1792 On the night of April 25th, during the French Revolution, Dietrich, the mayor of Strasbourg, suddenly glanced at Rouge, the young captain of the fortress army sitting next to him and asked him if he could write a battle song for the Rhine Army, which will leave for the former enemy tomorrow. Rouge is a humble ordinary person. He never considers himself a great composer. His poems have never been published and several of his operas have been rejected. He only knows that his impromptu poems are well written.
In the revolutionary atmosphere, people's emotions become more and more fanatical. It was long after midnight when the guests left the mayor's residence. On that night, he used all his enthusiasm, and I'm afraid it was providence that made him write this song. When he finished, he even fell to the ground and danced excitedly. What he didn't know was that after that, he never wrote a commendable work, and this night finally became his own swan song.
On April 25th, the day of declaration of war that made Strasbourg so excited was over. Actually, April 26th has already started. Night hangs over thousands of families; However, the night is just an illusion, because the city is still very excited. However, after the first performance of La Marseillaise, the mayor and his wife felt very general, and their evaluation was only "the society is very satisfied."
Today, we will find this statement surprisingly cold. It is understandable to just express friendly impression and lukewarm approval, because the premiere of La Marseillaise didn't really declare its power. "La Marseillaise" is not a song for a tenor with a pleasant voice, nor is it a solo created to be interspersed between romance and Italian aria in a petty-bourgeois salon. This is a song full of emotion, rhythm and militancy. "Citizens, raise your hands." This is a call to a large group of people and the masses. The real band accompaniment of this song is clanging weapons, powerful trumpets and marching teams. Not for the indifferent and comfortable audience, but for the same actors and fighters. It is not suitable for a single soprano or tenor to sing, but for thousands of people to sing. This is a model March, a victory song, a mourning song and an ode to the motherland. The national anthem of all the people. Lu Ge's song was born of passion, and only passion can give it inspiring power. This song did not arouse repercussions, its lyrics and melody did not go deep into the soul of the nation to cause magical songs, the army was not familiar with their victorious March, and the revolution was not familiar with her eternal hymn.
Even if he created this miracle overnight, Ruger's achievement seems to be only a short-lived success, and this song is just an event outside Paris, and then it will be forgotten. However, the inner strength of a work will not be hidden or imprisoned for a long time. A work of art can be forgotten, banned and buried by time, but something full of vitality always beats something that can only exist for a short time.
On June 22nd, in Marseille, the other end of France, the Friends of the Constitutional Club held a banquet to bid farewell to the volunteers. Sitting at a long table, 500 young people with fresh blood and brand-new national guard uniforms sang this song; At the moment, their emotions are as passionate as when they were in Strasbourg on April 25, but they are even hotter, more impulsive and more passionate because of the southern temperament of the Masai people, and they are not as blindly full of confidence to win as when they just declared war, because the French revolutionary army is in danger.
On July 30th, guided by this flag and this song, Marseille Camp crossed the suburbs and entered Paris. Thousands of people stood by the roadside to give them a grand welcome. The 500 people in Sang Men seemed to be singing this song alone, marching with neat steps over and over again, and all the people listened with bated breath. What hymn did the Masai sing? So beautiful and inspiring! This is accompanied by the rapid drums, and the song "Citizens, Raise Your Arms" is so shocking! After two or three hours, this song can be heard in the streets and alleys of Paris.
So the song spread like an avalanche, and the process of victory was unstoppable. This song was sung at banquets, in theaters and clubs, and even later in church, after the thanksgiving hymn was sung, and it quickly replaced the thanksgiving hymn. A month or two later, La Marseillaise became a song of the people and the whole army. France and Xavier, the first French military minister, saw the inspiring power of this unparalleled national war song with his insight. He urgently ordered that100000 songs be printed and distributed to the whole army. In two or three nights, the spread of Song of the Unknown surpassed all the works of Moliere, Racine and Voltaire. There is no grand gathering that does not end with singing "La Marseillaise", and there is no moment before the battle. The team does not sing this free battle song and goes into battle. In Jumapu and Nelwan, the players sang this song in unison and lined up for a decisive charge. Enemy generals who only rely on the old method of giving soldiers two copies of soju to boost their morale saw thousands of people singing battle songs at the same time, and the weak revolutionary army also sang battle songs at the same time, just like the sonorous waves hitting their own teams. They were shocked that nothing could compete with this "terrible hymn", and finally the whole line was defeated.
