Entendez-vous, dans les campagnes,
Mugir ces feroces soldats? 
Ils viennent jusque dans nos bras
Egorger nos fils, nos compagnes! 
Aux armes, citoyens! 
Formez vos bataillons! 
Marchons!

I listened to those boys’ voices, and something of the history of the song put its spell upon me then.  There was the passion of old heroism in it, of old and bloody deeds, with the wild wars of revolution and lust for liberty.  Rouget de Lisle wrote it one night at Strasburg, when he was drunk, says the legend.  But it was not the drunkenness of wine which inspired his soul.  It was the drunkenness of that year 1792, when the desire of liberty made Frenchmen mad. . .  The men of Marseilles came singing it into Paris.  The Parisians heard and caught up the strains.  It marched to the victories of the Republican armies.  “We fought one against ten,” wrote a French general, “but La Marseillaise was on our side.”  “Send us,” wrote another general, “ten thousand men and one copy of La Marseillaise, and I will answer for victory.”

A hundred years and more have passed since then, but the tune has not gone stale.  Again and again in the Orders of the Day one read that “the company went into action singing La Marseillaise, Lieutenant X was still singing when, after carrying the enemy’s position, he was shot in the throat”; or “the Chasseurs Alpins climbed the ridge to the song of La Marseillaise.”

The spirit of it runs through the narrative of a French infantryman who described an action in the Argonne, where his regiment held a village heavily attacked by the enemy.  There was street-fighting of the fiercest kind, and hand-to-hand combats in the houses and even in the cellars.  “Blood,” he wrote, “ran in the gutters like water on a rainy day.”  The French soldiers were being hard pressed and reserves came with their new regiments in the nick of time.

“Suddenly the Marseillaise rang out while the bugles of the three regiments sounded the charge.  From where we stood by the fire of burning houses we could see the action very clearly, and never again shall I see anything more fantastic than those thousands of red legs charging in close ranks.  The grey legs began to tremble (they do not love the bayonet), and the Marseillaise continued with the bugles, while bur guns vomited without a pause.  Our infantry had closed with the enemy.  Not a shot now, but cold steel...  Suddenly the charge ceased its bugle-notes.  They sounded instead the call to the flag.  Au drapeau!  Our flag was captured!  Instinctively we ceased fire, thunderstruck.  Then very loud and strong the Marseillaise rang out above the music of the bugles, calling Au drapeau again and again.”

“We saw the awful melee, the struggle to the death with that song above all the shouting and the shrieks...  You who imagine you know La Marseillaise because you have heard it played at prize distributions must acknowledge your error.  In order to know it you must have heard it as I have tried to tell you, when blood is flowing and the flag of France is in danger.”