Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle

Rouget de Lisle, composer of The Marsellesasinging for the first time.

Claude-Joseph Rouget de Lisle, or Rouget de l'Isle (Lons-le-Saunier, Franche-Comté, May 10, 1760 - Choisy- le-Roi, June 26, 1836), was a French soldier and composer, an officer in the French Army Corps of Engineers. As a soldier he reached the rank of captain in the French army.

Graduated from the Mézières School and assigned to Strasbourg, he composed le Chant de guerre pour l'armée du Rhin (Song of War for the Army of the Rhine) on April 25, 1792. This hymn, sung by the battalion of the Marseillaises during their march towards Paris in July 1792, is quickly renamed La Marseillaise, and on March 14, 1879 it will become the French national anthem during the Third Republic. Imprisoned during the period of the French Revolution known as the Regime of Terror and sentenced to death, he is said to have escaped for being the author of this popular and patriotic hymn. He subsequently fought in the Vendée, graduated in 1796 and lived with difficulty in Lons-le-Saunier. Luis Felipe I had granted him a small pension corresponding to the Legion of Honor.

His ashes were transferred to the Hôtel des Invalides in 1915. However, his tomb can still be seen in the Choisy-le-Roi cemetery, a city that remembers him with a statue in his honor located in the square that bears his name.

Rouget de Lisle lived at today's 24 Rue du Commerce in Lons-le-Saunier. In this city there is a theater that has a clock with a chime that, before striking the hours, plays the two-bar melody of La Marseillaise. He passed away in poverty.