Charlotte Corday's Birthday Special: Like a Slap to the Face!
"One Death to Save A Hundred Thousand Lives, but why'd he have to be one of them?"
Commentary:
All that king and queen beheading just to put an EMPEROR on the throne through a voting system. You love to see it.
Napoleon's relationship with Corsica and France is almost as complicated as Corsica's was to the rest of Europe. Some thought it of Italy. Others thought it of France. Many agreed it was less than either.
Napoleon's political stance during his teenage years leaned towards the nationalistic with him writing a number of essays about French oppression (under Genoa, Corsica had more autonomy) and the need for Corsican independence, a sharp contrast to his more pragmatic father, Carlo.
The French Revolution not only provided more military opportunities to the young soldier, but opened him up to various political and philosophical influences as the revolutionaries schemed and quarreled among themselves as to what should be done with their country.
I'd like to think that regardless of what they thought of him, any version of Napoleon as a Servant would be crudely appreciative of anyone from his era, seeing them as little assistants who helped give him a chance of a lifetime.
Corday's political affiliation of this time was of the Girondinis, a more moderate pro-revolutionary faction who were opposed to the more radical groups who advocated for extreme enforcement of the revolution to prevent a backslide.
The assassination of Marat by Corday is thought to have been a critical factor in the stacked trial and extermination of the Girondinis (only a few months after Corday's own death), but it must be kept in mind that they were already highly unpopular thanks to Marat's writings being backed and promoted by their various rival groups such as the Montagnards.
Though how it accelerated the eventual downfall of "The Mountain" (as in, emboldening Robespierre to commit further atrocities to perceived enemies within and without) and the rise of Napoleon is disputable, Corday's murder of Marat caused the public to scrutinize the common woman – the average citizen rather than scions of nobility – as figures who would care about French politics deeply enough to martyr themselves for it.
Nothing good came from this in the short term, as the immediate reaction to this notion was to ban women's political clubs and to enact harsher punishment towards female "counter-revolutionaries".
French feminists of the moment rebuked Corday's attack, claiming that it would incite direct reprisal of some form against their movement. Exposed to their jeers and criticisms during her last four days of life, Charlotte shrugged and noted, "As I was truly calm I suffered from the shouts of a few women. But to save your country means not noticing what it costs."
Though Corday exited the world of the living with as much sanguinity and poise as she could, she suffered a posthumous indignity when one of her guillotine's carpenters by the name of Legros picked up her decapitated head and slapped it across the cheek. Some onlookers believed that her disembodied visage reacted in shock to the assault; at the very least, Charles-Henri Sanson was horrified at the insult. Legros was jailed for three months for this affront.
Charlotte Corday died on July 17. Just 10 days before her 25th Birthday.
Charles-Henri Sanson remained a largely neutral figure throughout the French Revolution. While he beheaded royals and supposed traitors to the revolution, he also did the same to the architects of the September Massacres such as Danton and Robespierre. Perhaps, in another time and place, Marat could've been one of the 2,918 executions Sanson performed.
Sanson would eventually pass on in 1806, long enough to see Napoleon's first reign come into play. It bears mentioning that "The Gentleman of Paris" had never been a big fan of monarchy
Despite the tragic – and arguably idiotic – death of Charles-Henri's son Gabriel, the Sanson legacy outlasted Napoleon's thanks to his other son Henri (the one who actually guillotined Marie Antoinette) and Henri-Clément Sanson, bringing the seven generation dynasty of executioners to a close in 1847.
Although Henri-Cléments would cash in on it immediately after his retirement due to gambling debts, tweaking and supplementing an existing apocryphal memoir of Charles-Henri written by Honoré de Balzac for a lucrative rerelease under a different title. Not as well-known a hustle as how he sold one of the original guillotines to Madame Tussauds, but there you go.
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