Jean-Paul Marat

Assassinated on 13 July 1793 in Paris by Charlotte Corday, a provincial royalist who stabbed the radical journalist in his medicinal bath.

Overview

Marat, a physician turned revolutionary pamphleteer, edited The Friend of the People and demanded heads with such effect that he was among the most feared men of the Paris democracy and a duly elected convention member. Suffering from a skin disease, he worked from a copper bath. Corday, a young aristocrat from Caen stirred by the federalist revolts, gained entry with a list of names and struck him once in the chest; he died within minutes. She was guillotined four days later, serene to the end. The murder of Marat fed the Terror, and David painting of the dead Marat made him the revolution martyr. Corday became in turn the counter-revolution angel of assassination, a study in political killing with no accomplices and no regret.