Charlotte corday significance

The Angel of Assassination: A Profile on Charlotte Corday

“I killed one man to save 100,000.” Those were the words of Charlotte Corday as she awaited her sentence from the revolutionary tribunal. The crime: the murder of Jean-Paul Marat, an esteemed French journalist and politician. As she proudly stood before the masses, people wondered what drove the twenty-four-year-old to commit the murder.

The Beginnings 

On July 27th, 1768 in Saint-Saturnin Normandy, a young girl by the name of Marie-Anne-Charlotte Corday d’Armont, fondly referred to by her family as Marie, was born. Corday’s family members were fallen aristocrats: her father, Jacques-François de Corday d’Armont, was descended from the renowned dramatist Pierre Corneille and her mother, Charlotte-Marie Gaultier des Authieux, was descended from a French noble family. 

Tragedy struck for the Corday d’Armont family in April of 1782, when Charlotte Corday’s mother and one of her sisters passed away. The family had a hard time processing their deaths, especially Corday’s father, who would later send her

Charlotte Corday

French assassin (1768–1793)

For other uses, see Charlotte Corday (disambiguation).

Marie-Anne Charlotte de Corday d'Armont (27 July 1768 – 17 July 1793), known simply as Charlotte Corday (French:[kɔʁdɛ]), was a figure of the French Revolution who assassinated revolutionary and Jacobin leader Jean-Paul Marat on 13 July 1793.

Born in Normandy to a minor aristocratic family, Corday was a resident of Caen and a sympathiser of the Girondins, a moderate faction of French revolutionaries in opposition to the Jacobins. She held Jean-Paul Marat responsible for the September Massacres of 1792 and, believing that the Revolution was in jeopardy due to the more radical course the Jacobins had taken, she decided to assassinate Marat.[2]

On 13 July 1793, having travelled to Paris and obtained an audience with Marat, Corday fatally stabbed him with a knife while he was taking a medicinal bath. Marat's assassination was memorialised in the painting The Death of Marat by Jacques-Louis David. Corday was immediately arrested, found guilty by the Revolu

Charlotte Corday

Charlotte Corday (Marie-Anne Charlotte de Corday d'Armont, 27 July 1768 – 17 July 1793), was a figure of the French Revolution. In 1793, she was sent to the guillotine for the assassination of Jacobin leader Jean-Paul Marat. She blamed Marat for the more extreme course the Revolution had taken. He played a large role in the takedown of the Girondins. Corday believed in the Girondins' cause. In 1847, writer Alphonse de Lamartine gave Corday the nickname l'ange de l'assassinat (the Angel of Assassination).

Biography

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Charlotte Corday was born in Saint-Saturnin-des-Ligneries, Orne in Normandy, France in 1768.[1] Corday was from a family of minor aristocrats.

When Corday was a girl, her older sister and their mother, Charlotte Marie Jacqueline Gaultier de Mesnival died. Her father sent Corday and her younger sister to a convent in Caen. In the convent's library, Corday read the writing of Plutarch, Rousseau, and Voltaire[2] After 1791, Corday lived in Caen with her cousin, Madame Le Coustellier de Brettevill

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