Charlotte Corday
April 2008 - at AM Radio's "Die Like Marat" art installation, an amazingly detailed and beautiful build, located here in Bettina Tizzy's Chakryn Forest. Many thanks to Wobbling Wobbit for his patience, and his help here in playing the part of Marat.
On July 9, 1793, during the volatile times of the French Revolution, Charlotte Corday, a young woman from a noble family, and just shy of her 25th birthday set out on a mission to gain an audience with Jean-Paul Marat with the sole purpose of assassinating him.
Marat considered himself a renegade, a controversial revolutionary, and felt he spoke the truth for the people of France. Corday believed that the fiery rhetoric that Marat was publishing in his newspaper, “L'Ami du Peuple”, (The Friend of the People) , and his compiling and publishing the names of people he felt should be executed, had led to many of the terrible atrocities that were being committed, and the beheadings of hundreds of innocent people.
She felt strongly that something had to be done to stop him and his death lists, and with that in mind, she hoped to gain access to Marat under the guise that she would give him the names of Girondists planning an uprising in Caen. She traveled alone from Caen to Paris, carrying a copy of Plutarch's Lives with her, a book on the lives of Greek and Roman statesmen which she had spent much time reading, and had been greatly influenced by. She stayed at a small inn, where she wrote up a letter to the French people, explaining her intentions.
Jean-Paul Marat had been suffering for quite some time from a very painful and debilitating skin disease, and the only relief he could find was to spend hours every day soaking in a warm, clay-infused bath. Because of this, he had taken to having most of his official meetings with people while sitting in his bathtub.
On July 13, 1793, after obtaining a knife from a cutlery shop, and hiding it in her clothing, Corday proceeded to Marat's home. After initially being turned away twice, she finally was given an audience with him. When he heard that she had information for him about an alleged plot by the Girondists, after she brought up the plot during their talk, he announced that as soon as these men were found they would be sent straight to the guillotine. This so enraged her, and confirmed what she had felt about him, that she quickly drew the knife and killed him.
She was captured immediately, and hauled away to prison to await trial. When they doubted that she, a woman, could have planned all of this totally on her own, and that she must have had male accomplices, she stated firmly that a woman was just as capable as a man of committing an act of patriotic violence, and that is exactly what she had done. She felt that the fact that she was a woman had given her a certain advantage in gaining easier access to him. She confessed at her trial, that she alone was responsible for the plan to assassinate Marat, and was quoted as saying, "I killed one man to save 100,000."
On July 17, 1793, four days after she killed Marat and was convicted of the crime, she was put in a cart that would take her to her own death. She was offered a seat in the cart, but refused it , and instead chose to stand at the front of the cart the entire way to the guillotine, as it made its way through the huge crowds of people that had gathered to see the woman who had killed Jean-Paul Marat.
Marat's death, ended up making him a martyr, rather than the outcome for which Corday had hoped. Marat dead, and touted as a martyr for the revolution was used as a powerful tool for propaganda. This was helped along by the extraordinary painting by Jacques-Louis David which was commissioned immediately after Marat's death. He was asked to create a moving painting of a revolutionary martyr, and that it needed to be done as soon as possible.
It just so happened that the artist had been visiting Marat the day before the killing, and so had the whole general scene vividly fixed in his mind, but even so, he also had to work with the actual corpse, which had been quickly embalmed and put back in the tub. This proved quite a challenge for David, because, despite the embalming, the body began to deteriorate very rapidly in the warm July temperatures, and he had to work very quickly. The magnificent painting was finally finished in October, three months after Marat's death. Large crowds of people gathered to watch it be paraded through the streets of Paris, on its way to its residence at the Louvre Museum.
Charlotte Corday's bold act did nothing to stop the killings. In fact, things only worsened, and the real Reign of Terror started a couple of months after Marat's death in September, 1793. In the year that it lasted, it is said that possibly 40,000 people died, and that even in the very last month of the Terror, 1,900 people were executed at the guillotine.
Within two years of Marat's death, his martyrom was over, and all tributes to him were taken down. The painting "The Death of Marat", was returned to David, who himself was later imprisoned for his connection to the Reign of Terror, and his friendship with Robespierre. His family had been unable to sell the painting, since no one in France wanted any part of it, being so connected to the Reign of Terror, and Marat's part in it. Years later they offered the painting to the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Brussels, a city to which David had moved in exile after leaving prison, and where he died, which is where it still resides.
In years to come, Charlotte Corday would be considered a heroine to the French people.
