Exploring the depths of cultural identity, today’s podcast takes us on a journey to France, the nation that has the distinction of being home to the first official national anthem, "La Marseillaise." This episode intricately weaves together the history of the French Revolution, the life of Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle, and the creation of a song that became a powerful symbol of liberty and revolution. As we traverse through France's rich history, we’ll dive into the profound themes of patriotism and the complexities of colonialism that shaped the nation’s identity. With a witty twist, we’ll also uncover the culinary delights that have emerged from French heritage, because let’s be honest—great food is a revolution in its own right. Join us as we peel back the layers of history, music, and culture, revealing how a single song can encapsulate the spirit of an entire nation and inspire generations.

1. https://www.latribune.fr/economie/france/la-marseillaise-un-hymne-a-l-histoire-tourmentee-524332.html 
2. https://www.catacombes.paris.fr/en/history/site-history 
3. https://www.alliancefranco-italienne.com/curiosita-la-marseillaise-composee-par-un-italien/ 
4. https://www.authentic-europe.com/travel-tips/10-interesting-and-fun-facts-about-france 
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6. Wolf, John B. (1968). Louis XIV: A Profile. ISBN 978-1-3490-1470-5. OL 32357699W
7. https://archive.org/details/peasantsintofren0000webe/page/n635/mode/2up 
8. https://www.frenchempire.net/biographies/mireur/ 
9. https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Routledge_Dictionary_of_Cultural_Ref/x-FNTmUwfpEC?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PA147&printsec=frontcover 
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11. https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Seven_Years_War/1icUjZag24YC?hl=en 
12. https://www.ilfattoquotidiano.it/2016/01/10/la-marsigliese-e-il-mistero-attorno-alla-sua-paternita/2361661/ 
13.  William Apthorp (1879) Hector Berlioz; Selections from His Letters, and Aesthetic, Humorous, and Satirical Writings, Henry Holt, New York
14.  L. J. de Bekker (1909) Stokes' Encyclopedia of Music and Musicians, Frederick Stokes, New York
15. https://volcano.oregonstate.edu/chaine-des-puys 
16.  Williams, Chad L. (2010). Torchbearers of Democracy: African American Soldiers in the World War I Era. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. pp. 165–166. ISBN 9780807833940. OCLC 681746132.
17. https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/738232.pdf 
18. https://www.yna.co.kr/view/AKR20190218002100081 
19. https://www.classicalconnect.com/piano_music/schumann/faschingsschwank_aus_wien/1044 
20. https://www.classicfm.com/lifestyle/travel/marseillaise/ 
21. https://www.lions.com.au/news/388921/origins-of-our-club-song 
22. https://www.chabad.org/therebbe/article_cdo/aid/2465274/jewish/The-Spiritual-French-Revolution-A-Miracle-in-Our-Times-5752-1992.htm#footnote18a2465274 
23. https://www.thetimes.com/travel/destinations/europe-travel/france/paris/cannes-star-denounces-racist-marseillaise-at-festival-opening-tsqpc6792rn 
24. https://www.bbc.com/news/av/magazine-34844105 
25. https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/serge-gainsbourgs-version-french-national-anthem/ 
26. https://web.archive.org/web/20120205191114/http://kennedycenter.com/calendar/index.cfm?fuseaction=composition&composition_id=2373 
27. https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_New_International_Encyclop%C3%A6dia/Marseillaise 
28. https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-34843770 
29. https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/HNS19151026.2.9 
30. https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/1537604 
31. https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_World_s_Great_Masterpieces/JxiGAAAAIAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=Claude_Joseph_Rouget_de_Lisle&pg=PA9577&printsec=frontcover 
32. https://www.siv.archives-nationales.culture.gouv.fr/siv/rechercheconsultation/consultation/pog/consultationPogN3.action?pogId=FRAN_POG_05&nopId=p-3kpqyvcx6-1qhjh1voi1436 
33. https://www.lons-jura.fr/decouvrir/lons-le-saunier-capitale-du-jura/ville-natale-de-rouget-de-lisle/ 
34. https://www.cheminsdememoire.gouv.fr/fr/rouget-de-lisle 
35. https://www2.assemblee-nationale.fr/decouvrir-l-assemblee/histoire/dossier-historique-la-marseillaise/claude-joseph-rouget-de-lisle
36. https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k205581f/f288 
37. https://cultea.fr/saviez-vous-que-la-marseillaise-fut-lhymne-national-russe.html 
38. https://www.telerama.fr/television/la-marseillaise-a-travers-le-monde,136600.php 
39. https://www.elysee.fr/la-presidence/la-marseillaise-de-rouget-de-lisle 
40. https://www.nouvelobs.com/societe/20140514.OBS7071/les-paroles-de-la-marseillaise-n-ont-absolument-rien-de-raciste.html 
41. https://www.universalis.fr/encyclopedie/marseillaise-la/ 
42. https://holocaustmusic.ort.org/resistance-and-exile/french-resistance/anthems-for-france/ 

Foreign.

