A Soldiers Sketches Under Fire | Page 4

come out to France to stand by the Empire.
Marseilles was a most wonderful sight at the time I was there, and
although I had made many previous visits in normal times, when I had
greatly admired its grand proportions, none of them had given me any
idea of what its appearance would be when it became the clearing
station in the time of such a great war, and one of the chief bases of all
food supplies. Troops of all descriptions were working like ants by day
and by night, unloading boats to the huge stores of all descriptions of
provender, and loading the trains with all kinds of artillery, ammunition,
Red Cross wagons, motors, horses, and all the paraphernalia of modern
warfare.
The town is the third largest in France, and the chief Mediterranean
seaport. Its history teems with exciting incidents of plague, fire,
sacking, siege, and hand-to-hand fighting, so it is quite in keeping that
it should take so important a part in the present conflict. It was here
Monte Cristo was hurled from the Chateau d'If in the sack from which

he cut his escape. Francis the First besieged it in vain, and it prospered
under King Rene. In the French Revolution it figured so conspicuously
as to give the title to the national hymn of the French.
THE STORY OF "THE MARSEILLAISE."
Is it too late to tell again the story of the origin of "The Marseillaise"?
[Illustration: ON THE QUAYHEAD AT MARSEILLES.]
Its author and composer (or it might be more correct to say composer
and author, for in this case music preceded words), Rouget de Lisle--a
young aristocrat and an artillery officer--had as a friend a citizen of
Strasbourg, to whose house, in the early days of the Revolution, he
came on a visit one evening. The tired guest was cordially welcomed
by the citizen and his wife and daughter. To celebrate the occasion his
friend sent the daughter into the cellar to bring up wine. Exhausted as
he was, de Lisle drank freely, and, sitting up late with his host, did not
trouble to go to bed. He had been amusing the family by playing some
of his original compositions on the spinnet. When the host retired for
the night he left de Lisle asleep with his head resting on the instrument.
In the early hours of the morning the young officer awoke, and running
through his head was a melody which, in his semi-drunken state the
evening before, he had been attempting to extemporise. It seemed to
haunt him, and, piecing it together as it came back to his memory, he
played it over. Then, feeling inspired, he immediately set words to it.
When the family came down he played and sang it to them, and his
host was so moved by it that he became quite excited and called in the
neighbours. The instrument was wheeled out into the garden, and in the
open air young de Lisle sang the song that was to become the national
air of his country to this local audience. The effect upon them was
"terrific," and from that moment the song became the rage. It seemed to
embody the whole spirit of the Revolutionists, and spread like wildfire
throughout France. It was to this song that the unbridled spirits of
Marseilles marched to Paris, hence its name, "The Marseillaise."
Shortly after this, de Lisle received a letter from his mother, the
Baroness, dated from her chateau, saying, "What is this dreadful song
we hear?" Fearing that his own life might be in danger, he being an

aristocrat and a suspect, he had before long to take flight across the
mountains. As he went from valley to crag, and crag to valley, he time
after time heard the populace singing his song, frequently having to
hide behind rocks lest they discovered him. It sounded to him like a
requiem, for he knew that many of his friends were being marched to
the scaffold to his own impassioned strains.
[Illustration: QUAYSIDE, MARSEILLES.]

CHAPTER III.
FROM MARSEILLES TO ARMENTIÈRES.
The incidents of the railway journey from Marseilles to Etaples, en
route to Armentières, told in detail, would fill a book. It was made in
ordinary cattle trucks, in which, packed forty to a truck, we spent four
days and a half at one stretch. Yet was it a bright and merry trip, for our
spirits were raised to the highest by the thought that we were going into
action, and we were at all sorts of expedients to make ourselves
comfortable. For instance, before we started the Stationmaster's Office
was ransacked, and every available nail pulled out to make coat and hat
pegs of in the cattle trucks. We had to sleep on the floor. Our corporal,
who