The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-08-19
THE MARSEILLAISE.
Its True History Done Over Again.

The London Daily NelCS claims that the true
origin of the "Marseillaise" is as follows
zone day in the last week of April, 1892
certain dinner party was given by the Mayor of
Strasburg, Monsieur Dietrich. The great war.
which was to last three-and-twenty years, and
to cost the world millions of men and hundreds
of millions of money, had been proclaimed a
few days before. All hearts in France were
beating with hope or anger, as they are beating
now, and the talk at this eventful banquet
was all of the war and its prospects, as it may be
now. Where, it was asked, is Tyrteus who
will give words to the enthusiasm of the people?'
Their Tyrteus was among them-a young officer
of engineers, thirty-two years of age, called
Rouget de Lisle, musician and poet, as we'll as
soldier. At the close of the evening he went
home agitated and unable to sleep. Taking his
VIOLIN he improvised the first verse and the air
of the noblest national war song that has ever
been written. He worked at it the whole night
long and in the morning he took it, finished to
his friends. The Mayors niece, Madlle Die
trich, to whom he first showed it, instantly sent
for all the guests of the preceding day, and
played it to them. 1t was welcomed with de-
light. Copies were made and circulated among
the military bands of Strasburg, and the ragged
and half-starved troops marched to the frontier
to this music of the new hymn. 1t was called
the Chant de rArmee du Rbin.
Published in little Strasburg paper of
which Dietrich was proprietor, by degrees it
got more widely known. But it had no real
popularity till it was adopted among the troops
of Marseilles, and shouted all the way from that
city to Paris by that grim and ferocious band
of six hundred who knew how to die,' and
were led by Barbaroux. The astonished ears of
the Parisians heard then for the first time, from
the hoarse throats of their fierce visitors the
terrible words, 'Allons enfans de la patrie.
They called it first the 'Hymne des Marseillaise
and subsequently the Marseillaise'
1T is noteworthy that the author was put
into prison and deprived of his military rank for
refusing his adhesion to the changes brought
about by the 10th of August, when these men
u L. lt<1
the Swiss, and shouting his own words. He had
applied the torch to fuel, which, when kindled,
came near consuming himself as well as
the banded kings across the frontier. But
Robespierre fell, and the poet got out of jail,
singing another hymn composed in his cell. 1t
is hardly given, however, to any man to touch
more than once the deepest heart of nation,
and the later songs of Rouget de Lisle are now
forgotten. He rejoined the army, was wounded
at Quiberon IN 1885, and obliged to retire from
military service. At Paris he lived for siX-and-
forty years longer calm and blame
less existence, unmarried fecund in
poetry, music, and memoirs, with no troubles
except to make both ends meet a calm, unam-
bilious man, who had no desire to obtrude him
self. From the successive governments he
got but scant recognition, receiving little till
Louis Philippe, in 1880, gave him pension of
three thousand five hundred francs with the
Cross of the Legion of Honor. And when he
died. in 1886, he did not leave enough behind
him to defray the expenses of his own funeral.
His other works are pretty well forgotten but
the 'MaIseillaise' remains the one expression,
in words and music, of the indignation and
| fury with which France went to war in 1892 of
| the wild hopes and wilder dreams of the Great
| Revolution; and of the noble frenzy with which
a great people rose to assert themselves, and to
| hasten that Reign of Universal Brotherhood aud
Equality the advent of which is yet looked for
by thousands.
| of dreams and ideas for which men might well
| die. But in giving it back to the people, the
| Emperor strips it of its surroundings of barri-
| cades and general overthrow. 1t will be no
more what it has been. Already the Parisians,
who a fortnight ago were singing it all day and
| never wearied OF it. 1t may once more lead the
troops to victory on the Rhine, but it will never
more bear its old power to stir the blood OF
| Frenchmen. Blown about in the trumpets, il
| may be the herald OF great triumphs, but its
! former influence will be gone; and with new
! associations and new memories, it will no more
| serve for the shouts of red-capped republicans
| and the war-cry of maddened students firing
| from the barricades of Paris
'"The very words are out of date. What do
| these lines mean now
"'Que veut cette horde desclaves,
| De traitres, de Rois conjures {?
| There is only one king now against France,
| there are no more slaves and no traitors-as yet.
| In the revival of the song we see its death, for
| though the music will not die the power will be
| gone out of it, and it will henceforth rest on
another basis than its old one of Liberty, Equali-
| ty and Fraternity. For the soldiers of the new
army of the Rhine to sing this song is as if an
| old litany OF a suppressed and glorious worship
were revived TO be sung before a new idol The
'Marseillaise can never be the song of Imperial
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