On April 25, 1792, the Frenchman Claude-Joseph Roger de Lille composed the music and lyrics of La Marseillaise. The song has been the anthem of France since 1795.
It was written by Claude - Joseph Roger de Lille on the night of April 25 to 26, 1792, after Austria declared war on France. The original name of the anthem was “March of the Army of the Rhine“. The song became the rallying cry of the French Revolution and was first heard on the streets of Paris on July 30, 1792, sung by units of the French National Guard arriving from Marseille, hence its name.
The Marseillaise was such a success in the years after the French Revolution that on July 14, 1795, it was declared the national anthem.
It was subsequently banned successively by Napoleon Bonaparte, Louis XVIII, and Napoleon III. It was briefly restored after the July Revolution of 1830, and finally became the national anthem after 1879.
It was revised by Hector Berlioz in 1830. The Marseillaise was established as the anthem of France with the constitutions of 1946 and 1958.
In 1917, after the fall of the tsarist regime, both the Marseillaise and the Internationale were used as national anthems of Russia.
The song was banned by the Vichy regime in France and in the areas occupied by the Third Reich during World War II, and singing it was an act of resistance.
We recall that in 1793, Roger de Lille was imprisoned during the Jacobin Terror and was only released after the counter-revolution in 1795. It is a historical irony that the commander of the Army of the Rhine during the French Revolution was Bavarian by origin.