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Comment by jcranmer | Hacker News Reader

> It's intense, and as mentioned towards the end of this analysis, the actual words of the anthem are brutal. They're not singing "God save the king", but rather "we will water our fields with the blood of our enemies."

La Marseillaise, if you boil it down to a single sentence, is basically "Fight on, Frenchmen... because we are utterly screwed if you don't."--almost all of the violence in the song is about the violence directed towards the French by the various coalitions arrayed against it at that time. (Also extremely notable for a national anthem of that period, it never specifically identifies an enemy--contrast that to the dueling German anthem in the film, which is a rather explicitly anti-French anthem.)

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> contrast that to the dueling German anthem in the film, which is a rather explicitly anti-French anthem

Yes, OTOH it seems to have a mere passive, defensive spirit: “a guardian of the river” – “the watch on the Rhine” – “protects the sacred border of the land” – “remain”,[1] written afraid of annexation:

“Repeated French efforts to annex the Left Bank of the Rhine began with the devastating wars of King Louis XIV. French forces carried out massive scorched earth campaigns in the German south-west. This policy was fully implemented during the Napoleonic Wars with the creation of the Confederation of the Rhine in 1806–1813. In the two centuries from the Thirty Years' War to the final defeat of Napoleon I, the German inhabitants of lands by the Rhine suffered from repeated French invasions.

The defeat and exile of Napoleon gave the Germans some respite, but during the Rhine Crisis of 1840, French prime minister Adolphe Thiers advanced the claim that the Upper and Middle Rhine River should serve as his country's "natural eastern border". The member states of the German Confederation feared that France was resuming her annexationist designs.”[2]

Maybe itʼs even meant as a signal of dishonesty that it is sung by soldiers whose army didnʼt watch at the Rhine but occupied France brutally? Anyway, I donʼt intend to praise the Wacht am Rhein, itʼs certainly not great poetry, rather a rattling and clattering from the dustbin of history.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_Wacht_am_Rhein#Lyrics [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_Wacht_am_Rhein#Origin

> the violence directed towards the French by the various coalitions arrayed against it at that time

I’m not extremely deeply familiar with the history and consequences of the French Revolution, but I recall that it was the French who started the War of the First Coalition.

As an ironic aside, it looks like the fellow who commissioned La Marseillaise lost his head to the Reign of Terror.

> contrast that to the dueling German anthem in the film, which is a rather explicitly anti-French anthem

Die Wacht am Rhein? The lyrics on Wikipedia don’t mention the French at all so far as I can tell. They claim that ‘Frenchman’ is a literal translation of ‘Welscher,’ but I think the literal translation is ‘foreigner.’

I mean "started" is maybe too implicative a word. They did declare war but considering the general rasespone of monarchs to Republicanism in that period as well as the territorial ambitions of those monarchs, it's hard to imagine revolutionary France not finding itself at war with most of Europe.

Or the Italian one which is anti-Austrian.

But in doing so it features some solidarity with the Polish :D

> Son giunchi che piegano (Mercenary swords)

> le spade vendute (they're feeble reeds)

> già l'Aquila d'Austria (The Austrian eagle)

> le penne ha perdute. (Has already lost its plumes)

> Il sangue d'Italia, (The blood of Italy)

> il sangue Polacco, (and the Polish blood)

> bevé, col cosacco, (It drank, along with the Cossack)

> ma il cor le bruciò (But it burned its heart)

... this is actually reciprocated in the Polish anthem:

> Marsz, marsz, Dąbrowski, (March, march, Dąbrowski)

> Z ziemi włoskiej do Polski. (From the Italian land to Poland)

> Za twoim przewodem (Under your command)

> Złączym się z narodem. (We shall rejoin the nation)

Translation on the first two verses is reversed

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