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IV.

The history of the other great national hymn of the world, the Marseillaise-for these two separate themselves by eminence from all the others-is noticeably and significantly unlike that which has just been examined. Every reader of this little book may not know all the brief history of that marvellous song, which is almost travestied in Lamartine's sentimental melodramatic account of it in the Girondins. It received its name from the men who first made it known in Paris, the ruffian Marseillais. -a horde, some five hundred strong, of the vilest and most brutal of the floating population of a Mediterranean sea-port town, who were summoned to Paris by Barbaroux for the purpose of exciting and assisting at the atrocities of 1792. Headed by the wretch Santerre, they marched into Paris, and through its principal streets, on the 30th of July in that year, a band of swarthy, fierce, travel-soiled desperados, wearing red Phrvi

caps wreathed with green leaves, dragging cannon, and singing as they marched, a song beginning:

แ 'Allons, enfans de la patrie,
Le jour de gloire est arrivé!
Contre nous, de la tyrannie
L'etendard sanglant est levé.
Entendez vous dans ces campaignes

Mugir ces féroces soldats!

Ils viennent jusque dans vos bras

Egorger vos fils et vos compagnes !—

Aux armes, citoyens! formez vos bataillons!

Marchons! qu' un sang impur abreuve nos sillons!"

These inflaming accents were just suited to the intense craving of the morbid appetite created by the revolution; they at once stimulated and gratified, though they could not slake it; and on that day Paris drank in with greedy ears an intoxication from which, in spite of certain seeming intervals of imposed restraint, she has been reeling ever since.

But who had done this? Not a Marseillais, not a sans-culotte, not even a revolutionist. Rouget de Lisle was none of these, but an accomplished officer, an enthusiast for liberty it is true, but no less a champion of justice, and an upholder of constitutional monarchy. He was at Strasbourg early in 1792. One day Dietrich, the mayor of the town, who knew him well, asked him to write a martial song to be sung on the departure of six hundred volunteers who would soon set out to join the army of the Rhine. De Lisle consented, wrote the song that night-the words sometimes coming to him before the music, sometimes the

HARVARD UNIVERSITY

EDA KUHN LOEB MUSIC LIBRARY

CAMBRIDGE 38, MASS.

music before the words-and gave it to Dietrich the next morning. As is not uncommon with authors, he was at first dissatisfied with the fruit of his sudden inspiration, and as he handed the manuscript to the mayor, he said, "Here is what you asked for; but I fear it is not very good." But Dietrich looked, and knew better. They went to the harpsichord with Madame and sang it; they gathered the band of the theatre together and rehearsed it; it was sung in the public square, and excited such enthusiasm that, instead of six hundred volunteers, nine hundred left Strasbourg for the army. This song its author called merely "The War-Song of the Army of the Rhine" (Chant de guerre de l'armée du Rhin). But in the course of a few months it worked its way southwards, and became a favorite with the Marseillais, who carried it to Paris, where the people, knowing nothing of its name, its author, or its original purpose, spoke of it simply as "the Song of the Marseillais," and as the Marseillaise it will be known for ever, and for ever be the rallying cry of France against tyranny.

How widely do the histories of these two hymns differ, and how characteristic is their difference of the two people who have adopted them! The British hymn, like the British constitution, the product of no man and of no time; the origin of its several parts various and uncertain, or seen darkly through the obscurity of the past; its elements the product of different peoples; broached at first in secret, and when brought to light, frowned down as treasonable,

heretical, damnable; but at length openly avowed, and gradually growing into favor; modified, curtailed, added to in important points by various hands, yet remaining vitally untouched; at last accepted because it is no longer prudent to refuse to yield it place; and finally insisted upon as the timehonored palladium of British liberty. The Marseillaise, written to order, and in one night, to meet a sudden, imperative demand: struck out at the white heat of unconscious inspiration, perfect in all its parts, totus, teres, atque rotundus; and in six months adopted. by the people, the army, and the legislature of the whole nation. The air of the one, simple, solid, vigorous, dignified, grand, the music of common sense and fixed determination; the words, though poor enough, mingling trust, and prayer, and self-confidence, and respect for whoever is above us, and a readiness to fight stoutly when God and the law are on our side: the other a war cry, a summons to instant battle, warning, appealing, denouncing, fiercely threatening the vengeance of the Furies; having no inspiration but glory, and invoking no god but liberty; beginning in deliberate enthusiasm, and ending in conscious frenzy.

How different the service too, to which the two songs have been put! The one used always to sustain, to build up, to perpetuate, to express loyalty and faithful endurance; a song of peace and plethoric festivity. The other, the signal of destruction, the warning note of revolution; the song that rises from the field where the red ploughshare turns up petri

fied abuses to the light of heaven and vengeance stalks between the stilts; the howl of famished men, and the shriek of nursing mothers whose breasts are dry. The one at best a tonic, but mostly sedative in its operation, and harmless at any time: the other from the beginning a stimulant, and to be used on great occasions only, and for great objects. The Girondists sang the first four lines of it, as-except one who fell before his judges, struck through the heart with his own dagger-they turned away from the bloody tribunal which had condemned them to death in the name of the liberty they had done so much to gain. At the battle of Jemappes, at the most perilous hour of that long doubtful day, Dumouriez, finding his right wing almost without officers, and giving way before the fire of the Austrian infantry and a threatened charge of the huzzars, put himself at the head of his battalions and began to sing the Marseillaise hymn, then not many months old; the soldiers joined in the song, their courage rallied, they charged and carried all before them. And in August of the next year at the fête of the inauguration of the constitution (always a fête and an inauguration!) when the convention and the delegates from the primary assemblies, including eighty-six doyens-which seems to be French for the oldest inhabitant to represent the eighty-six departments, assembled with a throng of "citizens generally" in the Place de la Bastille at four o'clock in the morning around a great fountain, called the Fountain of the Regeneration, as soon as the first beams of the

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