In the spring of 1792, the deputies declared war against Germany ; the news of this declaration was received in Alsace with indescribable enthusiasm.

In front of the enlistment offices the young people came to register as volunteers, and all felt the need to sing their desire to win in martial stanzas, likely to stimulate their emulation.
They sang well some songs of war of the old monarchy, but these songs were too dull, given the feelings of independence which animated these young men.
This gap was observed particularly in Strasbourg.
And one evening, during a patriotic concert offered to the mayor of the city, Dietrich, several notabilities invited a young engineer officer, Rouget de l'Isle, who had often charmed them with pleasant verses of his composition, to compose that warlike song which the situation demanded and which France expected.
Rouget de l'Isle defended himself at first against these propositions.
He modestly admitted to the assistants that he would not even try to satisfy them,
Knowing in advance that he would be quite below the task that was solicited from him. And all the floods to insist.
An hour later, Rouget de l'Isle takes leave of the company.
Here he paces feverishly the streets of Strasbourg.
He feels himself incapable of the effort he is asked to make, and yet self-love excites his imagination.
The man goes home, puts himself at his table, desperately takes his head in his hands, struggles, but vainly with the inspiration that flees.
He exasperates himself, he cries.
He lays on the paper the first verses that come badly, that limp, which seem to him a bad parody of all that has been done so far.

Finally, furious at the futility of his efforts, Rouget de l'Isle throws his pen and thinks of taking a little rest.
In the middle of the night, he feels awake as if by magic.
A good fairy, an inspector watched over her bed, but the lines of the first stanza and the chorus are miraculously aligned in her rested brain.
Rouget de l'Isle gets up, deeply struck by this mystery.
He runs to his table and writes with a single jet and the first stanza and the chorus of a song, which will become the national song of France.
Let's go children of your Homeland ... Even more singular, and which is well done to trouble the skeptical people, it gives in writing the air that will emphasize the words of the war song of the Army of the Rhine.
An invisible hand forces him to write, a mysterious voice sings through his own.
All the other verses come from themselves or almost, because the efforts made by the young officer to put them up are, so to speak, null and void.
The day has come. Rouget de l'Isle gets dressed, runs for Dietrich.
He begs to call for the same evening, the people who were presented the day before.
He wishes to make them judges of his work.
In the evening, before a brilliant assembly, he sits at the harpsichord and sings the war song of the Rhine Army.
Each stanza unleashes a storm of enthusiasm that grows crescendo.
A shudder shakes the listeners every time that Rouget de l'Isle sings the chorus in a loud voice, which is the admirable complement of each verse.
After the execution of his work.
Rouget de l'Isle sees Dietrich coming towards him, his face streaming with tears.
The mayor of Strasbourg takes the young man in his arms and gives him a hug by predicting immortality in this masterpiece of war songs.

A shiver shook the listeners ...

A few days later, the volunteers of Strasbourg left singing at the top of their voices.

Indeed, never did work have a faster fortune.
A few days later, the volunteers from Strasbourg left singing at the top of their head.
The day of glory has come...
It was on the 10th of August, the day of insurrection during which royal power was suspended, in the person of Louis XVI, that the war song of the Rhine Army received the name of Marseillaise.
The work of Rouget de l'Isle was sung in Marseille before being in Paris.
But the volunteer battalion created by the city of Marseilles had spread it from town to town; this was the reason for this new baptism.
Meanwhile Rouget de l'Isle was fighting in the ranks of the Rhine Army.
When the Republic dethroned the monarchy, the great Carnot was sent to the East as commissioner, to obtain the adhesion of the armies to the change of Government which had just taken place.
Although the army, in general, was in the most favorable dispositions for the new Government, Carnot had trouble with a certain number of officers belonging to the nobility, who refused to take an oath.
Among these men was Rouget de l'Isle.
Carnot had an interview with the author of the Marseillaise: "Will you oblige me," he said to him kindly, to dismiss for reasons of incivism, the author of a song that has led so many volunteers to victory ?
These words excited Rouget de l'Isle.
He hesitated, then he persisted in his refusal. "It's good," said Carnot simply, "the Republic is obliged to separate from you.
Perhaps you will regret your stubbornness one day.
Rouget de l'Isle saluted Carnot and went out.
As he arrived at the door, he heard the Marseillaise sing loudly.
He stopped short; his eyes filled with tears.
Envy took him back to Carnot, but he feared an affront and went out murmuring: "The voice of my child! ... It looks like a reproach.
Some time passed.
Inactive life had become intolerable at Rouget de l'Isle.

Every time he heard the Marseillaise play, he felt contractions in his heart.
So he asked to return to service.
And soon he was seen standing beside General Hoche, whose aide-de-camp he had become.
It was again at the sound of the Marseillaise that he was wounded at Quiberon, fighting against the emigrants, that is to say the French who took up arms against France.
The Empire leaves Rouget de l'Isle in oblivion.
It's all right if the Restoration did not proscribe the author of our immortal song. Misery was waiting for him.
How many people grazed in Paris an old man glabrous, with worn clothes, with a melancholy and proud look, without suspecting that it was there Rouget de l'Isle, the author of the Marseillaise, this song whose mingled accents were a little the secret of many successes.
And the grateful country left the author of the Marseillaise to be hungry!
If some artists and men of letters had not contributed to help him, Rouget de l'Isle would have known the worst days of distress.
Fortunately, after the July Revolution, he was remembered because the Marseillaise had still raised masses and a modest pension was granted to him.
 

It was again with the sounds of the "Marseillaise" that he was wounded in Quiberon.

He died in 1836 in Choisy-le-Roi in a family that was fond of him.
When Rouget de l'Isle was carried to the tomb, a large number of workmen who had been obliged to accompany his coffin, distributed bouquets of immortals to the assistants.
Before the earth freshly stirred, They had a beautiful, a great idea.
Having formed the circle around the pit, they knelt with respect, then, in a voice that was moved, in a voice that seemed to come from far away, they sang the first stanza of the Marseillaise in chorus.
And it was, it is said, a very impressive spectacle whose assistants kept an unforgettable memory.

Alphonse CROZIERE