Hello, and welcome to the Anthems Podcast. I'm Patrick, and I'm here to tell you the story of a song that helps to tell the story of a nation.

This time we're driving, which means taking a ferry to get to England and then taking the Channel Tunnel, which I just learned is essentially a ferry that is shaped like a train if you want to take your car across the English Channel. I'm not wildly interested in that thing though, because we're going to a place with much cooler tunnels, albeit ones that are decidedly more macabre.

So a catacomb, actually, but not the biggest one in the world, because that is in Ukraine. This place was built to alleviate cemetery overcrowding and currently houses the remains of more than 6 million people.

But it does mean that if you've heard about that, then you know I'm talking about France, officially the French Republic. Today we are in the country that receives the most international visitors per year because again, my friends kids were curious about their heritage.

Sometimes countries get picked for the same reason twice in a row, but that does nothing to diminish the choice. And France is an excellent way to wrap up the third year of the show, but not third full year.

There is, of course, the rich history of the nation and the incredible story it tells. But 35 countries in, I'm pretty sure all of them have interesting stories. There's all the science that comes out of the place.

For instance, pasteurization has saved countless lives by eliminating pathogens in food. They've got great food too. And the wine's not bad, although I actually know very little about wine. But that's all good. Great stuff all around.

But being the country that has the first official national anthem makes for an even better excuse to tell you about La Marseillaise. So back to French food, because yes, of course I have some favorites here, but they're not complicated, ridiculous French food preparation things.

I like provincial food. In no particular order, they are beef bourguignon, ratatouille, and French onion soup.

So a stew, stewed vegetables in oil and then all of the onions you can find. Stewed. All dishes with origins in the lives of peasants. And through essentially just paying very close attention to cooking.

You have transformed them into. Into something that makes me smile when I get to eat it.

You've got to take time to cook like that, and you'll need to take your time with this song too, because I did say that some of these things are sort of long, and this time it really is.

Yeah. SA Beyond.

Sam.

Sumudrop SA.

My initial reaction was thinking, hey, I know that tune. The Beatles stole the beginning of it basically, note for note for the start of all you need is love.

And to be clear, in my opinion, it's just fine to do stuff like that with music, as long as you're not pretending otherwise. I can tell for sure that this one is a march at least, and it is sung in French. I really enjoy it because this one is dripping with emotion at least.

This performance is great. Just like I enjoy street art and that includes high quality tags and graffiti too.

Yep, especially street art that uses layers of the space and evokes an emotional response. Shortly after I started writing this episode, I ran into the work of a guy named Gonzalo Barrando on Instagram.

He is a Spanish artist living and working in Spain and Italy, and I am not affiliated with the guy in any way, but I love his work. One particular piece of the very kind of cityscape street art I most love is called Passage, and it is in Boulogne sur Mer in France.

In a series of six consecutive stairways and sections of road. You get an ornate gate as you approach that kind of morphs a little bit, but and introduces you into different levels of space. It's actually.

It's a really cool piece. Where do we have to go if we want to see this thing in person?

France is not tough for me to locate because in American public schools they do teach us stuff about Europe and we had to memorize where all the countries were. So it gets into our news cycle a bit here too. Western world and etc.

But if we're locating it from the last country I covered, you just go southeast over the bottom part of England, which I'm sure has a name, but I don't know what it is. It may be easier for you to find it from Spain because the Iberian Peninsula hangs off the south of France.

Or if Italy really were a tall boot, go west from the part that would be directly under your knee.

The southern border is with Spain and The enclaved country of Andorra, with the west coast being the Bay of Biscay, the English Channel and depending on how oceans are bounded, because I am actually not sure some of the Celtic Sea. The north and eastern neighbors are from north to south. Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, Switzerland and Italy.

The non Spanish southern border is mostly the Mediterranean Sea, except for the tiny nation of Monaco.

The nearly 69 million people living in metropolitan France, which is the part of the country that is geographically in Europe, live in the largest country in in the European Union at 543,941 square kilometers. We'll talk about overseas France in a moment.

