Historians cannot help but be fascinated by those individuals who step forth from the shadows of ordinariness to forever alter, often violently and suddenly, the seeming march of events. When this individual is a woman, the story becomes all the more singular, and if she is young and beautiful, it takes on the allure of Romantic tragedy. Such is the tale of Charlotte Corday, whose time on history's stage was brief, but her image became one of the most endurably haunting of the entire French Revolution.

In the late spring of 1793, the Revolution was taking another turn down the process by which it seemed determined to drown itself in blood (the Terror would commence that September).

The running battle between the moderate Girondins and the radical Mountain (the Jacobins and the Parisian commune) was coming to a dramatic close. In this fierce power struggle, the losing Girondin faction, moderates who embodied and embraced much of what seemed good about the Revolution, would now pay the ultimate price for their failures to stop that which was "bad," namely, the extreme forces led by idealogues like Robespierre and Marat.

After failing on an ill-advised effort to prosecute Marat, which, in the end, only elevated Marat's status and power immeasurably, while also establishing the dangerous legal and political precedents by which the Girondins would ultimately be condemned, the Gir-ondins lost control. Their fate was sealed on 2 June, when the Assembly was surrounded by several thousand National Guards under the control of the Commune. The Girondins were evicted from the assembly and placed under house arrest.

Several Girondins escaped Paris, and made there way to the sanctuary of the provinces, in particular Caen, where they hoped to raise an army under General Wimpfen to liberate Paris from the mob. Here the Revolution crossed paths with the twenty-five-year-old Charlotte Corday.

Early Life

Charlotte Corday grew up in Normandy, and she was a direct ancestor of the classical dramatist Pierre Corneille (historians haven't been able to resist comparing her historical role with one of Corneille's heroines, this being a clear example of life imitating art). The daughter of impoverished nobility, she did not enjoy a particularly happy childhood. Her mother died when she was very young, and her father seemed to spend most of his time writing polemics about the sins of the nobility. At age thirteen, she attended the Abbaye-aux-Dames, a convent for girls of her station, where she became even more isolated and withdrawn.

In addition to the work of her ancestor, her most profound influence was the writings of Jean Jacques Rousseau, a passion she had in common, ironically, with Robespierre and many other radical revolutionaries.

With the arrival of the fugitive Girondins, in June of 1793, the political passions of Charlotte became aroused. Her aunt's house where she was staying after her father's second marriage was within view of the Hotel that the Girondins used for their headquarters. Their speeches and broadsides vilified Marat, who was seen as the architect of the coup on 2 June. Marat was widely hated in the provinces to begin with; as the elected representative of the Paris Commune, he was seen as the leader of the mob and the instigator of the "September massacres", during which 1,500 people were guillotined. Listing to these harangues against Marat, she no doubt formed her scheme, fully believing, as the many orators and broadsides suggested, that the removal of Marat might save France and the Girondins.

Sometime after she made up her mind she met, twice, with a young, handsome Girondin leader named Charles Barbaroux. She did not divulge her scheme to him, but she had hoped he would be able to give her some Parisian contacts who might, unwittingly, be able to further her scheme.

When she departed for Paris on 11 July she carried some mail for Barbaroux to a contact of his in the assembly named Duperret.

In Paris

Charlotte Corday's stay in Paris was brief. Here she learned that Marat was no longer attending the Convention because he had fallen ill. This news upset her greatly, for she had foreseen her great moment would require an audience, such as in the assembly itself, or during a public ceremony, but she adjusted her plan.

On 13 July, 1793, Charlotte was rebuffed in her first attempt to see Marat at his home. She left him a note explaining that she had information that would interest him about the Girondins in Caen.

When she returned much later that evening, she was once again denied entrance by Marat's "wife" Catherine Evrard. Marat, who coincidentally was preparing to do an article in his newspaper about the "conspiracy" in Normandy, overheard the heated discussion and, intrigued, summoned Corday into his bathroom. Marat was suffering from a grotesque skin disorder, and he seldom left his tub, thus it was not unusual for him to receive visitors in this condition.

Here we have one of the strangest scenes to come out of the Revolution (David's famous painting, "The Death of Marat", which shows an unblemished Marat dead in his bathtub, sought to create a glorious martyred image for the victim). The juxtaposition of the beautiful, virginal assassin with the physically hideous and naked Marat is singularly dramatic.

The Death of Marat

Marat had Charlotte pull up a chair, and he took notes as he began to question her about the Girondin conspiracy. When he at last indicated that she had given him enough evidence to guillotine these men, Charlotte had the final proof of the correctness of her actions. She withdrew the knife she had concealed in her dress and plunged it downward into the astonished Marat. The blow could not have been better aimed; it cut the carotid artery to his heart and killed him within seconds. His wife heard his screams and rushed to him. Meanwhile, one of Marat's rougher associates subdued Charlotte by striking her over the head with a chair, and, as he later said, by pinning her down by her breasts.

