Jul 14th, 2009 at 9:20 am
Bastille Day
A little “La Marseillaise” for your Bastille Day:
Patrice Higonnet’s book Sister Republics: The Origin of French and American Republicanism is recommended for a smart take on the Franco-American relationship.
32 Responses to “Bastille Day”
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July 14th, 2009 at 9:44 am
National anthem rituals creep me out. Especially when Roberto Alagna is doing it.
July 14th, 2009 at 9:50 am
Without a doubt, the world’s best national anthem.
July 14th, 2009 at 9:55 am
I think the Marselleisse is a cultural milestone for the West as it denotes the birth of modern nationalism. I find particularly interesting the confluence of liberty (which at the time stood as liberty against the tyranny of kings) and love of nation. The French stopped being subjects of a king and became citizens of a nation.
July 14th, 2009 at 10:01 am
Whenever I hear this, all I can think of is Casablanca. I’m not sure what this says about me.
July 14th, 2009 at 10:05 am
Did you actually read that book? Or is it just on your shelf “signaling” that you are an intelligent contemporary affairs blogger with an interest in current scholarship on the historical roots of our international relationships?
July 14th, 2009 at 10:17 am
Thank you so much! My mother is from France and it was such a treat to watch this video and listen to it.
My mom sings this sometimes.
This will make any wingnut’s head explode but, when I hear La Marsellaise I feel the same pride for France that I feel for this country.
I have a dual citizenship after all…
July 14th, 2009 at 10:17 am
It is a pretty great tune. Here’s Schumann putting part of it to use (with Fischer-Dieskau, of course)
July 14th, 2009 at 10:19 am
Helps if I actually include the Fischer-Dieskau
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CF7kGWJlje0
July 14th, 2009 at 10:19 am
Allons enfants de la Patrie,
Le jour de gloire est arrivé !
(Although the song is more about the events leading up to the Battle of Valmy than the storming of the Bastille several years earlier.)
July 14th, 2009 at 10:21 am
Context makes this perhaps the best version.
July 14th, 2009 at 10:26 am
The Marseillaise is deeply disturbing, like a premonition of 200 years of nightmares to come.
July 14th, 2009 at 10:30 am
Jesus Christ, Kervick, it’s a marching song for soldiers who were about to defend their country from a foreign invader. No different from the “their blood shall wash out their foul footsteps’ pollution” verse in the Star Spangled Banner.
July 14th, 2009 at 10:35 am
If I am not mistaken, it’s a song inspired by a war created by Brissot’s efforts to export the domestic problems of the French revolution.
July 14th, 2009 at 10:36 am
Given that I’m reading a whole bunch of books about the French Revolution, it feels weirdly deja vu that today is Bastille Day. However, it is one hell of an anthem; lots more going on there than in the Star-Spangled Banner in terms of a whole theory of democracy, nationalism, and republicanism.
I have always loved the Casablanca version, and personally, it’s the “aux armes, citoyens!” that gets me.
July 14th, 2009 at 10:40 am
How conveniently we overlook in our history the crucial fact that the defeat of Gen. Cornwallis at Yorktown (essentially ending the revolutionary war with Britain) was probably not doable without the French land forces of led by General Comte de Rochambeau and the presence of the French fleet under Admiral Comte de Grasse in Chesapeake Bay. The French government (King) was also the major funder and arms supplier to the colonies for a large part of the war of independence.
Rochambeau forced the Brits to surrender to Washington in recognition of our long struggle, and also to humiliate Cornwalis. Cornwalis got ’sick’ on the day of the formal surrender and send a subordinate to the event. He was miraculously ‘better’ the next day, however.
So, here’s to the French nation and people, near our Independence Day and on the anniversary of the French revolution.
July 14th, 2009 at 10:46 am
@matt, @Jack123: You are correct! It is the best version.
I wish I had an onglet frites maintenant! Liberte, egalite, fraternite!
July 14th, 2009 at 10:49 am
The best version as far as I know is sung by Edith Piaf.
July 14th, 2009 at 10:51 am
No different from the “their blood shall wash out their foul footsteps’ pollution”
Yeah, that line is creepy as well.
But far be it from me to throw cold water on the patriotic parades.
So, let us gorge on the still-beating hearts of our genetically inferior enemies, raise the bloody panties of our violated virgin daughters, amputate the genitals of the aristocrats and feed them to our loyal patriotic dogs, hang the capitalists’ entrails from the branches of our pure native forests, and then throw the Jews down well!
Vive the Fatherland!
July 14th, 2009 at 10:58 am
I am shocked, shocked! To find that people think La Marselleise is the best anthem.