A lot of variety and a lot of beautiful places to explore here. For our geology diversion today, we're going to talk about something that in geological terms is kind of an infant.

The massive central highland region of France covers about 15% of the country. And the Champ de Puy is a north to south chain of volcanic domes that begin to form as early as 95,000 years ago.

The most recent eruptions were just 5 to 6,000 years ago. And geologically, it's basically a moment, really.

There isn't too much for me to say about the place to get you excited, unless you're a volcanism nerd. But one of you might be out there.

I will say that it is a recently finished place and that the range is one of the best looks at plate tectonics that's happening in pretty close to real time.

A consequence of that is the overseas territories that account for about 18% of the land area and give the country the second largest exclusive economic zone on the planet, whatever that means. I'm not going to list the 13 of them, so please look them up on your own.

But I will say that some of them are definitely going to get covered here someday. For now, we have a timeline to get into again and again.

The subtext of episodes on this show has been the downfall of colonialism, so I thought in this one we would get to talk a great deal about France's part in colonialism actually happening.

However, the conquest and subjugation of foreign people by the French isn't a heavy feature of this particular part of the story, since hence they got to have a proper revolution against the king in ways that the colonized people were never allowed to do. Another thing that I don't have the bandwidth to get into, but someday I may win the lottery and start doing this full time.

So instead we're going to begin with a sketch of the rule of Louis xiv, a man known as the Sun King. He was a humble guy.

Much of what he did made the revolution that gave us the song of interest possible, and he managed to stay in Powers for 72 years. So his reign bears at least a little discussion.

And not to belabor the point without getting into it too much, but a lot of what he did was financed by colonial efforts that were going on in the background. The French Revolution and the historical run up to it is one of the things that I have a ton of information about in my head already.

It's one of my favorite revolutions. In fact, I've read at least seven or eight books on it and listened to several podcasts.

So this episode has been a series of exercises in less is more, looking at the detailed historical landscape that's already sitting in my head and weaving a thread through it that tells the story in a novel method, at least part of the story. But enough of all that metanarrative stuff, we've got a song to learn about.

After that, Louis set about doing what he could to decimate the feudal system and subjugate the nobility to consolidate and concentrate royal power in Paris. And then he moved his base of operations to Versailles.

That stuff is something that will get discussed in part at another time, maybe because it's way more important in the story of the United States and way ahead of where we are in explaining things here, as in it's past Louis the 15th and nearly into the reign of the very last king of France, Louis xvi.

Her occupation was sadly limited to having eight kids in 18th century Europe. Our writer grew up in the small town of Montagu, where he began playing the violin at a young age.

One must assume that he got lessons because YouTube didn't exist and fretless instruments are extremely difficult to learn.

He is said to have demonstrated some talent as a poet, but his father shipped him off to the military school in Paris for six years because that was what you did with your kids when you wanted them to move up socially, especially if you were not born as an aristocrat and Cloud was not. He would have to go through the ranks to become an officer in the infantry or the cavalry.

Beyond decades of financial mismanagement and decades of ancien regime, macroeconomic policy failures and big, stupid, unproductive wars, there was also the influence of Enlightenment thinkers. This got into the heads of the rich people too, and they demanded social change such as parliamentary monarchy and institutional rationalization.

In the rise of someone that I mention here on a pretty regular basis because he is a wrecking ball, our old pal Napoleon Bonaparte here we will refer to as Napoleon the First. We'll talk a little bit more about him in a bit, but first we are going to return to the life of Rouget de Lisle.

That guy was the head of the House of Austria and would end up being the very last Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. And he was also the nephew of Louis XVI's wife, Marie Antoinette.

Four days after the vote to go to war, Cloud was asked by Mayor Dietrich to write a rallying song and produced the war song for the army of the Rhine. The next day, the mayor played it and sung it for an assembly of friends and soldiers, and it was very well received.

His wife made dozens of copies of it by hand and passed them out. This is, of course, the song that became La Marseillaise when it went to Paris with the volunteer battalions.

But before that point, it had already left Rouget's timeline and created its own story. So we're going to pick that up shortly while we follow Claude.

Mayor Dietrich and possibly others were executed, but de Lisle was spared and reinstated as aide de camp to a Northern army general.

But he did not do well as a writer for hire and instead ended up selling food to the army during the Napoleonic Wars. But he was hostile enough to the Empire that he wrote an angry letter to Napoleon chastising him for his behavior. It was never replied to.

