Assassination of Marat

A doctor, journalist and French politician, Jean-Paul Marat (1743–1793) played a leading role in the French Revolution thanks to the influence of his newspaper *L’Ami du peuple*. Frequently accused of inciting violence, he was one of the main instigators of the September Massacres.
Suffering from a very painful form of herpes, Marat was forced to confine himself to his home. He wrote and delivered his speeches to the Convention from his bathtub, where he took long baths in sulphurous water, his head wrapped in a handkerchief soaked in vinegar to relieve his migraine headaches. It was there, on 13 July 1793, that a young, fanatical royalist, Charlotte Corday, seeing Marat as a bloodthirsty tyrant, murdered him with a single stab.
His death turned Marat into a martyr of the Revolution and enabled the most radical Jacobins to justify the ensuing Reign of Terror.
Tried by the Revolutionary Tribunal, Charlotte Corday was guillotined four days after her crime.