Corday, Charlotte (Marie Anne Charlotte Corday d'Armont) (märē` än shärlôt` kōrdā` därmôN`), 1768–93, assassin of Jean Paul Marat Marat, Jean Paul (zhäN pōl märä`), 1743–93, French revolutionary, b. Switzerland.
..... Click the link for more information. . Although of aristocratic background, she sympathized with the Girondists Girondists (jĭrŏn`dĭsts) or Girondins
..... Click the link for more information. in the French Revolution and felt that Marat, in his persecution of the Girondists, was acting as the evil genius of France. She resolved to emulate the action of Brutus and destroy the "tyrant." Leaving her native Normandy for Paris, she gained an audience with Marat by promising to betray the Girondists of Caen and stabbed him (July 13, 1793) in his bath. She was guillotined.

Corday (d'Armont), (Marie-Anne-) Charlotte

Charlotte Corday, engraving by É.-L. Baudran after a portrait by J.-J. Hauer.

(credit: Courtesy of the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris)

(born July 27, 1768, Saint-Saturnin, near Séez, Normandy, France—died July 17, 1793, Paris) French political activist. A noblewoman from Caen, she moved to Paris to work for the Girondin cause in the French Revolution. Horrified at the excesses of the Reign of Terror, she sought an interview with Jean-Paul Marat, one of its leaders. On July 13, 1793, she stabbed him through the heart while he was in his bath. Arrested on the spot, she was convicted by the Revolutionary Tribunal and guillotined.