There is A bit of lingering controversy about whether or not the music is completely original, but I'm going to completely ignore it because there is no convincing evidence that someone else composed it.

Under Napoleon, it was not officially banned, but it definitely was during the Restoration of the Monarchy, which, given that I said Louis XVI was the last king of France and not Louis xv, I don't consider the Restoration much of a monarchy.

Musically speaking, this is probably pretty close to the most iconic of all of the anthems, but I'll reserve my judgment for at least another 30 or 40 episodes. It is straightforwardly a European style march in the key of C major with a 44 and a range of about an octave and a half.

It has jumps that are usually a fifth or an entire octave to give it bold feeling and has suggestions of opera, keeps it moving. It's a dynamic piece.

Again, we have a song that was written to be sung by a group of soldiers on the move, so there is a strong emphasis on downbeats and the very singable 1:5,4 progression we see in many anthems.

It's a prototypical revolutionary composition that manages to be defiant, martial and bright while remaining sort of expected and urgent at the same time.

It's not the most complicated piece of music in the world, but Rouget was apparently only a medium talent in musical composition, and music doesn't have to be complicated to be great. Lyrically speaking, this one is kind of a lot in amount of song written and in the material covered.

There are at least no clarifications to be made about the translation here, since French and English are mostly cooperative. But if you don't know French, then you might be surprised by the English extremely violent nature of the lyrics that you're about.

To hear in La Marseillaise. Back in episode 18 I talked about Mexico and their anthem is definitely more violent than this one.

But the version that people sing includes almost none of that. As not the case in France.

We would do well to recall the circumstances of the writing for these things, though since Rouget was a seasoned captain creating a rallying song in a patriotic fervor on the eve of war, that he didn't intend to be the national anthem of France. We'll hear more about that after the reading.

La Marseillaise is seven verses, since I will be including the so called children's verse, and we'll put a pin in that. The official version is just verse one and the refrain.

Here I will read verse one refrain and then on through the rest of the verses and I'll indicate where the refrain is. It's after everyone. I might forget to say that the anthem is originally in French.

Arise, children of the fatherland, the day of glory has arrived against us of tyranny the blood stained standard is raised. Do you hear in the countryside those bloodthirsty soldiers a Blair.

They're coming right into your arms to tear the throats of your sons and your wives. The refrain to arms, citizens, form up your battalions. Let's march, let's march. Let blood impure water our furrows.

What do they want, this horde of slaves, of traitors, of conjured kings, for whom these ignoble chains, these long prepared irons? Frenchmen, for us. Ah, what outrage. What outbursts it must arouse. It's us they dare to conspire, to return to the old slavery. Refrain.

What these foreign cohorts what would make the law in our homes? What these mercenary phalanxes would strike down our proud warriors?

Great God, with chained hands under the yoke we'd yield ourselves Vile despots would become the masters of our destinies. Refrain. Tremble, tyrants, and ye traitors. The disgrace of all parties. Tremble, ye parasidal schemes will finally receive their prize.

Everyone is a soldier to fight you. If our young heroes fall, the earth will produce new ones ready to fight against you. Refrain.

Frenchmen, as magnanimous warriors, endure or hold back your blows. Spare these pitiful victims that regret arming against us but these bloodthirsty despots.

But these accomplices of Bouill, all these tigers, who without mercy would tear their mother's breast apart. Refrain. Sacred love of the fatherland, lead, support our avenging arms. Liberty, liberty. Beloved, fight with your defenders under our flags.

May victory hurry to your virile accents so that your dying enemies see your triumph in our glory. Refrain the children's verse we will start our career when the elders are no more. We will find their dust there and the trace of their virtues.

Much less jealous to survive them than to share their coffin. We will have the sublime pride to avenge them or follow them. Didn't you hear the refrain a final time?

Okay, I'm getting away from the line by line analysis in most cases because I don't think it translates well into an audio medium and isn't conducive to a good narrative. So I'm trending towards broad stroke explanation, and it continues to be that way. But where to start with this? Huh?

Context always matters with anthems, and the context here was the imminent war with establishment European royal powers that were terrified that revolution would come to their centers of power and knock on their door too. That means propaganda everywhere in Strasbourg, specifically pro French propaganda designed to inspire men to battle and to patriotism.

There are two main inspirations for the lyrics outside Delisle's seemingly genuine patriotic fervor for the country whose military he'd been in for years. The first is hearsay, and I'm not sure I can trust Rouge's relatives remembrance of what happened.

