SHORT STORY: The Friend of the People
Khushi Choudhary (ISB 12)
Khushi, a writer and editor here at BUDDY!, has a very unhealthy obsession with suspense and true crime. She is 100% on board with the rage of writing historical fiction.
This short story, The Friend of The People, is her interpretation of how Jean-Paul Marat (a radical voice in the French Revolution) was assassinated.
Pop to the end of the page to read a short blurb on the French Revolution for context!
The Death of Marat
a 1793 painting by Jacques-Louis David of the murdered French revolutionary leader Jean-Paul Marat
(Google Arts & Culture)
L'Ami du Peuple
(1792-1793)
1 YEAR TO EVENT
"Papa, who is here?"
The men walk in to grab Charlotte's father's arms and move him roughly. He struggles in their hold and says, "Please! She has no one! Her mother, Madeline, passed away from sickness when she was a girl."
Her father slams a fist into one man's jugular, escaping their hold. The other man slams her father into a wall. She hears them shout the words "Girondist" and "Marat" as they leave.
She watches the clock-face, waiting for papa to appear. The next day she picks up the newspaper and it is full of articles on the September Massacres. Tears stream down her face, unabated.
Disbelieving, she talks to the clock-face. It becomes her mother and father — as she sees them in its glass. She becomes the only surviving member of the family.
17 DAYS TO EVENT
The Corday house has a clock above the kitchen stove with a face. The hands at ten minutes to three are eyebrows that slant downward. The clock watches as the still dust, untouched, collects on the beds. The house remains empty.
"Maman," she calls. Charlotte forgets herself, and her arms spread to embrace. She can feel her mother's push.
She hears Madeleine erupt in anger, "I gave you a choice to leave all of this behind! Runaway from the deceit. No Girondins and Jacobins."
Charlotte's hand moves to console, but there is no warmth or skin. She grips the table and starts: "It's the right thing to do. What is one death compared to the millions saved? He laughs at the families who beg for mercy, but he sends them to the guillotine.
The paper he writes is called "The Friend of the People," how can that be his name when he sends them to die? He is against the Girondists! Against us! Marat deserves to die."
Madeleine tuts and says, "do I watch while your head rolls into the basket then? This isn't some fantasy where murder is acceptable, Charlotte!"
"I have a plan!" Charlotte exclaims.
Charlotte hears every strained syllable when her mother says, "No plan can get you out of this murder."
14 DAYS TO EVENT
The scent of medicinal oils seeps into his skin as Charles waits on the polished porch. His head is hung, blinking at his shoes, and he's lost in thought. I want to avenge. I want to be free. I have to get this job.
"Who are you?" Charles lifts his head to meet the eyes of a hideous man.
His skin resembles rotten meat. He stands imposingly — his chest jutted out, and limbs stretched. The white cotton towel is set as a turban on his head, and all hair pulled back tightly to draw attention to the face's irregular sag. Charles sees a frail body matched with a sharpened tongue.
This man doesn't look like a killer. Marat, the skilled politician and speaker, has fizzled away.
"Well?" Marat asks.
"Pardonnez-Moi monsieur, I am here to apply to assist in the job of making L'Ami du Peuple? Your views on the mistreated poor are just." Charles tries to butter him up.
"I require no help. "My verdict is final."
"But someone sent me —"
"Go away!" Marat slams the door.
Charles would have fallen over from the force of the door if his shoe wasn't wedged in the corner, allowing one final comment.
"Your co-leader Robespierre sent me!" Charles was lying. It was Danton, another co-leader of the Jacobins, who wanted Charles to get close to Marat.
"Get out of my house!"
7 DAYS TO EVENT
After a week of cajoling, Marat has agreed Charles should work under him. Marat needs help publishing his newspaper. The Girondins are trying to arrest him.
"I can't believe this is where your Jacobins are hiding you. In the sewers." Charles says as he emits joyful chortles.
He understands he should withhold his laugher. Marat could fire him. However, the latest issue of "The Friend of the People" will remain unwritten. Marat's health is deteriorating further.
"Will you shut your face! I need you to meet someone at Rue Foyatier to acquire information. Try not to do your job abysmally. Don't let them know it is for the paper, or we both will be hiding in the sewers."
FINALLY, THE EVENT
"The reign has only just begun, Charles! The Girondist members executed this week were but a first step."
Charles stands beside the tub. Marat is seated in a medicinal bath, his skin getting better. The newspaper has flourished like their friendship.
Murky, grey water swirls slowly in the tub as Marat shifts to complete his scribbles on the makeshift table. Marat pauses as he looks at Charles.
Charles takes off his wig and is convinced Marat knows that it's over for him and his depraved newspaper.
He pleads for mercy as his palms start to rise. The knife breathes in candle-flame when Charlotte juts it out of her coat.
"It's nothing personal. Just business," Charlotte says.
Skin layers rip and a tortured scream echoes. Charlotte thinks about her father and her mother. Blood and tears coat his face, and red raindrops fall into the bathwater.
