Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Marseillaise   Listen
adjective
Marseillaise, Marseillais  adj.  Of or pertaining to Marseilles, in France, or to its inhabitants.
Marseillaise hymn, or The Marseillaise, the national anthem of France, popularly so called. It was composed in 1792, by Rouget de l'Isle, an officer then stationed at Strasburg. In Paris it was sung for the first time by the band of men who came from Marseilles to aid in the revolution of August 10, 1792; whence the name.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Marseillaise" Quotes from Famous Books



... happier expression of this spirit of harmony than was presented in the serenade offered to these gentlemen—representatives of the honored name of Steuben on the evening of their arrival in New York, the band playing first "The Watch on the Rhine," followed by the "Marseillaise" and "God Save the Queen," and then the martial airs of the Old World resolving themselves into the peaceful strains of the crowning glory of "Hail, Columbia!" ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various

... greatly increased that we have German fellow-countrymen in the Grand duchy of Posen. The former and, I am tempted to say, childish cult of the Poles as I knew it in my childhood is no longer possible. Then we were taught Polish songs in our music lessons together with the Marseillaise, to be sure. The Polish nobleman, therefore, than whom God never created anything more reactionary, was here thrown into one pot with the French revolution, and liberalism was coupled with the cause of the Poles, because we were lacking in political perspicacity. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke

... was a picture of the condemned anarchists. Several pictures of notorious Anarchists who have been beheaded for murder and riot were conspicuously displayed. The band played no national airs except the 'Marseillaise,' and everything said and done showed a bitter hatred of American institutions. Mrs. Parsons gave a history of the Paris commune of 1871, and said the mistake made was in showing any mercy to capitalists. Her remarks were loudly applauded, although a majority ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, April 1887 - Volume 1, Number 3 • Various

... digesting his eggs, stretched his long legs under the opposite seat, threw himself back, folded his arms, smiled like a man who had just thought of a good joke, and began to whistle the Marseillaise. ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant

... he sat bolt upright, with his head back, like a horse scenting battle. Glancing at him, Chris wondered at his attitude, till suddenly she recognized the strains of the Marseillaise. ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell

... and red-coated band poured out patriotic music, and the intervals between the courses that so few waiters were left to serve were broken by the ever-recurring obligation to stand up for the Marseillaise, to stand up for God Save the King, to stand up for the Russian National Anthem, to stand up again for the Marseillaise. "Et dire que ce sont des Hongrois qui jouent tout cela!" a ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton

... the oath of the people amid scenes of wild enthusiasm and shouting. To add to the enthusiasm of the occasion a party of real volunteers had appeared, and after receiving the three-coloured cockade from their sweethearts, had shouldered their guns and marched, singing the Marseillaise, straight from the theatre to the road for La Vendue, where they were going to shed ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed

... and honveds had advanced, ready to fire a final salvo over the grave of the Prince, when, suddenly, gliding between the ranks of the soldiers, appeared a band of Tzigani, who began to play the March of Rakoczy, the Hungarian Marseillaise, the stirring melody pealing forth in the night-air, and lending a certain mysteriously touching element to the sad scene. A quick shudder ran through the ranks of the soldiers, ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie

... a republican! Utopia!—Play the Marseillaise in A On trumpets, while the sentimental flute Sighs "God preserve the ...
— L'Aiglon • Edmond Rostand

... the street, shouting and cursing as it went. Some one started to sing the Marseillaise, and others took it up, and the words mounted ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair

... festival, as they moved along the boulevards to the Court of the Tuileries, they coupled the name of Napoleon with Jacobin curses and revolutionary songs. The airs and the words that had made Paris tremble to her very centre during the Reign of Terror—the "Marseillaise," the "Carmagnole," the "Jour du depart," the execrable ditty, the burden of which is, "And with the entrails of the last of the priests let us strangle the last of the kings," were all roared ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne

... test, established the Protestant claim to be evangelical, in the eyes of the people. Next came his hymns, many popular, some good and one really great. [Sidenote: Hymns, 1528] Ein' feste Burg has been well called by Heine the Marseillaise of the Reformation. The Longer and Shorter Catechisms [Sidenote: Catechisms, 1529] educated the common people in the evangelical doctrine so well that the Catholics were forced to imitate their enemy, though ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith

