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6th of November 1792: A force of 40,000 poorly trained French volunteers defeat a force of 14,000 Austrian regular troops at Jemappes in the Austrian Netherlands, now Belgium, and go on to conquer the rest of the Austrian Netherlands. This song was the national anthem of the First, Third and Fourth French Republics, and the anthem of the modern Fifth Republic. On the 25th of April 1792, Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle was staying at the house of Baron Philippe Friedrich Dietrich, when his host asked him to write a song to inspire the Republic's troops, who were at the time fighting the War of the First Coalition against many European powers. That very evening, Rouget de Lisle complete a song he entitled “Chant de Guerre pour l'Armée du Rhin“ (War Song of the Army of the Rhine). François Mireur, a soldier of the Republic, went down to Marseille to collect volunteers for the army, and sang the song whilst there. As the volunteers he collected marched into Paris, they sang the song, which as a result became known as “La Marseillaise“. The National Convention officially made it the national anthem of the Republic on 14 July 1795. Napoleon stripped it of its status during his reign because of his personal dislike of the song, and it did not make an official return until 1879, during the Third Republic. Audio from Picture from
