Charlotte Corday: French woman assassinates revolutionary leader in his bathroom

CAIRO – 13 July 2021: The French Revolution broke out in 1789, but its goals were not fully achieved. For many years, there were intertwined episodes of violent events.

On July 13, 1793, French Charlotte Corday assassinated Jean-Paul Marat, one of the most prominent leaders of the French Revolution. Marat was stabbed to death in his bathroom by Charlotte, who was sympathetic to the royalists, against whom the revolution broke out.

L'Ami du Peuple was founded by Jean-Paul Marat, originally a physician - according to the "History" website, in 1789, and its criticism was a contributing factor to the bloody turn of the revolution in 1792.

With the king's arrest in August of that year, Marat was elected deputy of Paris at the conference. In the French Revolutionary Legislature, Jean-Paul Marat opposed the Girondins, a faction of moderate republicans who advocated constitutional government.

By 1793, Charlotte Corday, the daughter of a poor aristocrat and ally of the Girondins in Normandy, considered Marat an enemy of France and plotted his assassination, leaving her hometown for Paris.

She had planned to kill Marat at the Bastille Day Parade on July 14, but had to look for him at his home when the festivities were called off.

On July 13, Charlotte Corday went to the house of Marat, who was suffering from a chronic skin disease, making him most of the time sitting in a warm bath. 

Corday pulled out a knife and stabbed him in the chest. He died almost instantly. Corday quietly waited for the police to arrive, arrest her, and then execute her four days later.