What I can be quite sure of, though, was that the lyrics were heavily inspired by the posters in Strasbourg, specifically one that was put up by the Society of Friends of the Constitution. It states, to arm citizens, the standard of war is unfurled, the signal is given. We must fight, win or die. To arms, citizens, let us march.

It's practically an anthem already, and you heard the lyrics I just read. So these posters are not the entirety of the piece, obviously, but this one is a concise statement of the thesis for the entire thing.

Plus, when you've got the words framed in the context of war posters in a city preparing to fight, it makes the song make a bunch more sense. There are very strong echoes of Freemasonry in this song as well. Well, yes, La Marseillaise is not a Masonic anthem by any stretch of the word.

This guy was a Mason. It was written by him at the request of another Masons.

So There might not be anything specific in the writing, but once you see the Enlightenment and the masonry creep into 18th century French thinking, it's hard to unsee this stuff, at least for me. This is one of the anthems that are very clear that people are going to be killed.

It's not a unique thing, but it's right there in the first few lines of this thing, so I have to at least acknowledge it. Again, we encounter a writer that got the assignment and understood what he was running with.

The task this time was to rally the troops for war with Bohemia and Hungary. Another one of the things I'll eventually address, maybe depending on which countries it affects and when.

The difference in writing for something explicitly as an anthem versus something that was written for another reason that became an anthem is another topic that's too big for just part of an episode and will eventually be addressed by me in a different medium. Another day here though, we hear of soldiers raising a blood stained standard, that's flag.

While bloodthirsty soldiers come to tear out the throats of the women and children. But the battalions march and the impure blood will flow.

The line in the refrain about impure blood is often criticized as a racist term and it does sound like one to my 21st century ears.

But the sources mostly disagree about that, with some saying that Rouget is really referring to the commoners like himself that are fighting alongside and under him because they're not blue blooded aristocrats. Of course, some sources also say that he's clearly talking about the non French in a racist way.

And still other sources say that it's a reference to non patriotic French people. But despite reading a lot about it, I've got no definite claim for you.

I'm leaning towards the casual racism that definitely still exists in the form of sayings, or the it's always the way it's been attitude. I mean, la Marseilles does have a distinctively xenophobic ring to it, given the context of when it was made and what it was made for.

To be fair, that is due in large part to the actual existential threat that was represented by the armies bearing down on them. So context matters again and again. Reading through the thing again though, I kind of feel like Delisle could be quoting memes.

If this was written today, he was writing fast and if he did it in one night, the slogan altering for rhyming purposes lets him do get a lot of ground.

I think that it somehow makes this work very well and helps us understand that despite a lot of criticism Time spent banned and several attempts at replacing it. Claude's writing stays as the national anthem of France, but not all of it was written by him.

There are a bunch of additional verses of La Marseilles that we're not going to talk about at all because they are not part of the official version of the anthem, except for one, which is the so called children's verse. It was the very last one that I read out before.

It was performed by first in an opera called the Offering of Liberty and was part of a religious scene based on the French anthem. Given the very different and generationally forward looking tone of this verse, it's mostly agreed that it was meant to be recited by a child.

It fits well with La Marseillaise if it's considered as an anthem and not just a marching song, because looking forward to when the young are not young anymore is an idea that a lot of anthems explore. With that, we are nearly at the end of another iteration of the national anthem story.

I think that I've almost figured out how to talk about these things, or at least I'm finally starting to understand things better. Or possibly my previous knowledge of French history was much more useful here than I thought.

Regardless, we got a slightly different but more clearly illustrated than some have been story, maybe with La Merciers and I got to mispronounce a bunch of words and names from continental Europe. This time on to the credits. The writing, recording and production for the show are done by me and I wrote and played the theme music.

The music was used by me with my permission. Unless otherwise noted, the anthems I play here are free to play because most anthems are.

My sources are in the show notes and they live@theanthemspodcast.com I can be found on Facebook and WhatsApp as the Anthems podcast. I post about the show and the rare anthem relevant news story, but mostly I'm depending on word of mouth for this getting into ears.

That means that I'm asking you to help me by using the hashtag anthemspod.

It would be cool if you shared this content and maybe it will assist the people and the government in France in coming to terms with the colonial past that we hear so often about.

Maybe you have again been temporarily trapped in a position that you're not really a fan of at your day job, and in order to alleviate the boredom, you ambush people with a series of facts that you learned from this very episode. Or maybe you just listen to the show on the way to work once or twice a month.

Either one of those things has you labeled as pretty awesome by this podcaster. I will see you somewhere else next month.

Sam.