Thousands will be saved, and she will have saved them. Charlotte is doing this, not Marat, she is their friend and savior. She will avenge her family. Her hand, with a mind of its own, moves to slash and stab.
He releases a wail and strains to speak. Three gurgling wheezes later, he yells, "Aidez, ma chère Amie!"
Help me, my dear friend, he has said. She yells, "Who helped my parents?"
The lifeless stare never shifts from her face as she says, "I helped the people. I am L'Ami du Peuple."
She runs away as Danton plants fake evidence to frame the housekeeper.
1 DAY AFTER
Charlotte squints at the newspaper under a melting candle. The headline reads, "Jacobin Leader Found Dead" and her lips lift as she reads "Written by Charles Bel."
The newspaper says: "Catherine Evrard to be charged for the murder of Jean-Paul Marat. Evard, a housekeeper, nursed his illness at home. A rusted knife was found in her quarters, and bloody sheets surreptitiously hid under her cot. Authorities consider her the prime suspect..."
The candle wax drips onto her hand, and she hisses. She thinks to herself that her job is done. Danton has covered this up well, and Charlotte has killed Marat by dressing up as Charles Bel.
4 DAYS AFTER
She steps on the plank. Her eyes dart to the side. Danton's head sits in the basket, and she feels vomit rising.
"The Directory sentences Charlotte Corday to be executed for the assassination of the immortalized Jacobin leader Jean-Paul Marat. Georges Jacques Danton and Corday have been working together to kill this man. Maximilien Robespierre is our current leader. He has confirmed, after an intense interrogation of Jean-Paul Marat's housekeeper, Danton and Corday are responsible. Robespierre also confirms that Danton sought vengeance for his executed Girondist wife..."
Charlotte reaches to bite the executioner's hand. He slams his hand down on her back, and her skull cracks on the wood. She gathers saliva in her mouth to spit a wad in his face, and he mutters some choice words.
"You fools, you don't realise your own Maximilien Robespierre ordered Danton to kill Marat so he could rule alone," Charlotte says.
The executioner replies with a knowing smile, "It's nothing personal. Just business."
The September Massacres were a series of killings of prisoners in Paris that occurred from 2–6 September 1792 during the French Revolution. Charlotte Corday held Jean-Paul Marat responsible.
fin.
A sweet, condensed run-down of the French Revolution.
King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, rulers of France, lived luxuriously on France’s money. Their selfish spending (that perpetually increase) left peasants hungry, the government depleted, and France bankrupt. Due to financial tension, France’s three estates warred with each other. The first estate consisted of 130,000 clergy members who conducted religious affairs, paid no taxes, controlled the media, owned 20% of the land. The second estate was the 110,000 nobles who paid no taxes, controlled the military, and owned 20% of the land. The third, and least fortunate, estate was the large population of peasants and workers who paid all taxes and had no privileges. The Third Estate was desperate to change their situation — living without fundamental rights as they shouldered all burdens and harvest was meagre.
The King ordered a meeting of the Estates-General to fix the economy’s condition. The meeting was rigged — the 1st and 2nd estates could veto the 3rd estate in any decision. Seething and victimized, the 3rd estate rebelled to create a new group, The National Assembly, and write a constitution for France. King Louie agreed to listen and merrily proceeded not to do a thing, except unleashing the military on them. Planning a counter-attack, the National Assembly would tear down the Bastille (a fortress used in the 17th-18th century as a state prison) by storming it as a mob and slaughtering everyone.
The revolutionaries were the Jacobins, the Girondins or the Girondists, and the Sans-Culottes. The Jacobins were violent, radical thinkers and war-averse. Associated to the group was Maximilien Robespierre, Georges Danton and Jean-Paul Marat. The Girondins, led by Jacques Pierre Brissot, were all about war — the civil war and war with Austria — and not as powerful as the Jacobins. The Sans-Culottes (meaning no or different pants, ha!) were a small group following the Jacobins.
Marat held many uncompromising, ferocious views on “the denunciation of royal despotism, a defense of the sovereignty of the people, and a sympathy for the poor and downtrodden which he never abandoned” (Biography). He published his journal, Ami du peuple or Friend of the People, that was greatly popular among the lower classes. The authorities who tried to silence him were unable to as he avoided arrest by hiding with help from supporters. Paris voters would elect him to the Convention, and the “concentrated his invective against the Girondin party,” and a brilliant speech to the Convention dissipated any efforts by the Girondins to arrest him. The overwhelming support by the public caused the Convention to unseat and the arrest of the Girondin leaders on June 2, 1793.
Enter Charlotte Corday, “an idealistic girl of Girondin sympathies came to Paris to seek revenge and to rid her country of the monster Marat.” Marat was ailed by chronic skin disease and an unkempt appearance, and so was ceaselessly taking medicinal baths. July 13, 1973: under the guise of bringing him information against the Girondins, she stabbed him to death in the tub. Inspiring ‘The Death of Marat’ painting that is based on his murder.
Works Cited
https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/marat-assassinated/7QGjl9R141MCBw?hl=en-GB
https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/napoleons-rise-fall-illustrated-timeline/