This is a small brochure entitled Charlotte Corday, beheaded in Paris on July 16, 1793, and published in Paris, year 4 (1795). Our particular copy was never cut nor bound, and there are water stains all through its 144 pages—just as if those old crusty pages were still wet with a young exalted woman’s blood, and her (in)famous victim’s.
Our copy comes with the rare portrait of Charlotte Corday. The caption reads: “As Marat was exhaling his poisonous rage, You cowardly feared him instead of punishing him, I’ve stabbed the beast and revenged your shame, Follow my example, and learn how to die.” A young and beautiful lady, Charlotte is famous for murdering Jean-Paul Marat (1793), a key figure of the French Révolution (1789). The publisher of L’Ami du peuple, Marat was also a powerful member of the revolutionary Assembly, and the fierce advocate of violence. He was blamed for the massacres of the prisoners that took place in September 1792. The moderates and the royalists identified him as l’homme à abattre. Many of his political enemies had sought refuge in Caen, where Charlotte Corday listened to their heated speeches before she decided to go to Paris to kill the beast. She sent Marat a deceitful note: “I hope you’ll see me today. I’m arriving from Caen. I must reveal important secrets to you for the Republic’s sake.” The sick leader received her in his bathtub, where he’d spend most of his time—some skin disease was tormenting him, and he suffered terrible headaches. There was no witness, but the next thing, she plunged a knife in his chest. He cried, his people rushed into the bathroom and seized Charlotte. Marat was here, lying in water tainted with his own blood—dead; as later immortalized in David’s painting. “How did you stab him straight in the heart?” her accuser later asked. “The indignation that made my own heart sick showed me the way,” she answered.
This is a scarce brochure, written by Couet-Gironville. The Rare Book Hub transaction history only lists one copy, sold for $303.00 in Paris, in 1989. No copy for sale on Abebooks, and the only one available on eBay.fr for €249.00 was missing the portrait. She was tried by the famous Fouquier-Tinville (later guillotiné himself). “While standing in the courtroom, she noticed that a painter was drawing her portrait—the one we put at the head of these memoirs was reproduced from the same drawing. She chose the best position for him to see her, and she asked him to send some copies to her relatives.” She was sent to the scaffold as a lamb to the slaughter: “She remained so calm until the very last moment,” Couet writes. “It proves her intentions were but pure, and that what she did was a crime in the eyes of the law only, and not in the eyes of mankind.” Some saw Corday as a martyr (mainly the Royalists but not only), but Marat’s followers disagreed. “Right after she was executed,” Couet deplores, “the executioner’s assistant showed her severed head to the audience, and slapped it several times.” The Revolutionary Court looked for some accomplices—but couldn’t find any. Charlotte was a determined 25 year-old woman, who apparently acted on her own. She was probably a royalist at heart, but it seems she genuinely felt the urge to murder Marat to put an end to the bloodbath. She was right—well, so to speak.
These publications that came out in the middle of historical chaos are usually political pamphlets in disguise. So is this one. Although listed as one of the earliest of Corday’s biographies, it’s more of a plea against her victim, here described as a “cannibal” leading a “bunch of throat cutters.” Marat was indeed planning more massacres. It’s hard to keep things in perspective as far as this troubled period is concerned. Marat was a dark man, sick, angry, and quick to have people sliced up. Was this bloody part of the Révolution necessary? Probably. Would YOU have agreed with him at the time? Depends on your social and political background, I guess. Anyway, Marat’s blood wasn’t enough to stop the rivers of blood that were coming. He was indeed replaced by Robespierre, who soon orchestrated the Terror. More than 200,000 people were then put to death until Robespierre was eventually put to death himself in July 1794—what a period!
Charlotte Corday remains an ambivalent figure of the French Révolution—but she’s also seen as a strong woman, who played a crucial part in this crucial historical period of her country. “I’ll be tried tomorrow at 8:00 am,” she wrote in her last letter. “By noon, I shall be done, as the ancient Romans would say. I don’t know yet what my last instant will look like, and the end must crown the whole. I fear not death. My life has a meaning only as long as it’s been useful.” As Mlle Deshoulières once said, your life was always long enough as long as you’ve led a good life.
Thibault Ehrengardt
