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29 Messidor de l'an I : Charlotte is guillotined
July 17, 1793 at 6.30 pm, place de la Révolution : Charlotte is guillotined... She was turning 25.
"As Charlotte stood smiling a kindly farewell to the people, the sun suddenly pierced through a rift in the storm-clouds and flooded her face
and figure with the glory of it setting rays. Framed in this halo of crimson light, Charlotte moved to the spot indicated by Sanson, and laid her head under the knife ...*"
After the decapitation, "Legros, the brutal assistant, help up the head to the gaze of the spectators and, undeterred by the smile of content on the beautiful dead face, struck it repeatedly with his open hands...*" *From Lamartine's history of the Girondists.
Charles-Henri Sanson, her executioner, in the
Mémoires de Sanson,
described Charlotte as a young and beautiful thoughtful woman, whose calm and control inspired him respect.
François Legros, assistant executioner, was sentenced to three months in prison.
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La Place de la Révolution, nowadays Place de la Concorde
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Charlotte's body was taken to the Hospital of Charity to prove her virginity, the Montagnards accusers thinking that a woman could not have done so out of love for a man.
She was declared "virgo intacta" (documents would have disappeared).
The body was then transferred to the Madeleine Cemetery while the
skull would have been kept by Charles-Henri Sanson,
given to Alexandre-Charles Rousselin Corbeau de Saint Albin, secretary of Danton then acquired by Bonaparte's family. By now, It would be in
possession of Prince Radziwill's descendants. The Cemetary disused in 1794, the skeletal remains were transferred to the Catacombs of Paris.
Marat's body was exposed in the amphitheater of Saint-Côme covered with a sheet while the Société des Cordeliers raised an "altar to the heart of Marat."
On July 15 at 6 pm, an impressive procession walked from the Rue des Cordeliers, went to the French Theater, then the Eglise des Cordeliers,
where Marat was buried in the monastery garden. An immense crowd wandered during the whole night, at the light of torches for "Friend of the people" the "Martyr for freedom".
November 25, 1794
Marat is transferred to the
Panthéon
February 8, 1795, reversal of politic strengths :
Marat coffin was removed from the Panthéon
and transferred to a next door cemetary,
Saint Etienne
du Mont on the montagne Saint
Geneviève.
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About the terrible guillotine during the Reign of Terror
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... >>> Charlotte Corday next :
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2
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3
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4
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5
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Jean-Paul
MARAT's destiny
