“Freedom Triumphant”
Description
When the Bastille fell French soldiers joined in the battle for freedom. "From France now see LIBERTY's TREE Its branches wide extending" and the "swine ... unite, and swear they'll bite Their unrelenting drivers"
Notes
Zimmermann: "The word 'swine' is used affectionately ... perhaps an allusion to the 'swinish multitude' denounced by Edmund Burke (_Reflections on the French Revolution_) and vindicated by Tom Paine (_The Rights of Man_)." A United Irishmen song, "The Swinish Multitude," was "sung by them as they marched to the Battle of Antrim Killen." (source: a review of _The Decade of the United Irishmen--Contemporary Accounts 1791-1801_ by John Killen; the review is by John Russell on the Irish Republican News site for December 18, 1997). See broadside Bodleian, Harding B 5(97), "Edmund Burke, to the Swinish Multitude" ("Ye base swinish herd, in the stye of taxation"), unknown, n.d.
Zimmermann points out that lines, including the first four, "were borrowed from the famous Orange ballad "The Battle of the Boyne"
"The Battle of the Boyne" begins
July the first, in Oldbridge town,
There was a grievous battle,
Where many a man lay on the ground,
By cannons that did rattle
"Freedom Triumphant" begins
The fourteenth of July, in Paris town,
There was a glorious battle,
Where many a tyrant lay on the ground
By cannons that did rattle
Zimmermann's tune is "Boyne Water." - BS
The sad irony is, of course, that this song was obsolete by the time it was published. By 1796, France had been through the Reign of Terror (1793-1794) and the Directory of 1795 was already losing public support; in 1796, a young fellow by the name of Napoleon was named to his first major command in Italy.
Ireland in that year would see the first of the fiascos that clustered around the 1798 rebellion; this was the year of the Bantry Bay invasion (for which see especially the notes to "The Shan Van Voght"). - RBW
References
- Zimmermann 4, "Freedom Triumphant" (1 text, 1 tune)
- Moylan 14, "Freedom Triumphant" (1 text, 1 tune)
- BI, Zimm004