Corday d'Armands, MARIE CHARLOTTE,

Corday d'Armands, MARIE CHARLOTTE, known as CHARLOTTE CORDAY, was born at St Saturnin, near Sées (Orne), 27th July 1768. The descendant of a noble family, with Corneille's blood in her veins, she yet welcomed the Revolution, for from Voltaire she had imbibed 'philosophic' theories, from Plutarch ideas of antique heroism. But she was horrified at the monstrosities of the Jacobins; and her hatred of their acts was intensified by converse with a party of proscribed Girondists, who had fled to Caen in Normandy. She resolved to rid her country of one of the heads of the Jacobins, and came with that view to Paris. Whether to slay Robespierre or Marat was an open question; but while she debated the matter with herself, a demand of the latter for two hundred thousand more victims, marked him out for her weapon. Twice she failed to obtain an audience, but on the evening of 13th July 1793 she was admitted on the plea that she had important news from Caen to communicate. She found Marat in his bath, and her pretended denunciation of the fugitive Girondists, some of whom were her own friends, called forth the remark: 'They shall receive their reward; I will have them all guillotined at Paris.' Straightway she drove her knife to his heart; he died with a stifled cry. Charlotte was at once arrested, and brought before the Revolutionary Tribunal, where she gloried in the act. In the Conciergerie she sat to the artist Hauer; on the evening of 17th July she was guillotined. The executioner held up her head to the multitude, and slapped it; in the sunset the beautiful dead face seemed to blush. See works on her by Vatel (3 vols. 1872), Mrs Van Alstine (1889), and R. Focke (1895); also Austin Dobson's Four Frenchwomen (1890).