The day when La Marseillaise was rediscovered

It was a very chaotic day, on this July 29th 1830. The revolution, called later on the three glorious days, had just started, that would put a end to the reign of king Charles 10th. Hector Berlioz, who was then a renowned composer had just finish to compete, and win the grand prix de Rome, a competition ruled by the state. He had written the last notes of his cantata Sardanapale, with the sound of bullets in the surrounding streets.

Hector Berlioz in the years 1850

The institut itself, where he was living, was populated by frightened refugees. He went out, with a pistol, willing to get involved to the events. Paris was in turmoil, full of enthusiastic revolutionaries, men and women, and kids, that looked like the characters depicted in the famous Delacroix’s “la liberté guidant le peuple”. A king’s guards building located in the Babylone street had been taken by the insurgents, and Berlioz could hear the proud young men saying; “we were at the taking of Babylone !” Music, songs, could be heard anywhere. Berlioz crossed the Palais Royal’s garden and met a group of young men who were singing one of his compositions. The group of singers was begging for money for insurgents support to the growing audience that encircled them, and according to Berlioz, the amount of collected money was not due to the quality of their music… The musicians then decided to move followed by the crowd, to the nearby galerie Colbert. A shopkeeper offered the musicians to play at the second floor at her place, under the big glass dome of the gallery.

Colbert gallery, where la marseillaise was played

On Berlioz suggestion, the band started to play la marseillaise, the Rouget de Lisle song, that he had just reorchestrated some weeks before. At first and second verse, the huge crowd standing below the dome remained quiet so Berlioz remembered that he indicated in his orchestration that the song should be yelled by all those who had a voice, heart and blood in their veins, ask the crowd to sing. And the huge crowd started to sing. As the place was closed, with its big dome, the sound went incredibly big and Berlioz finally faint. In 1879, la marseillaise was restored as France’s national anthem, and has remained so ever since.