Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle | |
---|---|
Born | 10 May 1760 Lons-le-Saunier, France |
Died | 26 June 1836 76) Choisy-le-Roi, Seine-et-Oise, France | (aged
Allegiance | France |
Service/ | French Army |
Years of service | 1784–1793 |
Rank | Captain |
Awards | Chevalier. Legion of Honour (1831) [1] [2] |
Other work | Chant de guerre pour l'armée du Rhin, " La Marseillaise " |
Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle [lower-alpha 1] (French: [klodʒozɛfʁuʒɛd(ə)lil] ; 10 May 1760 – 26 June 1836) was a French army officer of the French Revolutionary Wars. Isle is known for writing the words and music of the Chant de guerre pour l'armée du Rhin, which would later be known as La Marseillaise and become the French national anthem. [4]
Rouget de Lisle was born at Lons-le-Saunier, reputedly on a market day. His parents lived in the neighbouring village of Montaigu. [5] A plaque was placed at the precise spot of his birth and a statue erected in the town's center in 1882. He was the eldest son of Claude Ignace Rouget (5 April 1735 – 6 August 1792) at Orgelet and Jeanne Madeleine Gaillande (2 July 1734 – 20 March 1811). [6]
In 1784, he was initiated into "Les Frères discrets", a masonic lodge in Charleville, just after being promoted officer. [7]
He enlisted into the army as an engineer and attained the rank of captain. A royalist like his father, he refused to take the oath of allegiance to the new constitution. [1] Rouget de Lisle was cashiered and thrown into prison in 1793, narrowly escaping the guillotine. [4] He was freed during the Thermidorian Reaction and retired to Montague. [1]
The song that has immortalized him, "La Marseillaise", was composed at Strasbourg, where Rouget de Lisle was garrisoned in April 1792. However, another composition with the same tune [8] was composed 11 years before by the Italian composer Giovan Battista Viotti at the court of Marie Antoinette. France had just declared war on Austria, and the mayor of Strasbourg and worshipful master of the local masonic lodge, baron Philippe-Frédéric de Dietrich, held a dinner for the officers of the garrison, at which he lamented that France had no national anthem. Rouget de Lisle returned to his quarters and wrote the words in a fit of patriotic excitement. The piece was at first called Chant de guerre pour l'armée du Rhin ("War Song for the Army of the Rhine") and only received its name of Marseillaise from its adoption by the Provençal volunteers whom Barbaroux introduced into Paris and who were prominent in the storming of the Tuileries Palace on 10 August 1792. [4] [2]
After the war, Rouget de Lisle wrote a few other songs of the same kind as the "Marseillaise", and in 1825 he published Chants français (French Songs) in which he set to music fifty poems by various authors. His Essais en vers et en prose (Essays in Verse and Prose, 1797) contains the Marseillaise; a prose tale Adelaide et Monville of the sentimental kind; and some occasional poems. [4] He returned to public life after the July Revolution and was awarded the Legion of Honour by Louis Philippe I. [2]
Rouget de Lisle died in poverty in Choisy-le-Roi, Val de Marne. [9] His mortal remains were transferred from Choisy-le-Roi cemetery to the Invalides on 14 July 1915, during World War I. [9] [10] [11]
"La Marseillaise" is the national anthem of France. The song was written in 1792 by Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle in Strasbourg after the declaration of war by France against Austria, and was originally titled "Chant de guerre pour l'Armée du Rhin".
Nicolas, Count Luckner was a German officer in French service who rose to become a Marshal of France.
The French Revolutionary Wars began on 20 April 1792 when the French Legislative Assembly declared war on Austria. This launched the War of the First Coalition.
Giovanni Battista Viotti was an Italian violinist whose virtuosity was famed and whose work as a composer featured a prominent violin and an appealing lyrical tunefulness. He was also a director of French and Italian opera companies in Paris and London. He personally knew Joseph Haydn and Ludwig van Beethoven.
Lons-le-Saunier is a commune and capital of the Jura Department, eastern France.
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Events from the year 1836 in France.
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Suzanne Anne de Dietrich was a French Protestant theologian known for her work in the ecumenical movement.
François Mireur was a French general who is notable for having sung the "War Song for the Army of the Rhine", later known as La Marseillaise, in 1792 when he volunteered for the newly created republican army. He later served under Napoleon Bonaparte and was killed in Egypt in 1798.
Le Chant des Girondins was the national anthem of the French Second Republic, written for the drama Le Chevalier de Maison-Rouge by the writer Alexandre Dumas with Auguste Maquet. The lines of the refrain were borrowed from "Roland à Roncevaux", a song written in Strasbourg by Claude-Joseph Rouget de Lisle, the author of La Marseillaise. The music is by conductor-composer Alphonse Varney.
Events from the year 1792 in France.
Baron Philippe Friedrich Dietrich was a French scholar and politician. He was most well known as the first mayor of Strasbourg who encouraged Rouget de l'Isle to write various patriotic songs, including the song which became known as "La Marseillaise", first performed in his living room; he was also known as a scientist, author of a mine survey and the development blast furnaces in France, distinguished geologist and chemist, and member of the Academy of Sciences. As mayor of Strasbourg, he accelerated revolutionary reforms throughout the region.
Delisle or De Lisle may refer to:
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