sudden summer rainfall. Her body was buried in the Madeleine Cemetery. Her skull was said to have been removed from her grave and passed from person to person in later years.
After Corday's decapitation, a man named Legros lifted her head from the basket and slapped it on the cheek. Charles-Henri Sanson, the executioner, indignantly rejected published reports that Legros was one of his assistants. Sanson stated in his diary that Legros was in fact a carpenter who had been hired to make repairs to the guillotine. This offence against a woman executed moments before was considered unacceptable and Legros was imprisoned for three months because of his outburst.
The direct consequences of her crime were opposite to what she expected: the assassination did not stop the Jacobins or the Terror, which intensified after the murder. Also Marat became a martyr, a bust of him replaced a religious statue on the rue aux Ours and a number of place-names were changed to honour Marat. Corday's act transformed the idea of what a woman was capable of, and to those who did not shun her for her act, she was a heroine.
Public Domain Appearances[]
All published appearances of Charlotte Corday before January 1, 1929 are public domain.
Some Notable Appearances are listed below:
Public Domain Literary Appearances[]
- Posthumous Fragments of Margaret Nicholson
- Histoire des Girondins, in which he gave her this now-famous nickname: "l'ange de l'assassinat" (the angel of assassination).
- Les Misérables, Combeferre likens Enjolras's execution of Le Cabuc to Corday's assassination of Marat, calling it a "liberating murder".
- Harper's Weekly (29 April, 1865 edition), in a series of articles analysing the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, but goes on to conclude that her assassination of Marat was a mistake in that she became Marat's victim rather than saving or helping his victims.
- Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, young Rebecca re-enacts a scene of Charlotte Corday in prison, with her friends playing the role of the mob.
Public Domain Theatrical and musical appearances[]
- The Female Enthusiast: A Tragedy in Five Acts
- Charlotte Corday by François Ponsard
- Charlotte Corday by Kyrle Bellew
- Vera; or, The Nihilists, At the end of Act III, before departing to kill the Czar, Vera exclaims "the spirit of Charlotte Corday has entered my soul now".
Public Domain Movie appearances[]
- Charlotte Corday (1908)
- Charlotte Corday (1919)
- Napoléon (1927)
Notes[]
- Corday's killing of Marat was considered vile, an "arch-typically masculine statement", which reaction showed that whether or not one approved of what she did, it is clear that the murder of Marat changed the political role and position of women during the French Revolution. After Corday murdered Marat, the majority of women distanced themselves from her because they believed that what she had done would spark a reaction against the now developing feminist movement, which was already facing criticism.