The Winning Bid: Charlotte Corday’s Letter Fetches 270,900 Euros in Normandy Auction

The letter from Charlotte Corday was sold for 270,900 euros during the sale of the Osenat house. The final price greatly exceeded the estimates of the auctioneer, who set its value between 80,000 and 100,000 euros. The Normandy region won the auction and will soon recover the historical letter.

Charlotte Corday was a prominent figure of the French Revolution who assassinated Jean-Paul Marat, a radical activist, on July 13, 1793. She was born on July 27, 1768, in Normandy and executed on July 17, 1793, in Paris. Corday was a member of an aristocratic family and a descendant of the French dramatist Pierre Corneille on her mother’s side. She was a supporter of the French Revolution and sympathized with the Girondins, a moderate faction of French revolutionaries in opposition to the Jacobins. Corday believed that Marat and his Jacobin allies were corrupting the soul of the Revolution and that his death would be the death of violence throughout the nation.

Her letter explaining her gesture, found on her just after the assassination of Marat, was sold for 215,000 euros at auction. The significance of her letter lies in the fact that it changed the way women were viewed during the Revolution in terms of personal agency and having the courage of one’s convictions.