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"
AUTHOR: Zimmerman-SongsOfIrishRebellion: "Madden ascribed this song to a United Irishman named Thomas Storey"
EARLIEST DATE: 1796 (Zimmerman-SongsOfIrishRebellion's text is from _Paddy's Resource_, Belfast, 1796, published by United Irishmen)
KEYWORDS: rebellion France political
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REFERENCES (2 citations):
Zimmerman-SongsOfIrishRebellion 4, "Freedom Triumphant" (1 text, 1 tune)
Moylan-TheAgeOfRevolution-1776-1815 14, "Freedom Triumphant" (1 text, 1 tune)
NOTES [312 words]: Zimmerman-SongsOfIrishRebellion: "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").
A song called "Greedom Triumphant" was published in the United States in 1796, to the tune of "To Anacreon in Heaven." I do not know its relationship to this song. - RBW
Last updated in version 2.6
File: Zimm004

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