CHAPTER XVIII
ASSASSINATION OF JEAN PAUL MARAT
(July 13, 1793)
IN the letter of farewell which Charlotte Corday, from her prison cell as a doomed murderess, addressed to her father, she used the phrase (the French words are a well-known verse from a famous tragedy):
“’Tis not the scaffold, but the crime, that brings disgrace”;
for she still adhered to the belief that in killing Marat she had not committed a crime, but an act of patriotic devotion for which posterity would honor her, and history would place her name among the benefactors of mankind. In this belief she was more than half right, for in the long list of political crimes and assassinations there is not one which has been so willingly condoned by the world, so eloquently defended by historians, so enthusiastically immortalized by poets, and so leniently criticised even by moralists as that of Charlotte Corday. In her defence the law of heredity has been invoked, for it has been maintained that Charlotte Corday, who was a great-grandniece of the great Corneille, had inherited those sublime patriotic and republican sentiments which the great tragic poet so often and so eloquently expresses in his dramatic poems. In fact everything has been done to surround her crime with the halo of martyrdom, and to secure for her the glory of a national heroine.
It was in the middle of the year 1793. The French Revolution had reached that turning-point when the Revolutionists had almost exhausted their fury against the Royalists, and engaged in factional fights among themselves, always ending in the execution of the members of the vanquished party. The National Assembly--transformed into the National Convention--was under the absolute control of the Jacobins, and Marat, Danton and Robespierre were the absolute rulers of Paris and consequently of France. The King had been guillotined, the Queen and the other members of the royal family were imprisoned, and their execution was only a question of time. An insane craving for blood seemed to have taken possession of the men who were guiding the destinies of France. Danton, by far the most gifted of these Jacobins, had forever sullied his name as the author of the “September Massacres”; but far more odious was Marat, “the friend of the people,” the blood-thirsty demon of the Revolution, who quite seriously demanded, in the paper of which he was the editor and publisher, that two hundred thousand persons should be guillotined to purify the aristocratic atmosphere of France.
The powerful party of the Girondists, who were distinguished by a certain degree of moderation and had been a sort of counterpoise in the Convention to the Jacobins, had not only been defeated, but had been actually driven out of the Convention and been branded as traitors and enemies to the Republic. With Marat, Robespierre and Danton in the absolute and unrestrained possession of power, the destruction and execution of the Girondists was therefore only a question of time,--of months, weeks, perhaps only of days,--and most of them fled from Paris, seeking refuge in those parts of France which were known to be strongly attached to the moderate views of the defeated party. Normandy was one of these provinces, and in its ancient towns and villages quite a number of the proscribed leaders of the Girondist party--Buzot, Pétion, Barbaroux, Louvet and others--appeared with the outspoken intention of arousing the population and inducing them to march against Paris. There had been great excitement before their arrival. The enemies of the Terrorists were in a large majority, and had been active in organizing, equipping, and drilling an army, and General Wimpfen, the commandant at Cherbourg, was bold and imprudent enough to announce that he would march upon Paris with an army of sixty thousand men.
At that time there lived at Caen in Normandy a young girl of noble descent, very beautiful and ingenious, but poor. Her name was Charlotte Corday, or rather Marie Anna Charlotte Corday; she lived at Caen in the house of her aunt, Madame de Bretteville. Charlotte was the daughter of Monsieur de Corday d’Armans, and a great-grandniece of Pierre Corneille, the greatest of the tragic poets of France. The statement that she was the great-granddaughter of the poet is erroneous. She was the great-granddaughter of Marie Corneille, the only sister of Pierre Corneille, whose daughter married Adrian Corday, Baron of Cauvigny. This lineage makes the claim of heredity for Charlotte’s sublime character, which is so often insisted on, rather fanciful, especially since no other members of the great poet’s family have manifested these characteristics. Charlotte had a sister and two brothers, who had left their father’s house after he married his second wife. Her two brothers went to Germany to take service in the army of the Prince of Condé in his campaign against the French Revolutionists.
