sourced story
13 July 1793Reputable source · 2 sourcesWell documented

Charlotte Corday Assassinates Marat

A Girondin sympathizer stabs the radical journalist in his medicinal bath

On the timeline · around 13 July 1793 · Republic and TerrorRepublic and TerrorThermidor to BrumaireCharlotte Corday Assassinates Marat17931794

Quick facts

Location
Marat's residence, Paris
Date
13 July 1793
Weapon
Kitchen knife
Corday executed
17 July 1793

What happened

Charlotte Corday, from a minor noble family but a committed republican, believed Jean-Paul Marat and his Jacobin allies were corrupting the Revolution and blamed him for the fall of the Girondins. On 13 July 1793, she gained an audience with Marat, who conducted much of his business from a medicinal bath to relieve a skin condition, by promising to betray Girondist sympathizers sheltering in Caen. She stabbed him once, just beneath the collarbone; he died almost instantly. Corday made no attempt to escape, insisted at trial that she had acted entirely alone, and was executed by guillotine four days later, on 17 July, ten days short of her twenty-fifth birthday.

Why it matters

Marat's death made him a revolutionary martyr and hardened Jacobin resolve against the Girondins Corday had hoped to save, accelerating rather than slowing the drift toward the Terror. It also demonstrated that women, barred from formal political power, could still alter the Revolution's course through direct action, for good or ill.

How we know

World History Encyclopedia's account draws on trial testimony in which Corday repeatedly and consistently described acting alone, and on contemporary description of the stabbing and Marat's death.

Sources

See something wrong? . Corrections with a source get fixed fastest.

Part of a timelineThe French Revolution28 events · How a bankrupt monarchy's tax crisis became a decade of upheaval that ended with a general seizing powerView all →
Charlotte Corday Assassinates Marat · The French Revolution · SourcedStory