When I was a kid, I didn’t mind that the Ruskylanders won every other gold medal, because I like their anthem so much. Here is funky version that would not have flown in the old days.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OV0YPP7a0A4&feature=related
July 14th, 2009 at 10:59 am
My Bastille Day youtube pick is Johnny Hallyday singing the Carmagnole: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muMtrCCl1vU
July 14th, 2009 at 11:00 am
Oh, anytime you want to denounce bloodthirsty nationalism in general I’m with you 100% of the way. No fair singling out the Frogs, is all I’m saying.
July 14th, 2009 at 11:10 am
I like this version better.
July 14th, 2009 at 11:46 am
It was once a tradition at the annual Valentine’s Day showing of Casablanca at the Harvard Square Theater, for the audience to stand up and sing the Marselleise along with the film. I wonder if this is still done.
July 14th, 2009 at 11:54 am
Not sure why everyone prefers the Casablanca version to Grande Illusion. (Long clip, but very good. Skip to 9:15 for just the song.)
July 14th, 2009 at 12:09 pm
-We’ll have to wait. If only we hadn’t missed that train at Budapest.
-But you insisted on standing till they finished their National Anthem.
-You must show respect. If I knew it was going to last 20 minutes.
-It’s my contention that the Hungarian Rhapsody is not their National Anthem.
-We were the only two standing.
-That’s true.
(Caldecott and Charters in “The Lady Vanishes”)
July 14th, 2009 at 12:37 pm
Happy Bastille Day Everyone!!!
Best National Anthem: South Africa (No Contest)
Second Best National Anthem: France
Third Best National Anthem: Great Britain
Fourth Best National Anthem: Soviet Union
July 14th, 2009 at 3:35 pm
Where’s the love for Deutschland uber alles?
Am I the only one who loves that song despite its disturbing past?
July 14th, 2009 at 4:04 pm
Well, it also had a more honorable past (before the Krauts stole the tune) as the hymn to the Austrian emperor written by no less than Haydn and used in by him one of his greatest quartets.
July 14th, 2009 at 7:02 pm
I’ve heard “This Land is Your Land” proposed as a replacement national anthem for the USA. It’d be a big improvement.
Reasons:
- it’s easier to sing, and much catchier
- it celebrates both individual freedom and universal inclusiveness rather than the glories of war
- it does not include the phrase “no refuge could save the hireling and slave from the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave”
One downside is that we’d be losing the current anthem’s perpetual reminder that wars of choice are a bad idea. “Oh say can you see” is a perpetual reminder of the blowback from the American invasion British North America, a hymn of thanks to God that the British fleet which sacked Washington DC did not also destroy Baltimore.
July 15th, 2009 at 1:33 am
What would the appropriate policy response to the widespread British abduction of American navy personel have been? I’m genuinely curious here. The war of 1812 didn’t go very well for the US, and it would have best been avoided, but I’m genuinely not sure what the appropriate policy response would have been. I suppose you might say that the US just should have put up with a certain amount of kidnapping to preserve the peace, but that’s a pretty tough position for a sovereign state with any form of public accountability to take.
July 15th, 2009 at 10:27 am
Yeah, they had a “Third World” back in that day. There were countries whose sovereignty was taken seriously, and there was the kind whose sailors you kidnapped if you felt like it and whose territory you violated whenever you felt the urge. And if they crossed you, you bombarded one of their cities without bothering to declare war. The War of 1812 made the United States a first world nation. From 1814 on, the British negotiated with us instead of taking arbitrary action. Pretty important during several crises, not the least of which the Big One in 1860-1865. Other powers followed suit. As badly as the Americans peformed in that war, they showed they could defend themselves.
The biggest reason smaller countries have backed international treaties, laws, and organizations for the last few centuries was to keep the big powers from slapping them around with impunity. Like the British in the 1800s, the United States playing bully boy in Central America in the 1920s, or Bush and Cheney in Iraq in the 21st Century.
July 15th, 2009 at 3:55 pm
The War of 1812 made the United States a first world nation. From 1814 on, the British negotiated with us instead of taking arbitrary action.
This is true, but I wouldn’t credit the War of 1812 to this vis-a-vis British policy with America. In the nineteenth they were increasingly focused on India, Russia and China. Especially during the American Civil war since they had just finished up mopping up the Sepoy Rebellion and were right in the thick of the Second Opium war. After the Napoleonic Wars its American colonies (especially since after the 1840s when the pelt trade collapsed) weren’t important enough to start a war over and the British were loathe to tangled up in Europe again. To hell with “54-40 or fight”, they had basically abandoned Oregon territory south of Vancover Island a year before they made a deal with us.
The British wanted to use its sea power to bully the European and minor powers (like America) and only fight wars they knew they could win in the colonial realm. Kinda like the U.S. likes to do now.
They were afraid to get mixed up in America because America was a general political minefield for them (by that time, British Whigs were sympathetic to American self government) and they had more important things to do, not because they had any more esteem for the American military after 1815. In fact, they had even less because we won something like only three battles and they had easily destroyed our capital in the progress of the war.