Charlotte Corday

Born July 27th, 1768 Normandy, France

Executed July 17th, 1793 Paris, France by guillotine

Killed Jean Paul Marat in his bathtub

After her mother died, her and her sister were sent to a convent school where she spent a lot of her days in the library. At 23, two years into the revolution, she moved in with her cousin and started to follow politics more closely. 

She began going to political meetings of the Girondin faction at an early age. They supported a constitutional government and were much more moderate compared to the Jacobins, which she thought to be too radical.

She had a view that if she went after Marat and cut him off, she would save the revolution.

Once the deed was done, she waited calmly by his side for the police to come and collect her and was later guillotined for her crime. 

Her actions were debated for a long time afterward and continue to be discussed. Some thought what she did made women of the time look bad while some supported it. Overall, her plan largely turned Marat into a martyr, which was the opposite of what she had wanted. Regardless of the controversy and the eventual outcome, she received the nickname “Angel of Assassination” and has been memorialized in poetry, literature, and art ever since.