1 เ hearts to feel for him and for France, so there were singers also to lament his fall. Otherwise, we have nothing of the kind dating from the period of the Empire. This is, however, the proper place to say a word or two of what really became the Napoleonic Anthem, the song sometimes called 'Romance de la Reine Hortense,' but best known by its designation Partant pour la Syrie,' or rather, Le Départ pour la Syrie.' It is a mere jingle, as far as the poetry goes, of about the same class as The Troubadour; and, like Vive Henri Quatre' and 'Pauvre Jacques' has not a word of reference to either politics, patriotism, or loyalty; but from the circumstance of Queen Hortense, the step-daughter of the first and mother of the third Napoleon, composing the air to which it was set, it obtained first the vogue of fashion, and, finally, reached the character of a sort of National Anthem. We annex the words (attributed to Laborde), but they do not deserve a translation : : Among the song-writers, after the fall of the First Napoleon, Béranger unquestionably holds the first place, not merely because he sang with such affectionate appreciation of the lost glory of the Empire, but because his songs are in themselves essentially poetical. Having, however, spoken at length of Béranger himself, and given numerous specimens of his songs in an earlier volume of this Review,* we now pass on to Émile Debreaux, another of the most popular minstrels of the period from the Restoration to 1830, to help the sale of whose works, on behalf of a young widow and orphans, Béranger wrote the 'Chanson-Prospectus,' which is one of the most feeling and touching of his works. Debreaux died in 1831, at the age of only thirty-three. He was author of a surprising number of songs of all kinds, so many that Béranger could say of them in the Chanson-Prospectus,' Ses gais refrains vous égalent en nombre, Of those specially referring to the lost glo- We must content ourselves with giving but one specimen from Debreaux, as it leads us to another branch of our subject, the songs of the Conscription, but we can only find room for the first four stanzas: LE CONSCRIT. J'avais à peine dix-huit ans Qui m'envoie au bout de la terre Batailler pour je ne sais quoi: Avez-vous jamais vu la guerre ? La souveraine du Brabant Que le pied de notre princesse: J'avais le regard louche et faux, * See Vol. xlvi. On prétendit faire un César : Que le noble métier des armes ! Avez-vous jamais vu la guerre ? THE CONSCRIPT. When I was a lad of eighteen, My time in sleep, eating, and drink, It appears that the Queen of Brabant Five score thousand poor lads must contend, My eyes were both squinting and crooked, Of my wonderful prospects they talked; Almost out of my senses would send, O, my lads, what a happy pursuit Of a church-font would find greater charms. Raw turnips and haricot beans, Prime cold water, black bread without end, Make a banquet for heroes to feast.— Were you ever a soldier, my friend? The following, on the same subject, is by the brothers Cogniard : Grand' ville que voilà, Il n'est pas de royaume, Mais quittant leur bannière, Ils s'écriaient tous deux: Il n'est pas de royaume Qui vaille un toit de chaume THE CONSCRIPT MOUNTAINEERS. Two mountaineers marched Full heavy at heart From their sweet home to part. 'O there's never a kingdom Nor realm upon earth To compare with the cottage That sheltered our birth.' All the wealth of the city To change them was vain; There's no happiness there; At length, from their service Thou hast ne'er been forgot; Which sheltered our birth.' Dont nos cœurs son' z'enchantés; Ne pleurés point not' départ, Adieu donc, mon tendre cœur, Que Fanfan, que Fanfan, Vous y dirés que Fanfan Qui qu'a fait cette chanson, N'en sont trois jolis garçons; Ils étiont faiseux de bas, Faiseux de bas, faiseux de bas, Ah! Ils étiont faiseux de bas, Et à c't'heure ils sont soldats. (bis.) (bis.) Great Liberty, ye Frenchmen brave, And tyrants find who seek a slave, A warrior instead. And Paris, swift of memory, March, Gallia's sons 'Gainst hostile guns, Past fire, and steel, and battery peal, Close, close the ranks! and scatter not, And fire, each citizen, his shot, O days of deathless memory! On the outbreak of the Revolution of 1848, the old revolutionary and patriotic (bis.) songs came again into vogue, and excited the rapturous enthusiasm of a generation which had almost forgotten their very sound. But along with the older ones, such as the 'Marseillaise,' the Chant du Départ,' and others already noticed, a new one took a place of great prominence. This was the (bis.)Song of the Girondins,' by Dumas and Maquet, written in 1847, and more generally known, at least in England, by the words of its refrain 'Mourir pour la patrie! C'est le sort le plus beau, le plus digne d'envie.' As was the case with many other songs, a great part of the success of this must be attributed to its music, composed by Varney; for the words, consisting of two stanzas, taken from a play entitled Le Chevalier de la Maison-Rouge,' are of really secondrate importance, while the chorus is taken bodily from a far better song, by a far greater singer, Rouget de l'Isle, the author of the Marseillaise,' who employed it as the burden to each stanza of his 'Roland à Roncevaux.' 