Charlotte Corday (July 27, 1768 - July 17, 1793) was a figure of the French Revolution. In 1793, she was executed under the guillotine for the assassination of Jacobin leader Jean-Paul Marat. Her decision to kill Marat was stimulated not only by her revulsion at the September Massacres, for which she held Marat responsible, but by her fear of an all-out civil war. She believed that Marat was threatening the Republic, and that his death would end violence throughout the nation. She also believed that King Louis XVI should not have been executed. She went to Marat's home on the evening of July 13th, claiming to have knowledge of a planned Girondist uprising in Caen. Marat admitted her. At the time, he conducted most of his affairs from a bathtub because of a debilitating skin condition. He wrote down the names of the Girondists that she gave to him, then she pulled out the knife and plunged it into his chest, piercing his lung, aorta and left ventricle, and died almost instantly. At her trial, when Corday testified that she had carried out the assassination alone, saying, "I killed one man to save 100,000." After her decapitation, Jacobin leaders had her body autopsied immediately after her death to see if she was a virgin. They believed there was a man sharing her bed and the assassination plans. To their dismay, she was found to be virgo intacta (a virgin). She was 24 years old.