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Charlotte Corday Biography

Charlotte Corday Image

CORDAY D'ARMONT, kōr'dā' där'män', Marie Anne Charlotte (1768–93). The assassin of Marat, generally known as Charlotte Corday. She was born at Saint-Saturnin in Normandy. Her youth, passed in a convent, was spent in the reading of Plutarch, Rousseau, Raynal, Voltaire, and Corneille. Though she was noble by birth, she sympathized ardently with the cause of the Revolution in its early phases; but when the fall of the Girondists ushered in the Terror, she swung immediately to the opposite pole. She was Convinced by Barbaroux that Marat and Robespierre were the enemies of France. To the fervent student of the classics the rôle of Brutus seemed a noble one, and she determined to save the nation by murder. Telling her father that she was bound for England, she journeyed to Paris (July 1, 1793), inquired there for the house of Marat, pretending to be the bearer of a message, and bought a knife on the way. Twice delayed, she found Marat at last in his bath, writing (July 13). He had asked that morning, in the Ami du Peuple, for 200,000 heads, and Charlotte told him she could give him those of the Girondists at Caen. As he was setting down the names she uttered, one by one, she drove the knife up to the hilt into his heart, then made a futile attempt to escape. Marat cried out, "à moi, ma chère amie!" and then died immediately; and the girl, quickly captured, and saved with difficulty from the mob, was taken to prison. Brought to trial and speedily condemned, she died calmly (July 17, 1793). Consult: Dubois, Charlotte Corday (Paris, 1838); Vatel, Charlotte Corday et les Girondins (Paris, 1872); Bibliographie des femmes célèbres (3 vols., Turin and Rome, 1892–1905); Defrance, Charlotte Corday et la mort de Marat (1909).