Charlotte had been placed in a convent at Caen when only twelve years of age, and being naturally contemplative, the retirement and silence of the convent made her even more so. She abandoned herself entirely to those vague dreams and exaltations which so often fill the minds and souls of young girls on the threshold of womanhood. Especially the proud, exalted, grandiose heroines, whom her great-granduncle had immortalized in his tragedies, Cinna, Horace, Polyeucte, Le Cid, made a profound impression upon her, and she learned the most beautiful passages by heart. Her very education seemed to prepare her for the great historic _rôle_ which she was to play some ten or twelve years later. At the age of seventeen or eighteen she left the convent and was kindly received in the house of Madame de Bretteville. Her mind was filled with the exalted sentiments of Corneille and Plutarch, whom she read and reread with great delight. Her soul was restless at the sight of the increasing agitation against the corruption of the aristocratic classes and of the profound misery and degradation of the poor. The house of Madame de Bretteville was one of those sombre, sad-looking, narrow residences which are still found occasionally in the silent and sleepy streets of old Norman towns, and well adapted to the stern and dreamy character of Charlotte. In the rear of the house there was a garden, surrounded by high walls, and this garden became the favorite spot of Charlotte in her readings and studies. Her extraordinary beauty, which consisted as much in the classical cast of her features, her dazzling complexion, her magnificent eyes, as in the intellectual expression of her countenance and her queenlike bearing, had fully unfolded itself in the quietude of her home.
Those who have found in books the greatest joys and pleasures of their lives know what an immense enthusiasm, what an ardent and insatiable curiosity fills the soul when circumstances permit them to explore the vast field of human thought and inspiration and to dive into its treasury. Madame de Bretteville’s library was well filled with translations of the great classics of Greece and Rome, and also with the works of Voltaire, Rousseau, Montesquieu and other modern writers. These became the favorite study of Charlotte. One of her greatest favorites was Raynal, whose famous History of the two Indies had just appeared and filled Europe with admiration. Very likely that which appealed so strongly to Charlotte’s heart was the sympathy which the author felt for the oppressed races, and especially for the black slaves. With untiring zeal and passion she devoured everything in her aunt’s library,--novels, history, philosophy,--and these studies finally led her to politics, which engaged at that time the minds of the foremost writers of France and became the favorite subject of public and private discussion. In this way two parallel currents of ideas had formed themselves in Charlotte’s mind,--on the one hand, a powerful desire for greater liberty and the elevation of the oppressed and degraded; on the other hand, a profound admiration for those who devote and sacrifice themselves to the great cause of humanity, and a vague but ardent desire to adorn her name with the halo of heroism and immortality. Left entirely to the instincts and aspirations of her own nature, the young royalist (for her entire family was strictly royalistic) had become a republican, but a republican in the sense of Plutarch and Tacitus, nourished by the sentiments of Corneille and Rousseau. Nothing in her appearance indicated her enthusiastic and soul-devouring ambition to make herself the deliverer of her country from the terrible calamities which had recently befallen it. Her political studies had filled her, republican though she was, with extreme disgust and hatred for the Terrorists, and especially for Marat, who seemed to be their inspiring genius. This was the general situation and also the personal frame of mind of Charlotte Corday at the time the Girondists who had escaped from Paris came to Caen to organize armed resistance to the terrorism of the “Mountain.”
Charlotte Corday had zealously followed the reports in the newspapers she could get hold of concerning the situation at Paris, and her heart beat warmly for the cause of the Girondists. Like all others in the city she lived in, she believed that Marat was the secret spring that kept the entire machinery of the Revolution in motion, that he was the head and soul of the anarchists and murderers, that he was the centre of all conspiracies, the originator of all crimes, and that, with him out of the way, peace and liberty would soon regain the ascendency, and a freer, nobler, greater France would arise from the ruins. With such convictions in her mind she attended the meetings of the Girondists, where appeals were made to the citizens of Caen and all Normandy to enroll themselves in the service of their country, of liberty, of humanity, against the tyrants at Paris. The impression which these meetings made upon her soul can hardly be described. For the first time she saw and heard the men she had read so much about, and whose patriotic utterances had so often found a loud echo in her own heart; they were there, young, beautiful, enthusiastic, made doubly interesting by the ban of proscription which had exiled them from Paris; they were there with their inspiring eloquence and patriotic appeals, and in the tumultuous audience there was no one more fully enchanted and carried away than the young girl, the disciple of Plutarch and Rousseau. The words: “Country!” “Duty!” “Public Welfare!” repeated again and again by the orators, were deeply engraved upon her impressionable heart. An extraordinary exaltation took possession of Charlotte’s soul; she aspired to a part as grand as that of these orators; she longed for a chance to devote herself to the holy cause of liberty and to suffer for it.
