Corday, a Girondin sympathizer, believed killing Marat would halt the escalating violence of the French Revolution. Instead her act helped fuel the Reign of Terror, as Jacobins portrayed Marat as a martyr. Her calm demeanor at trial and execution made her a divisive symbol of political violence for generations.
Charlotte Corday traveled to Paris from Normandy with a single purpose: to stop the man she blamed for the Revolution's descent into bloodshed. She gained entry to Jean-Paul Marat's apartment by claiming to have a list of traitors, then stabbed him once through the chest as he soaked in a medicinal bath for his skin condition. He died within minutes.
At her trial, Corday showed no remorse, declaring she had killed one man to save a hundred thousand. The Jacobins seized on Marat's death, commissioning Jacques-Louis David's famous painting of the slain 'Friend of the People' and using the murder to justify harsher measures against perceived enemies of the Revolution. Corday went to the guillotine calmly, reportedly blushing when an executioner's assistant slapped her decapitated head, an act for which he was later imprisoned. Her story has since inspired plays, operas, and endless debate over whether she was a heroine or a fanatic.