Their impure blood should water our fields

1792 Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle (1760 - 1836) composed 'La Marseillaise', the French national anthem ...

The French Convention accepted it as the national anthem (decree passed July 14, 1795), but 'La Marseillaise' was banned by Napoleon during the Empire, and by Louis XVIII on the Second Restoration (1815), because of its revolutionary associations.

In the 19th Century, 'La Marseillaise' was widely used in many countries as the anthem of all kinds of radical groups, but during the early 20th Century was generally replaced in this role by 'The Internationale' which itself was originally intended to be sung to the tune of the French revolutionary song. The French anthem is still sung, although today it shocks with its delight in murder: “Let us march, Let us march! That their impure blood should water our fields”.

Ironically, de Lisle was himself a royalist and refused to take the oath of allegiance to the new republican constitution.

Tagged: france, music, radical, history