... pronounced it differently from Mr. Voltelen. And there came a young French count whose relations my father's brother had known; he had come as a sailor on a French man-o'-war, and he came and stayed to dinner and sang the Marseillaise. It was from him that I heard the song for the first time. He was only fifteen, and very good- looking, and dressed like an ordinary sailor, although he was ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes

... letter addressed to Miss Hall, by one of the wounded soldiers under her care at the Smoketown Hospital, a Frenchman who, while a great sufferer, kept the whole tent full of wounded men cheerful and bright with his own cheerfulness, singing the Marseillaise and other patriotic songs, is but one example of thousands, of the regard felt for her, by the soldiers whose sufferings she had relieved by her gentle ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett

... nightly with the tramp of drilling minute-men. Secession orators harangued enthusiastic crowds. Hardly a coat but bore a secession cockade. November 17th, the Palmetto flag was unfurled in Charleston. It was a gala day. Cannon roared, bands played the Marseillaise, and processions paraded the streets bearing such mottoes as "Let's Bury the Union's Dead Carcass!" "Death to All Abolitionists!" The whole South was beside itself with excitement. One State after another assembled its convention to decide ...
— History of the United States, Volume 3 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews

... protectorate which neither Tunis nor Constantinople would allow. There had been also many commercial difficulties—some honest, some dishonest; but what led to the acute stage which these difficulties and differences assumed in 1881 was the purchase, in 1880, by the Societe Marseillaise, for 100,000 L, of a large tract of land known as the Enfida—subject, it had been stipulated, 'to the provisions of the local law.' But the purchase was no sooner publicly declared than its legality ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton

... luck (an abrupt glissando); through his sturdy resolve to go to war in his friend's place, on through many battles to his death, all is on a high plane that commands sympathy for the emotion, and enforces unbounded admiration for the art. There is a brief hint of the Marseillaise woven into the finely varied tapestry of martial music, and when the lover comes trudging home, his joy, his sudden knowledge of Perrine's faithlessness, and his overwhelming grief are all built over a long organ-point of three clangorous bride-bells. The leit-motif idea ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes

... the sculptured ornaments, or riding fearlessly on the shoulders of the marble busts. One by one the battalions had taken up their position on the Place with their bands. When they were all assembled they struck up the Marseillaise, which was re-echoed by a thousand voices. It was grand in the extreme, and the magnificent hymn, which late defeats had shorn of its glory, swelled forth again with all its old splendour revived. Suddenly the cannon is heard, the voices ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton

... and as these little reminiscences usually recurred to him in the mornings, he regaled me with them while he was being dressed. The air that I have heard him thus mutilate most frequently was that of The Marseillaise. ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Memoirs of Napoleon • David Widger

... in addition to the dance, favoured us with "the Marseillaise" with the French words, being occasionally prompted by the head of the orchestra, who nearly worked himself into a frenzy while accompanying the dancers with both vocal and instrumental music at the ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight

... with a wooden leg, who was singing the "Marseillaise" from door to door, approached, holding ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark

... beat of the drum Veronica's soul came down from its place, and took part in the Procession. As long as they played the Marseillaise she felt that she could march with the Procession to the ends of the world; she could march into battle to the Marseillaise; she could fight to that music ...
— The Tree of Heaven • May Sinclair

... o'clock, to the sounds of "Sidi Brahim" and the "Marseillaise" we charge the German lines. The attack will probably be deadly. On the eve of this great day, which may be my last, I want to recall to you your promise.... Comfort my mother. For a week she will have no news. Tell her that when a man is in an attack he can not write ...
— Fighting France • Stephane Lauzanne

... the lateness of the hour, the French infantry again advanced to the attack. Flushed with two victories earlier in the day, they went forward confidently and with eagerness and enthusiasm. Cheers broke out along the whole line as they advanced. Farther back, a band—many bands—played "The Marseillaise." ...
— The Boy Allies At Verdun • Clair W. Hayes

... abundance of poetry which has been inspired by the Irish Nationalist cause, the two following poems have been selected as characteristic. The first, by Michael Scanlan, has been called the Marseillaise of the Fenian movement. The second ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy

