killed one man to save 100,000,” Charlotte Corday allegedly claimed during her trial for the grisly assassination of the revolutionary Jean-Paul Marat. Disillusioned with the radical and violent direction that Marat’s radical Montagnard faction was taking, Corday tricked herself into the leader’s household on 13 July 1793. She surprised Marat as he worked in his bathtub and plunged a knife into his chest, killing him instantly. Her act of violence – since immortalised in Jacques-Louis David’s painting, ()– is one of the most infamous of the period; it sent shockwaves through