6 Besides the Song of the Girondins' the Revolution of 1848 gave birth, as may be supposed, to a number of others, such as Felix Mouttet's Hymne aux Paysans,' Albert Blanquet'sCitoyenne,' the quaint and original Vote Universel' by E. Pottier, a working man, and many more. The Chant des Ouvriers' by Pierre Dupont, though written earlier, owes its great popularity this particular period; it is, however, only the song of a class, and expresses a discontent of the most illogical sort; but it has a tendency very unusual in songs of the kind, to discountenance war. We give the last stanza, in which both assertion and moral are unexceptionable :— A chaque fois que par torrents L'amour est plus fort que la guerre, Souffle du ciel ou de la terre. The history of the present terrible war leads our attention to French patriotic songs of a different.class from many of those we have been considering, namely to songs springing from the circumstances of foreign conflict rather than from those of internal politics or domestic revolutions. To this class belongs, in the first place, De Musset's 'German Rhine,' written as long ago as 1841, in answer to Niklas Becker's German song on the same subject ('Sie sollen ihn nicht haben'). We have purposely kept back this song, notwithstanding its precedence in date to those of 1848, till dealing with songs of the present time, since it is the present time which has given it its importance. It is said, and we believe with truth, to have been little more than an improvisation, or, at least, to have occupied only an hour or two in its production, and to have been elicited by a sort of challenge, in a company, to any one to answer in a fitting manner Becker's song which had just then become popular in Germany. The original of Becker's, with a translation, appeared in the previous number of this 'Review,'* so that our readers, if desirous, may compare it with De Musset's answer, which, if rather erring in contempt of tone, is, notwithstanding, full of verve and spirit: LE RHIN ALLEMAND. Nous l'avons eu, votre Rhin Allemand: Un couplet qu'on s'en va chantant We have had it already, your German Rhine Covered all your plains with night? Who filled our cups with your thin white Have remembered our presence better. Let it wash your livery clothes, For how many were ye, ye carrion crows, When our eagle maimed fell 'neath your blows? Let it flow in peace, your German Rhine, Du pied de nos chevaux marqués dans votre In its calm reflection shine; Nous l'avons eu, votre Rhin Allemand: A dechiré sa robe vert. Où le père a passé, passera bien l'enfant. Nous l'avons eu, votre Rhin Allemand. De son ombre couvrait vos plaines ? Nous l'avons eu, votre Rhin Allemand. Vos jeunes filles, sûrement, Ont mieux gardé notre mémoire: * See Quarterly Review,' vol. cxxviii. But beware lest your vain pot-valiant cries, From their gory graves make the brave dead rise. Hitherto the present war has produced few songs in France. Since Sedan her gallant children have had no time for aught but effort, their panting breasts no breath to spare for aught but the one repeated cry, To arms!' All honour to them if, in their anguish and suffering, they realize, beyond the power of song to utter, the claims of their unhappy country, and if it be from this cause that Les Français ont cessé de chanter,' as one of themselves has said! Moreover there is a practical difficulty in obtaining any song sprung from the present time. The best appear to be Le Rhin Français,' by Armand Silvestre, A la Fron Tonnez, canons, voici la rouge aurore, Jusqu'à la nuit, fauchez, fauchez encore, Du Dieu du Ciel, auteur de notre gloire, Soient un reproche, d'échos en échos! D'un peuple fier, sérieux Réveil, Chants du pays, à notre âme ravie, From Heaven above, whence all glory descends, Let the proud tidings swift through the universe fly, Whilst for Europe the shout of our victory blends With reproach, as the echoes to echoes reply. |