Correspondent in Caen,
The Norman elected officials are up in arms and declare themselves ready to engage in a standoff with the State. While the Ministry of Culture announced Wednesday evening its intention to break the sale by which the Normandy Region, the Calvados Department and the City of Caen, had acquired last Sunday the “political testamentary letter” of Charlotte Corday, who had murdered the Jacobin revolutionary Jean-Paul Marat in his bathtub in 1793, Hervé Morin now says he is ready “to attack the State” in court.
Joined by Le Figaro, the president of the Normandy Region says he is indeed “very angry” and well “decided not to let it go” by the Ministry of Culture, which finally decided, three days after an auction transparent, to include this three-page document in the National Archives. A “claim” procedure should indeed be filed by the State services with the auctioneer of the sale. For the former Minister of Defence, “it’s quite incredible that a manuscript, which has never interested the Ministry of Culture, since it has regularly been put up for sale, the last time it was even in 2022, today being a claimed document…” And the centrist president of the Normandy region exclaimed: “Decidedly, facing the Girondins, Robespierre continues to reign in certain Parisian minds!”
This Friday morning, in the presence of Jean-Léonce Dupont, the president of the Department of Calvados, and Joël Bruneau, the mayor of Caen, Hervé Morin should therefore repeat his “indignation” with force during a joint press conference scheduled for the Abbaye aux Dames, which now houses the headquarters of the Region. Locally, in Normandy, this “pre-emption” by the State of Charlotte Corday’s letter is experienced as an affront. Originally from the Pays d’Auge, Marie Anne Charlotte de Corday d’Armont is considered a “child of the country”. The acquisition by telephone on Sunday June 11, for the sum of 215,000 euros during an auction held in Versailles, of his political testament had been welcomed by all the local media. “The idea is that this document remains attached to the region of origin of Charlotte Corday, who was born in the Orne and grew up in Caen”, still welcomed together, at the beginning of the week, the elected officials Normans.
Questioned by AFP, the Osenat auction house, where the sale took place last Sunday, indicated today that the document would remain in sequestration in its vaults while waiting to receive the official request for a “claim” from the ministry. of the culture. This would be based on an article of the Heritage Code, which stipulates that “public archives are imprescriptible” and that the State can therefore initiate “action for nullity or claim” to recover them if necessary.
Composed of three pages, this manuscript, entitled Address to French friends of law and peace, was written by Charlotte Corday just before she assassinated the president of the Club des Jacobins in her bathtub on July 13, 1793. Hidden under her corsage at the time of his arrest, he was finally withdrawn from the accusation file because… not going in the direction of the revolutionary court of the time! Since then, this political manifesto, which has already gone through several auction rooms for 200 years, has been the property of several collectors.