At that time, Lu Re, the captain of this unknown engineering unit, was solemnly sketching fortifications in a small garrison in Xu Ninggen. Maybe he has forgotten the "Battle Hymn of the Rhine Army" he wrote on the night of April 26th 1792. When he read in the newspaper that an ode and a war song conquered Paris like a hurricane, he dared not think about every word and beat of the Marseillaise full of confidence to win, but about the miracle that happened to him that night. This is the cruel irony of fate. "La Marseillaise" resounded through the sky, but it did not make such a person, the person who created it, stand out. Nobody in France cares about Captain Claude de Lyle. The greatest honor a song can get belongs to this song, and it never benefits its author. His name was not printed on the lyrics, and he was completely ignored in those glorious moments. He had no resentment.
Only history can invent this kind of revolutionary hymn of genius, but the most ruthless thing in history is that the author is no longer a revolutionary; On the contrary, no one has ever used his immortal songs to push the revolution forward like him, and now he is trying his best to stop it. When Marseilles and the people of Paris sang his songs and rushed into Tuileries Palace to overthrow the king, Rouge was tired of the revolution. He refused to swear allegiance to the revolution, preferring to resign rather than serve the jacobin Party. The "precious freedom" sung in his songs is not empty talk to this honest and frank man: he hates tyrants who cross national borders and wear crowns on their heads, and he also hates new dictators and tyrants in the National Assembly.
When his friends, the godfather of La Marseillaise, the mayor Dietrich and General Luckney (La Marseillaise was originally dedicated to him), and the original audience of La Marseillaise that night-officers and nobles-were all dragged to the guillotine, he publicly vented his dissatisfaction with the welfare committee, and soon a strange thing happened. The revolutionary poet was arrested and imprisoned as a counter-revolutionary, and he was tried. Only because of the hot month coup, with the overthrow of robespierre and the opening of the prison gate, the French Revolution was able to avoid the shame of giving the author of immortal revolutionary songs to the "national razor".
If Rouge had really been executed at that time, he would have died heroically, instead of being as poor as he was later. Because the unfortunate rouge has spent thousands of days in the world for more than 40 years, but only one night in his life has he really possessed genius and creativity that does not belong to him. He was expelled from the army and his pension was revoked; His poems, operas and articles cannot be published or performed. Fate doesn't forgive this amateur author who broke into the ranks of immortals without authorization. The little man worked in various small businesses that were not always clean and struggled all his life.
That cruel chance made Lu Ge a god and genius for three hours, and then threw him back to his humble position contemptuously, which hopelessly poisoned his character and made him grumpy. He quarreled with all the powerful people, complained to them, wrote several violent and rude letters to Bonaparte who wanted to help him, and publicly and proudly declared that he had voted against the referendum. His business got him involved in something disgraceful, and even he was sent to the hot debt prison in St. Patrick's for an unpaid bill of exchange. He is not welcome anywhere, creditors chase him for debts, and the police keep watching him. Finally, he hid somewhere in this province, from where he seemed to hear the news about the fate of his immortal songs from an isolated and forgotten grave.
In his lifetime, he heard the Marseillaise attack European countries with invincible troops. Later, when he heard that Napoleon became emperor, he thought it was too revolutionary and ordered it to be deleted from all programs, so that the descendants of Bourbon dynasty completely banned the song. A generation later, the revolution broke out in July 1830, and his poems and melodies came back to life in the barricade of Paris. King Louis Philippe gave him a small pension because he was a poet, which surprised him. People still remember him, the man who disappeared and was forgotten. He thought it was like a dream, but it was just a vague memory.
1836, he finally died in Rierova, Shuwazi, at the age of 76. At this time, no one knows who he is and no one can say his name. Another generation passed, until the "La Marseillaise" became the national anthem of the world war, and the battle song was played again on various fronts in France. The little captain's body was buried in the Invalides in the seventh district of Paris, France, in the same place as the body of another little lieutenant Napoleon. In this way, the extremely unknown author of an immortal famous song was finally buried in the honor cemetery of his disappointed motherland, although only for one night as a unique poet.