Which radical journalist was stabbed to death in his bath by Charlotte Corday in 1793?

Jean-Paul Marat was the radical journalist stabbed to death in his bath by Charlotte Corday in 1793.

Marat edited L’Ami du peuple (“The Friend of the People”), a newspaper that attacked royalists and political moderates while championing the Revolution’s most militant causes. His influence made him a leading—and deeply hated—voice of the radical Jacobins.

On 13 July 1793, Corday, a sympathiser of the rival Girondins, gained access to Marat while he was taking a medicinal bath. Marat spent much of his time in the bath because of a painful skin condition. Corday accused him of endangering France and fatally stabbed him in the chest. She was arrested immediately and guillotined four days later.

The killing became one of the Revolution’s most famous episodes, especially through Jacques-Louis David’s painting The Death of Marat. A common mix-up is to identify Corday as a Jacobin: she opposed Marat and associated with the more moderate Girondin camp.