These projects and aspirations remained mere vague dreams, until an event occurred which gave them definite shape. On the seventh of July the volunteers who were to march on Paris assembled on a large plain in the immediate vicinity of Caen. The plain was large enough to hold one hundred thousand men; but only thirty volunteers appeared. General disappointment was visible among the spectators; but no one was more deeply affected than Charlotte Corday, who was also present. It seems that from that very sorrow there sprang up within her mind a project both heroic and terrible,--to assassinate Marat, whose words had been most influential in expelling and proscribing the Girondists. To Charlotte’s mind the cause of the Girondists was identical with that of liberty, country, and justice. And how often in the past had a pure and blameless life sacrificed for a great cause appeased the wrath of Destiny! She went home and requested an interview with the Girondist deputies.
Charlotte Corday was then twenty-four years old, but looked much younger. She was tall, and of beautiful proportions; her complexion was of dazzling whiteness, her hair was blond, her luminous eyes of charming sweetness, her nose finely cut, and her chin indicated firmness and determination. Her face was a perfect oval, and the total impression was that of perfect beauty. Both her smile and her voice were of angelic sweetness. Charlotte made a profound impression upon the deputies; but they were not inclined to take her seriously. One day Pétion came in while she was in conversation with Barbaroux. “Ah, ah,” said he, “there is the beautiful young aristocrat paying a visit to the Republicans.” “You judge me wrongly,” she replied, “but some day you will know who I am.”
The question has often been asked whether the Girondists put the dagger in Charlotte Corday’s hand to assassinate Marat. The enemies of the Girondists persistently asserted this, but there is no evidence to that effect. Possibly in her two conversations with Barbaroux her determination to assassinate Marat, and not Danton or Robespierre, became confirmed by the intensity of hatred and contempt manifested for him by the famous Girondist leader. At all events, after these interviews she made her preparations to go to Paris with great circumspection, and great tranquillity of mind. A little dressing-case, a night-gown and a volume of Plutarch’s Lives, with some money, was all her baggage. But before going to Paris she proceeded to Argentan to bid her family farewell. Her father and her sister were living there, and she told them that she intended to go to England, and would remain there until the storm of the Revolution had blown over. She bade them farewell without showing an excess of emotion, but also without faintness, and then departed for Paris in the public stage-coach.
* * * * *
During the journey, which at that period lasted two days, she appeared serene and happy; no preoccupation seemed to disturb the tranquillity of her mind. Her fellow-travellers all fell in love with her and treated her with distinguished courtesy. One of them offered to marry her. Charlotte smiled, but refused politely. Moreover they were all radical revolutionists, and swore by Danton, Robespierre and Marat.
At Caen nobody had any idea of her plan. She had told her aunt she would go to Argentan and thence to England. She had always concealed her political views so carefully that nobody could have suspected her.
