AMAZING TRUE STORIES OF FEMALE EXECUTIONS
between the first and second ribs, piercing the upper part of the
right lung and aorta, and penetrated the heart, blood gushing
copiously into the bath water.
Having achieved her purpose, the young girl made no attempt
to escape but stood calmly by the window where, attracted by
Marat’s dying screams, she was found by an assistant, Laurent
Bas who, together with Simone and her sister Catherine, had
rushed into the room. Faced with the spectacle of his employer
submerged in a bath of blood, Bas promptly picked up a chair
and knocked Charlotte to the ground; as she attempted to get to
her feet, he felled her again, holding her there until members of
the national guard and a surgeon arrived. The body of the
murdered man was lifted out and placed on a bed. Charlotte,
calm and dignified, her hands tied behind her, was taken to the
Prison de l’Abbaye for interrogation and subsequent trial before
the Revolutionary Council. In court she admitted everything,
calling Marat a monster who had hypnotised the French peasants.
‘I killed one man in order to save a hundred thousand,’ she
proclaimed vehemently. The verdict and sentence were foregone
conclusions, death by the guillotine being the only possible
penalty.
In her cell in the Conciergerie Prison a painter, Hauer, was
working on a sketch of her when, on 17 July 1793, the
executioner Charles-Henri Sanson arrived to prepare and collect
his victim. On entering the room he found her seemingly cool
and entirely composed, sitting on a chair in the middle of the
cell and guarded by a gendarme. As he approached she looked
up and, removing her cap, sat still while he cropped her luxurious
black hair. When he had finished she picked up a lock or two of
the hair and gave some of it to the artist and the rest to the gaoler,
asking that it be given to his wife who had befriended her.
60
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