Charlotte Corday

Charlotte Corday
Charlotte Corday, painted at her request by Jean-Jacques Hauer, a few hours before her execution
Born	Marie-Anne Charlotte de Corday d'Armont 27 July 1768 Saint-Saturnin-des-Ligneries, Normandy, France[1]
Died	17 July 1793(1793-07-17) (aged 24) Paris, France
Cause of death	Execution by guillotine
Known for	Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat
Parents	Jacques François de Corday, seigneur d'Armont Charlotte Marie Jacqueline Gaultier de Mesnival
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Marie-Anne Charlotte de Corday d'Armont (27 July 1768 – 17 July 1793), known simply as Charlotte Corday (French: [kɔʁdɛ]), 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.^[2]

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. Marat's assassination was memorialised in the painting The Death of Marat by Jacques-Louis David. 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. In 1847, writer Alphonse de Lamartine gave Corday the posthumous nickname l'ange de l'assassinat (the Angel of Assassination).