Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle

Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle (), sometimes spelled de l'Isle or de Lile (10 May 1760 – 26 June 1836), was a French army officer of the French Revolutionary Wars. He is known for writing the words and music of the ''Chant de guerre pour l'armée du Rhin'' in 1792, which would later be known as ''La Marseillaise'' and become the French national anthem.

Early life

Rouget de Lisle was born at Lons-le-Saunier, reputedly on a market day. His parents lived in the neighbouring village of Montaigu. 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).Family Tree Rouget
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In 1784, he was initiated into "Les Frères discrets", a masonic lodge in Charleville, just after being promoted officer.

Career

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.Harry Thurston Peck, Frank Richard Stockton, Nathan Haskell Dole, Julian Hawthorne, Caroline Ticknor: ''The World's Great Masterpieces'' (American Literary Society, 1901)
p. 9577
Rouget de Lisle was cashiered and thrown into prison in 1793, narrowly escaping the guillotine. He was freed during the Thermidorian Reaction and retired to Montague.

La Marseillaise

The song that has immortalized him, "La Marseillaise", was composed at Strasbourg, where Rouget de Lisle was garrisoned in April 1792. 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.''The New York Times Current History: The European War'', Volume 16, 1918
p. 200

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. He returned to public life after the July Revolution and was awarded the Legion of Honour by Louis Philippe I.

Death

Rouget de Lisle died in poverty in Choisy-le-Roi, Val de Marne.Norman Davies: ''Europe: A history'', p. 718. His ashes were transferred from Choisy-le-Roi cemetery to the Invalides on 14 July 1915, during World War I.Tribute to Composer
''The Argus (Australia)'', 16 July 1915, p. 7, at Trove.

References

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Further reading

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Rouget De Lisle, Claude Joseph
1760 births
1836 deaths
18th-century classical composers
18th-century French poets
18th-century French male musicians
18th-century French male writers
19th-century classical composers
19th-century French dramatists and playwrights
19th-century French poets
19th-century French male musicians
Chevaliers of the Légion d'honneur
French Classical-period composers
French Freemasons
French male classical composers
French prisoners and detainees
French Romantic composers
National anthem writers
People from Jura (department)
People of the French Revolution
Prisoners and detainees of France