Rouget de Lisle

Rouget de Lisle, CLAUDE JOSEPH, author of the Marseillaise (q.v.), was born at Lons-le-Saulnier on 10th May 1760. When in 1792 he wrote and composed his celebrated song or hymn he was a captain of engineers stationed at Strasburg. Four months later, as too moderate a republican, he was imprisoned in Paris, but was released after Robespierre's fall. Wounded at Quiberon (1795), he quitted the army, and lived in Paris in narrow circumstances, until Louis-Philippe in 1830 awarded him a small pension. He died at Choisy on 26th June 1836. He published in 1796 a volume of Essais en Vers et en Prose; but none of the pieces it contains, nor indeed any of his other books, possess much real merit. The Marseillaise was his one inspiration. See a Memoir by Poisle-Desgranges (Paris, 1864), and one by Tiersot (1892).