She arrived at Paris on the forenoon of the eleventh of July, and put up at the Providence Hotel. Tired out by the long and tedious journey, she went to bed early in the afternoon and slept well till the next morning. No conscientious scruples disturbed her. Her mind was fully made up, and she did not for a minute hesitate to execute her project. The next morning she went to the Palais Royal, purchased a strong and sharp steel knife, and carefully hid it in her bosom. She then asked herself when and where she was to use her weapon. She would have preferred to give her act a certain solemnity. At Caen, while brooding over her purpose, she had conceived the plan to assassinate Marat on the Champ de Mars, on the fourteenth of July, during the celebration of the anniversary of the destruction of the Bastile and the overthrow of the monarchy. She hoped to slay this king of anarchy, surrounded as he would then be by thousands of his murderous followers; but when the celebration was postponed, she planned to assassinate him at one of the sessions of the Convention, the scene of his crimes and proscriptions. When she learned that Marat was ill and did not attend the sessions of the Convention, there seemed no way left for her except to go to his residence and meet him there. She addressed a letter to him asking for a private interview. The letter remained unanswered. She sent a second letter, more urgent than the first, in which she requested an immediate interview for the purpose of communicating to him a secret of great importance. Moreover she represented herself as unhappy, as a victim of political persecution and appealed to his protection. After this appeal she hoped to be admitted.
At about seven o’clock in the evening of July 13 she left her hotel, took a cab and proceeded to the residence of Marat, a dismal old building, No. 20 in the Rue des Cordeliers. There Marat lived, and there also he had the office and the press and composing-rooms of his newspaper, “The Friend of the People.” Marat’s living apartments, which were furnished with a certain elegance strangely contrasting with the general appearance of the building, were situated on the second floor and were shared by his mistress, or rather his wife, who loved him passionately, and who watched over him with the fidelity of a dog. Knowing the great peril to which the idol of her heart might be exposed from foreign visitors, she subjected each of them, before admitting him, to a careful scrutiny and painstaking examination.
When Charlotte Corday had ascended the stairway leading to Marat’s office, she suddenly found herself in the presence of Catherine Evrard--she continued to call herself by that name, although afterwards it appeared that she had been married to Marat. Catherine was surprised at the strange visitor, who, with a firm and melodious voice, inquired for the citizen Marat and desired to see him. With great attention Catherine scanned the young woman, who was dressed with great modesty and looked like a lady from the provinces, and demanded the object of her visit, and as Charlotte either refused to give her that information or failed to impress her favorably, she declined to admit her to Marat’s room, who, she said, was just taking a bath and could not be seen. At this moment Marat’s voice was heard from a room whose door was not tightly closed, and he told Catherine to admit the young stranger. He thought it was the young woman who had written to him, and who had announced her visit for that evening. Thus invited, Charlotte entered the room, much against the wish of Catherine. It was a small and dark room. A bath-tub stood in the centre, and Marat was taking a bath, covered up to the neck, except his right arm and shoulder, for he was in the act of writing an editorial for his newspaper. A board had been placed across the tub, and in this way a table had been formed to hold his manuscript. As she stepped up to him he began to ask her concerning the important news from Normandy she had promised in her letter. He also inquired about the Girondists who had gone there, and wanted to know what they were doing. She told him. “It is all right,” he said, while marking down their names. “Within a week they will all be guillotined.” If anything had been needed to confirm her resolution and to stir her up to speedy action, it was this announcement. She quickly drew the dagger from her bosom and plunged it into Marat’s breast up to the handle. This thrust, aimed from above, and executed with wonderful force and firmness, pierced the lungs, and severed the main arteries, from which a stream of blood rushed forth.
“Ah, this to me, my dear friend?” exclaimed the wounded man. It was all he could say. A moment later he was dead.
The assassination of Marat created a rage, a frenzy among the lowest classes of the population of Paris which it is impossible to describe. That the courageous young woman who had slain the demon of blood was not torn to pieces is a wonder. Charlotte, in thinking of the fate which might befall her after her task was performed, had not forgotten the possibility or even probability of falling a victim to the fury of the people, but even this terrible prospect did not deter her. She received what may be called a fair trial and she had the benefit of an official defender. Since she did not deny the act of assassination and readily admitted that it was an act of premeditation and careful preparation, any painstaking investigation might have been deemed unnecessary but for the hope which the Terrorists entertained, of connecting the Girondist party, and especially the Girondists assembled at Caen, with her crime,--a hope in which they were utterly disappointed. She was therefore arraigned before the Revolutionary Tribunal and subjected to a rigorous examination as to her accomplices.
“Who filled your mind with so much hatred for Marat?” asked the judge.
“I did not need the hatred of others,” she replied; “my own was sufficient.”