... direct, strong, homely, ready to borrow words from the kitchen or the gutter, is unmatched for popular eloquence and impression. There was music in the man. His flute solaced his lonely hours in his home at Wittemberg; and the Marseillaise of the Reformation, as that grand hymn of his has been called, came, words and music, from his heart. There was humour in him, coarse horseplay often; an honest, hearty, broad laugh frequently, like that of a Norse god. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren

... was charged anew. All at once, at a word from Valmond, he broke into the Marseillaise, with his voice and with his drum. To these Frenchmen of an age before the Revolution, the Marseillaise had only been a song. Now in their ignorant breasts there waked the spirit of France, and from their throats there burst ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... Tweedledum's praise, and Tweedledee's indignation—to read, in the Debats how the King was received with shouts and loyal vivats—in the Nation, how not a tongue was wagged in his praise, but, on the instant of his departure, how the people called for the "Marseillaise" and applauded THAT.—But best say no more about the fete. The Legitimists were always indignant at it. The high Philippist party sneers at and despises it; the Republicans hate it: it seems a joke against THEM. Why continue it?—If there be anything sacred in the name and idea of loyalty, ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray

... spiritually recognise is, perhaps, the most disgraceful manifestation of my neglected musical education—at all events, it is the one which causes me most uneasiness. Experience has warned me never to ask a player for the 'Marseillaise,' or 'Croppies Lie Down,' or what not; for he is pretty sure to say, 'Why, that's just what I've been giving you,' or words to similar effect. Alf at last grew tired of my non-committal remarks and replies, and, with a tact which impressed ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy

... another repairing the week's wear and tear of his garments. A group of interested listeners lie or sit round the happy possessor of the latest paper, who is reading it aloud. Others, of livelier tastes, gather round an accordion-player, who gives the "Marseillaise" with the fire and feeling of a true artist. Some hard workers, whose idea of pleasure is perfect rest, lie on their backs in the sun, with their hats tilted over their faces, sound asleep, heedless of the roars ...
— A Trip to Manitoba • Mary FitzGibbon

... the close, he gave us the radical song of Spain, which is now strictly prohibited. The air is charming, but too gay; one would sooner dance than fight to its measures. It does not bring the hand to the sword, like the glorious Marseillaise. ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor

... would stay away from Phoenix for several months and then one day he would appear with a few thousand dollars, more or less, spend every cent of it in treating the boys in my house and "blow back" home again generally in my debt. He used to sing La Marseillaise—it was the only song he knew—and after the first few drinks would solemnly mount a table, sing a few verses of the magnificent revolutionary song, call on me to do likewise, and then "treat the house." ...
— Arizona's Yesterday - Being the Narrative of John H. Cady, Pioneer • John H. Cady

... alights and enters the waiting boat. It is a tense moment. As the boat rows off the sailors sing the Marseillaise, and the gathered inhabitants join in. When the boat reaches the brig its sailors join in also, and shout "Paris or death!" Yet the singing has a melancholy cadence. A gun fires as a signal of departure. The night is warm and ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy

... the drama, and to some extent music, painting, and sculpture, arouse the emotions and direct them-if the art is good-into proper channels. Meunier's sculptured figures, Millet's Angelus or Man with the Hoe, the oratorio of the Messiah or a national song like the Marseillaise, have a stirring and ennobling effect upon the soul; while such a poem as Moody's Ode in Time of Hesitation, a story like Dickens's Christmas Carol, or a play like The Servant in efficacious than many a sermon. The study of any art has a refining ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake

... sees a crowd of young fellows sit down at a table; "There'll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight" to welcome a lad in khaki; and the very latest fox trot for the party of girls and young men from uptown, who look as though they were dying to dance. She plays the "Marseillaise" for Frenchmen, and "Dixie" for visiting Southerners, and "Mississippi" for the frequenters of Manhattan vaudeville shows. And, then, at the right moment, her skilled fingers will drift suddenly into something different, some exquisite, ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin

... contrast has been carefully laid and is waiting to be touched off. So it is with the markedly lyrical passages in narrative verse—say the close of "Sohrab and Rustum." When a French actress sings the "Marseillaise" to a theatre audience in war-time, or Sir Harry Lauder, dressed in kilts, sings to a Scottish-born audience about "the bonny purple heather," or a marching regiment strikes up "Dixie," the actual song is only the release of a mood ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry

