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The Convention accepted it as the French national anthem in a decree passed July 14, 1795. La Marseillaise was banned by Napoleon during the Empire, and by Louis XVIII on the Second Restoration (1815), because of its revolutionary associations. Authorized after the July Revolution of 1830, it was again banned by Napoleon III and not reinstated until 1879.

Product of the Revolution, the French national anthem survived two Empires, the Restoration and the Occupation before  finally being officialized by the Republic in 1946.  Claude-Joseph Rouget de Lisle, captain in the Engineering corps  garrisoned in Strasbourg, composed this air during the night of 24 to 25 April 1792 at the behest of the city's mayor, Baron de Dietrich. The song, entitled Chant de Guerre pour l'Armée du Rhin, was taken up throughout the country. A general in the Egypt Corps, François Mireur, in Marseille for the purpose of concluding plans for the joint march by the Montpellier and Marseille volunteers, had it printed under the title Chant de Guerre pour les Armées aux Frontières. The Marseille troops adopted it as a marching song; they were singing it as they entered Paris on 30 July 1792, and the Parisians dubbed it the Marseillaise.

Under the First Republic, the anthem was one of the civic songs that contributed to the success of the Revolution. Both Empires, the Restoration and the Second Republic passed over it in favor of occasional songs. Not until the Third Republic was the Marseillaise restored to its rank of national anthem on all occasions at which military bands were called upon to play an official air. The French State retained it and the Free French Government once more gave it pride of place alongside Le Chant des Partisans, customarily sung as the anthem. At last the Marseillaise was made the official national anthem by the constitutions of the Fourth and Fifth Republics (Article 2 of the Constitution of 4 October 1958). In 1974, President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing had it modified in accordance with earlier scores and slowed the tempo. Since 1981 however, the anthem has once again been performed according to the scores and tempo in use until 1974.

French Patriotic Songs


samedi, 21 février 2004