THE MARSEILLAISE.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXX, Issue 8, 27 August 1914, Page 4

THE MARSEILLAISE.

"La Marseillaise," the National song of Franco, was composed by a young French officer of artillery named Rouget de Lisle, who was born in 1760 and died in 1836. In 1792, when lie Mas living at Strasbourg, famine reigned in the city. Rouget de Lisle was a frequent visitor at the house of an Alsatian patriot, Dietrich, Mayor of Strasbourg. The story, as related, 1 goes on to say that the hospitableMayor, reduced to offering his friend some army bread and a slice of ham, produced his last bottle of wine and said:—"There will soon be a patriotic celebration at Strasbourg; may these last drops inspire de Lisle with one ol those hymns which convey to the people the intoxication from whence the\ proceed." De Lisle /went home to his lonely room, sought for inspiration, "now in ins patriotic soul, now in his harpsichord; sometimes composing the music before the words; sometimes the words before the air." He fell asleep and did not wake up until next day. An interesting account of what followed says that it was with some difficulty de Lisle recalled the words and music as if from a dream, for he had set down nothing on the previous night. Then he went to the Dietrichs, and the eldest daughter played the accompaniment while de Lisle sang. "At the first stanza," says Lamartine, ', "all faces turned pale: at the second (tears ran down every cheek; and at the last all the madness of enthusiasm broke forth. Dietrich, his wife, his (laughters, and the young officer fell weeping into each other's arms. The hymn of the country Was found. It was destined, alas! to be also the hymn of terror. A few mouths afterwards the unfortunate Dietrich went to the scaffold to the sound of the very, notes which had their origin on bis own hearth, in the heart of his friend and in the voices o? his children." It was the hymn of the French Revolution, and soon after its composition it was played by the public orchestras and Hew throughout the country. Marseilles adopted it to be sung at the be-

ginning and close of every session of its clubs. The Marseillaise, when they marched to Paris in July, 1792, having been invited thither by Madame Roland, sang this soup; en route, and when they entered Paris, and so it came to be known as "La Marseillaise." But the irony of fate. Rouget de Lisle was a Royalist, was imprisoned during the Reign of Terror, and released by the Revolution of Thermidor.