Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle
| Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle | |
|---|---|
Rouget de Lisle sings la Marseillaise for the first time painted by Isidore Pils (1813–1875)
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| Born |
10 May 1760 Lons-le-Saunier, France |
| Died |
26 June 1836 (aged 76) Choisy-le-Roi, Seine-et-Oise |
| Allegiance |
 France |
| Service/branch | French Army |
| Years of service | 1784–1793 |
| Rank | Captain |
| Awards | Chevalier. Légion d'honneur (1831) |
| Other work | Chant de guerre pour l'armée du Rhin La Marseillaise |
Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle (French: [klod ʒɔzɛf ʁuʒɛ d(ə) lil]), 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.
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).
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. 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.
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, 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 after a public dinner. 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.
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