Charlotte Corday was a fifth-generation descendant of the dramatist Pierre Corneille.
23 Facts About Charlotte Corday
2.
Charlotte Corday admired their speeches and grew fond of many of the Girondist groups whom she met while living in Caen.
3.
Charlotte Corday respected the political principles of the Girondins and came to align herself with their thinking.
4.
Charlotte Corday regarded them as a movement that would ultimately save France.
5.
The Girondins represented a more moderate approach to the revolution and they, like Charlotte Corday, were skeptical about the direction the revolution was taking.
6.
The opposition to this radical thinking, coupled with the influence of the Girondins, ultimately led Charlotte Corday to carry out her plan to murder one of the most outspoken and popular Montagnard radicals, Jean-Paul Marat.
7.
Charlotte Corday's action aided in restructuring the private versus public role of the woman in society at the time.
8.
The idea of women as second class or less than was challenged, and Charlotte Corday was considered a hero to those who were against the teachings of Marat.
9.
Charlotte Corday believed that Marat was threatening the Republic, and that his death would end violence throughout the country.
10.
Charlotte Corday believed that King Louis XVI should not have been executed.
11.
Charlotte Corday bought a kitchen knife with a 6-inch blade.
12.
Charlotte Corday initially planned to assassinate Marat in front of the entire National Convention.
13.
Charlotte Corday intended to make an example of him, but upon arriving in Paris she discovered that Marat no longer attended meetings because his health was deteriorating due to a skin disorder.
14.
Charlotte Corday was joined by a distributor of Marat's newspaper, who seized Corday.
15.
Charlotte Corday sent the following farewell letter to her father which was intercepted and read during the trial, the letter helping to establish that Marat's murder was premeditated:.
16.
Charlotte Corday underwent three separate cross-examinations by senior revolutionary judicial officials, including the President of the Revolutionary Tribunal and the chief prosecutor.
17.
Charlotte Corday stressed that she was a republican and had been so even before the Revolution, citing the values of ancient Rome as an ideal model.
18.
Charlotte Corday credited her fatal knifing of Marat with one blow not to practicing in advance but to luck.
19.
Charlotte Corday asked for Gustave le Doulcet, an old acquaintance, to defend her, but he did not receive the letter she wrote to him in time, so Claude Francois Chauveau-Lagarde was appointed instead to assist her during the trial.
20.
Hauer's likeness was completed shortly before Charlotte Corday was summoned to the tumbril, after she had viewed it and suggested a few changes.
21.
Charlotte Corday's skull was said to have been removed from her grave and passed from person to person in later years.
22.
Charlotte Corday's act transformed the idea of what a woman was capable of, and to those who did not shun her for her act, she was a heroine.
23.
Charlotte Corday's killing of Marat was considered vile, an "arch-typically masculine statement", which reaction showed that whether or not one approved of what she did, it is clear that the murder of Marat changed the political role and position of women during the French Revolution.