Later that evening during questioning she remained calm. Her only moment of weakness came when she realized that she might be torn apart by the angry mob assembling outside Marat's house. She also suffered the indignity of having her blouse torn, and her breasts exposed, by one of her questioners who believed she was hiding a note. The others were too embarrassed to allow any more of this sort of search.

Prior to her trial, Charlotte Corday underwent preliminary questioning by Montane, President of the Tribunal, and public prosecutor, Fouquier-Tonville.

Of course, Fouquier-Tonville and Montane, like many in their day, could not believe a woman capable of hatching such a plot on her own, and, in search of a justification for the purges that would follow, they were determined to get her to name the Girondins as the conspirators.

The trial of 19 July lasted less than an hour. Charlotte conducted herself with great dignity and composure, a difficult feat given the intimidating demeanor of the prosecution and the disarming sobs of the widow of Marat, loud within the room, which kept interrupting the proceedings. Aware that she was in the last hours of her life, Charlotte showed no fear about her fate, and she answered questions firmly.

Trial Transcript

This trial excerpt comes from the Scharma's Citizens:

"Montane: Was it from those newspapers [Girondin] that you learned that Marat was an anarchist?

"Corday: Yes. I knew that he was perverting France. I have killed one man to save a hundred thousand. Besides, he was a hoarder; at Caen they have arrested a man who bought goods for him. I was a republican well before the Revolution and I have never lacked energy.

"Montane: What do you mean by "energy'?"

Corday: Those who put their own interests to one side and know how to sacrifice themselves for the patrie.

"Montane: Didn't you practice in advance, before striking the blow at Marat? "Corday: Oh! The monster, he takes me for a murderer!...."

Those present in the court felt this last line sealed her triumph over her interlocutors. However, it had no effect on the inevitable verdict: guilty. The sentence was to be passed within four hours!

Charlotte, histrionic to the end, asked as a last request that one of the National Guards who had been making a sketch of her come to her cell to finish her portrait. The Romantic historian Michelet describes her countenance in this final portrait (a painting done from this sketch now hangs at Versailles):

"No one can see her without saying within himself: O, why was I born so late! O, how much I would have loved her! Her hair was of a pale yellow, with the most beautiful shades....in examining those sad mild eyes, one thing is felt, which, perhaps, explains her fate: she had always been alone...."

Martyrdom

The brave conduct of Charlotte during this great spectacle was the last piece needed to insure her martyrdom.

When the executioner arrived to her cell, she took the scissors he brought and cut a lock of her hair and gave it to the portrait-maker Hauer. Her hair was then shorn so that the blade would have a clean path. The effect of this jagged cutting, rather than diminish her beauty, only seemed to make her look more affecting and tragic.

As she rode in the wagon to the guillotine, even the weather seemed strangely to conspire with her performance. A great thunderstorm erupted, drenching her and the hostile crowd lining the streets, and then it swiftly passed. A red sun was said to have returned shortly afterward, which seemed to heighten the color of the scarlet smock [indicating a murderess] she wore. She passed calmly before Robespierre, Danton, Desmoulins and other "tyrants" she opposed. It was also said that the rain made her clothes cling to her body, and many of the men in the crowd could not help but notice her voluptuous body, yet another strange mixture of images, her sexual beauty contrasting powerfully with the imminience of death.

She did not betray any weakness in her last moment. She merely seemed to stare off calmly into the setting sun.

There is no underestimating the power of the Jeanne d'Arc archetype upon the French imagination. This perhaps explains the bizarre obsession, which seems perhaps perverse to the contemporary reader, with which the autopsy focused on determining whether or not Charlotte Corday was a virgin. Ultimately under the supervision of David [whose radical youth, where he served as a sort of minister of propaganda for the radicals, is an interesting but not particularly flattering chapter in his life] this body of examiners reluctantly had to admit that she indeed was chaste, thus crippling their plan to portray Charlotte as the whore of the Girondins.

In the end, the murder of Marat further sealed the fate of the Girondins and no doubt accelerated the onset of the "Reign of Terror". One of them noted that while Charlotte had unintentionally done much to ensure their destruction, at least she had "taught them the proper way to die."

Perhaps the most fitting epithet came from a young man in Paris who had observed Charlotte on her way to the guillotine. Quoted from Scharma's Citizens, this young man wrote "'Her beautiful face was so calm...that one would have said she was a statue. Behind her young girls held each other's hands as they danced. For eight days I was in love with Charlotte Corday.'"

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