... de Ville at seven o'clock. Though early, the spacious building was lighted from attic to basement, and slipping in through a swarm of Sans-culottes who surrounded the doorsteps, they entered the great hall. As they were going in the "Marseillaise" began to be pounded, and the entry, from the opposite direction, of persons of much more importance than they, attracted the eyes of the men and women who smoked and knitted round the hall. The incomers were the President and heads of ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall

... line was wavering under the most terrible cyclone of shells ever let loose upon earth, Emilienne Moreau sprang forward with a bit of tricolored bunting in her hand and the glorious words of the 'Marseillaise' on her lips, and by her fearless example averted a retreat that might have meant disaster along the whole front. Only the men who were in that fight can fully understand why Sir Douglas Haig was right in christening her the Joan of Arc ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)

... Semi-drunk knew no other except odd verses and choruses, he called upon Crass for the next, and that gentleman accordingly sang 'Work, Boys, Work' to the tune of 'Tramp, tramp, tramp, the boys are marching'. As this song is the Marseillaise of the Tariff Reform Party, voicing as it does the highest ideals of the Tory workmen of this country, it was an unqualified success, for most ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell

... stated being that "they are strenuously endeavoring to create mischief, and stir up strife between the people of the territory and the troops in Camp Douglas." The meeting then adjourned, the band playing the "Marseillaise." ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn

... above mentioned we find references to 'The Marseillaise' and 'Ca ira,' both of which Dickens says he heard in Paris. In Little Dorrit ...
— Charles Dickens and Music • James T. Lightwood

... worn, but gaily smiling at the pain, and saying, "Ca n'fait rien, madame." Later Harold opened his flask for some splendid Breton soldier boys just going into action. And they stood up with flashing eyes and shouted out the Marseillaise, while Laura shivered and thrilled ...
— His Family • Ernest Poole

... his independence—born of his colossal influence—by his satisfied and successful air. The former Marseillaise clothes-dealer, in his youth pouncing upon the sailors of the port and Maltese and Levantine seamen, to palm off on them a second-hand coat or trousers, as the wardrobe dealers of the Temple hook the passer-by, Salomon Molina, who had paraded ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie

... fanned hatred of the proletariat toward the "bourgeois" classes. One must give them credit in this respect. They know the value of simple language when they put this hatred into words. Listen to the Russian Marseillaise: "Rise, brothers, all at once against the thieves, the curs—the rich ones! Against the vampire Tsar! Beat them, kill them—the cursed evil-doers! Glow, dawn of better life!" The simple ideology, the easy catch phrases in which the language of this ideology is couched, the ...
— The Russian Revolution; The Jugo-Slav Movement • Alexander Petrunkevitch, Samuel Northrup Harper,

... an ominous preliminary rumble, the band struck up the Marseillaise. You should have seen the change in this crowd of corpses. You must remember that these people had been so long accustomed to lies and snares that it would probably take days to persuade them that they were ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson

... in motion, and for hours columns of troops moved up the Champs Elysees. The Rue Rivoli was actually choked with the men; the mob shouted "Vive la Commune" until they were hoarse, and the battalions from the working quarters lustily sang the chorus of the Marseillaise. ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty

... tramp of men marching together became audible as he spoke. Voices humming low and in unison the Marseillaise hymn, joined solemnly with the heavy, regular footfalls. Soon the flare of torch-light began to glimmer redder and redder under the dim, ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins

... a determined crowd waving flags made of handkerchiefs fastened to the end of rulers. A band, equipped with combs covered with tissue-paper torn from their drawing-books, played the strains of the "Marseillaise." They advanced towards the seniors in a ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil

... with chateaux and churches on impossible peaks, backed by tremendous stern giants. Why will they not allow us on shore to get a closer view?... Just above my head the men are concluding a concert with the 'King,' the 'Marseillaise' (I wonder do they appreciate that here it was first sung in its grandeur under Rouget de Lisle), and then with what should be our national song, 'Rule Britannia.' Well might they sing that with zest after the voyage ...
— The Seventh Manchesters - July 1916 to March 1919 • S. J. Wilson



Words linked to "Marseillaise" :   national anthem



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com