Read Online Female Executions: Martyrs, Murderesses and Madwomen by Geoffrey Abbott - Free Book Online

fortunes. Far from being a royalist, Charlotte supported the Girondists, a political group dedicated to a more moderate approach to the country’s dire problems, and she was filled with Republican fervour so intense that she regarded the assassination of Marat as the only solution.
    She walked the two hundred miles to Paris, and, on arriving there, stayed at the Inn de la Providence on the Rue des Vieux Augustins. There she wrote a note and sent it to her quarry, requesting an interview. While awaiting a reply, she went to a cutler’s shop on the Palais Royal where, for two francs, she bought a large sheath knife with an ebony handle. No reply having arrived, she dressed in her finest clothes, a pink silk scarf draped over her muslin gown, and an elegant hat adorned with a cockade and green ribbons, and visited Marat’s house, 20 Rue des Cordeliéres, but was turned away. Determined to carry out her self-imposed mission, she returned to the hotel from where she posted a message to Marat in which she stated that she knew the names of those in Caen who were plotting against the Revolution and was prepared to reveal them to him.
    A few hours later she returned, and although Marat’s mistress Simone attempted to refuse her admittance, Marat heard the voices and bade Charlotte to enter. The famous revolutionary had been ill for some time. During his earlier revolutionary days he had twice had to flee to London, and once even had to take refuge from the French authorities by hiding in the Paris sewers. In those noisome and pestilential tunnels he had contracted a virulent and incurable disease which covered his body in a rash so devastating that only almost continual immersion in a sulphur bath brought him any relief. Accordingly he spent most of his time in a slipper bath, decency being preserved by having a cloth draped over it, and with the aid of a board placed across it he was able to write his notes and keep up with his correspondence. He also suffered excruciating headaches, which he sought to relieve by wrapping his head in a bandanna soaked in vinegar.
    Charlotte Corday entered the room and approached her prey. As he started to query the reason for her visit, without warning she suddenly leant over and plunged the knife into his body with all the force she could muster. So violent was the blow that according to the post-mortem the blade entered his chest between the first and second ribs, piercing the upper part of the right lung and aorta, and penetrated the heart, blood gushing copiously into the bath water.
    Having achieved her purpose, the young girl made no attempt to escape but stood calmly by the window where, attracted by Marat’s dying screams, she was found by an assistant, Laurent Bas who, together with Simone and her sister Catherine, had rushed into the room. Faced with the spectacle of his employer submerged in a bath of blood, Bas promptly picked up a chair and knocked Charlotte to the ground; as she attempted to get to her feet, he felled her again, holding her there until members of the national guard and a surgeon arrived. The body of the murdered man was lifted out and placed on a bed. Charlotte, calm and dignified, her hands tied behind her, was taken to the Prison de l’Abbaye for interrogation and subsequent trial before the Revolutionary Council. In court she admitted everything, calling Marat a monster who had hypnotised the French peasants. ‘I killed one man in order to save a hundred thousand,’ she proclaimed vehemently. The verdict and sentence were foregone conclusions, death by the guillotine being the only possible penalty.
    In her cell in the Conciergerie Prison a painter, Hauer, was working on a sketch of her when, on 17 July 1793, the executioner Charles-Henri Sanson arrived to prepare and collect his victim. On entering the room he found her seemingly cool and entirely composed, sitting on a chair in the middle of the cell and guarded by a gendarme. As he approached she looked up