Charlotte Corday
April 2008 - at AM Radio's "Die Like Marat" art installation, an amazingly detailed and beautiful build, located here in Bettina Tizzy's Chakryn Forest. Many thanks to Wobbling Wobbit for his patience, and his help here in playing the part of Marat.
On July 9, 1793, during the volatile times of the French Revolution, Charlotte Corday, a young woman from a noble family, and just shy of her 25th birthday set out on a mission to gain an audience with Jean-Paul Marat with the sole purpose of assassinating him.
Marat considered himself a renegade, a controversial revolutionary, and felt he spoke the truth for the people of France. Corday believed that the fiery rhetoric that Marat was publishing in his newspaper, “L'Ami du Peuple”, (The Friend of the People) , and his compiling and publishing the names of people he felt should be executed, had led to many of the terrible atrocities that were being committed, and the beheadings of hundreds of innocent people.
She felt strongly that something had to be done to stop him and his death lists, and with that in mind, she hoped to gain access to Marat under the guise that she would give him the names of Girondists planning an uprising in Caen. She traveled alone from Caen to Paris, carrying a copy of Plutarch's Lives with her, a book on the lives of Greek and Roman statesmen which she had spent much time reading, and had been greatly influenced by. She stayed at a small inn, where she wrote up a letter to the French people, explaining her intentions.
Jean-Paul Marat had been suffering for quite some time from a very painful and debilitating skin disease, and the only relief he could find was to spend hours every day soaking in a warm, clay-infused bath. Because of this, he had taken to having most of his official meetings with people while sitting in his bathtub.
On July 13, 1793, after obtaining a knife from a cutlery shop, and hiding it in her clothing, Corday proceeded to Marat's home. After initially being turned away twice, she finally was given an audience with him. When he heard that she had information for him about an alleged plot by the Girondists, after she brought up the plot during their talk, he announced that as soon as these men were found they would be sent straight to the guillotine. This so enraged her, and confirmed what she had felt about him, that she quickly drew the knife and killed him.
She was captured immediately, and hauled away to prison to await trial. When they doubted that she, a woman, could have planned all of this totally on her own, and that she must have had male accomplices, she stated firmly that a woman was just as capable as a man of committing an act of patriotic violence, and that is exactly what she had done. She felt that the fact that she was a woman had given her a certain advantage in gaining easier access to him. She confessed at her trial, that she alone was responsible for the plan to assassinate Marat, and was quoted as saying, "I killed one man to save 100,000."
On July 17, 1793, four days after she killed Marat and was convicted of the crime, she was put in a cart that would take her to her own death. She was offered a seat in the cart, but refused it , and instead chose to stand at the front of the cart the entire way to the guillotine, as it made its way through the huge crowds of people that had gathered to see the woman who had killed Jean-Paul Marat.
Marat's death, ended up making him a martyr, rather than the outcome for which Corday had hoped. Marat dead, and touted as a martyr for the revolution was used as a powerful tool for propaganda. This was helped along by the extraordinary painting by Jacques-Louis David which was commissioned immediately after Marat's death. He was asked to create a moving painting of a revolutionary martyr, and that it needed to be done as soon as possible.
It just so happened that the artist had been visiting Marat the day before the killing, and so had the whole general scene vividly fixed in his mind, but even so, he also had to work with the actual corpse, which had been quickly embalmed and put back in the tub. This proved quite a challenge for David, because, despite the embalming, the body began to deteriorate very rapidly in the warm July temperatures, and he had to work very quickly. The magnificent painting was finally finished in October, three months after Marat's death. Large crowds of people gathered to watch it be paraded through the streets of Paris, on its way to its residence at the Louvre Museum.
Charlotte Corday's bold act did nothing to stop the killings. In fact, things only worsened, and the real Reign of Terror started a couple of months after Marat's death in September, 1793. In the year that it lasted, it is said that possibly 40,000 people died, and that even in the very last month of the Terror, 1,900 people were executed at the guillotine.
Within two years of Marat's death, his martyrom was over, and all tributes to him were taken down. The painting "The Death of Marat", was returned to David, who himself was later imprisoned for his connection to the Reign of Terror, and his friendship with Robespierre. His family had been unable to sell the painting, since no one in France wanted any part of it, being so connected to the Reign of Terror, and Marat's part in it. Years later they offered the painting to the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Brussels, a city to which David had moved in exile after leaving prison, and where he died, which is where it still resides.
In years to come, Charlotte Corday would be considered a heroine to the French people.