“But somebody must have instigated you to commit this deed?”
“We do but poorly what others tell us to do.”
“What did you hate him for?”
“For the enormity of his crimes.”
“What do you mean by his crimes?”
“His crimes against France and humanity.”
“Why did you kill him?”
“In order to give back peace to my country.”
“Do you believe you have killed all the Marats of France?”
“His death may frighten the others.”
“Do you regret and repent your deed?”
“I rejoice that it was successful.”
Only once during this trial her heart failed her. It was when Catherine Evrard, Marat’s mistress, took the stand to testify against her, and in a voice choked with tears told the story of her visit to Marat’s house. Looking at the woman who through her deed had lost him whom she loved, the tears burst from her own eyes, and she exclaimed: “No more! No more! I implore you. It is I who killed him; I do not deny it!”
Again she was deeply moved when the dagger with which she killed Marat was presented to her. “Do you recognize this instrument?” She turned away her face and exclaimed: “I do! I do!” The public prosecutor called attention to the fact that she had plunged the dagger into the breast of her victim from above, that it was a difficult thrust, and that she must have practised it before she acquired so much skill.
She listened attentively to what he said, and exclaimed with unfeigned indignation, “Shame! Shame! The wretch wants to brand me as an assassin!”
Her words caused a sensation. The audience and even the judges were struck with admiration, so much energy and patriotic devotion were expressed in her answers. She stood before them like an antique heroine, not trembling for her life, but provoking death and inviting it by her justification of the crime she had committed to save her country. The trial resulted in her conviction. She received her sentence of death without showing any emotion; was it not the crown of immortality to which she had aspired? Her official defender, Chauveau Lagarde,--the same who three months later so nobly defended Marie Antoinette,--might have saved her by pleading insanity, but he comprehended her nobility of soul and would not offend her by such a plea. “She refuses to be defended,” he said; “she pleads guilty and is beyond the fear of death!” After the death sentence had been pronounced, she stepped up to her defender, and with a smile of angelic sweetness thanked him for his noble-minded, graceful and kind defence. “You understood me,” she said, “and your esteem consoles me for the contempt of the ignorant masses.”
One thing remarkable about this trial was the respect, not to say the admiration, with which this young woman, who had killed their idol, was looked upon by the spectators. They seemed to feel instinctively that a divine inspiration, a heaven-born principle of humanity and patriotism, had prompted her to commit an act which human law condemned and punished, but which posterity would forgive, if not glorify.
From the very hour of her conviction, she became a national heroine. The wild Maratists clamored against her, but there were thousands and thousands even among the Revolutionists who sympathized with her and admired her. Brutus ceased to be the patron saint of patriotic assassins; his place in the hearts of enemies of tyranny and despotism was taken by the young girl who had so heroically thrown life and beauty away to redeem her country. Poets and authors immediately celebrated her in song and prose; it may be said that her immortality commenced even before her beautiful head fell under the knife of the guillotine. She died on the evening of the nineteenth of July.
When she was taken to the place of execution in the costume of the condemned victims--a scarlet shirt--the sun was setting. His last rays sent a farewell greeting to the young heroine, who seemed to be bathed in a halo of glory, as she ascended the steps of the scaffold with firm step and serene countenance. A shudder passed through the multitude as her head fell into the basket.
She was not insane; she was an exalted, enthusiastic dreamer, who looked upon her crime as an act of justice demanded by the necessities of the times,--an act inspired by a higher Power which had guided her in her design and helped her in its execution. Thinking of Jeanne d’Arc, who had saved France and immortalized herself by her self-sacrificing devotion, she felt convinced that God often chooses woman as his instrument for interposition in the history of nations. If she deceived herself in the nature of the act by which she hoped to restore the happiness of France and to terminate the era of bloody hecatombs sacrificed to the fury of sanguinary monsters, is it the duty of the historian to judge her severely? Should he not rather, while pointing out the error of her judgment, be willing to bestow on her the laurel-wreath of a patriotic heroine, which has been accorded to her by poets, by her grateful countrymen, and by the whole world?