CORDAY, CHARLOTTE

born July 27, 1768, Saint-Saturnin, near Sez, Normandy, Fr. died July 17, 1793, Paris in full Marie-Anne-Charlotte Corday d'Armont the assassin of the French revolutionary Jean-Paul Marat. Descended from a noble family, educated in a convent at Caen, and royalist by sentiment, yet susceptible also to the ideals of the Enlightenment, she was living with an aunt in Caen when it became the centre of a federalist movement against the Convention after the expulsion of the Girondins in MayJune 1793. Inspired especially by Charles Barbaroux among the Girondin refugees, Charlotte Corday left for Paris to work for the Girondin cause. There she solicited an interview with Marat because of the influence of his newspaper over the masses, and on July 13 she was finally admitted to his presence while he was in his bath. She named dissidents in Normandy; he noted them and assured her that they would be guillotined. She then drew a knife from under her dress and stabbed him through the heart. Arrested on the spot, Charlotte Corday was tried and convicted by the Revolutionary Tribunal (July 1617) and forthwith guillotined on the Place de la Rvolution.