Kirk Was Never a Marat—and That Is Why They Murdered Him

In Jacques-Louis David’s famous painting The Death of Marat at the Louvre, we see the revolutionary leader Jean-Paul Marat lying in his bathtub, pen in hand, writing his final letter. To those unfamiliar with his story, the image may seem oddly quiet, even intimate. However, Marat was a profoundly ill man whose radical politics ended violently on the eve of the French Revolution. His assassin, Charlotte Corday—an aristocrat disillusioned with the revolution’s descent into bloodshed—killed him, believing it would save France from chaos. As she awaited her own execution, she proclaimed, “I killed one man to save 100,000.”

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