This is a revisionist thesis that first appeared in 2005 and has enjoyed quite a good fortune since. It's false. La Marseillaise is a war song written in 1792

This is a revisionist thesis that first appeared in 2005 and has enjoyed quite a good fortune since. It's false. La Marseillaise is a war song written in 1792 after France declared war to Austria. Louis XVI, who was still King (albeit no more an absolute King but a more humble constitutional one like the King of England) and who still had his head on his shoulders, was in favor of the war because he thought (hoped) Austria would win and would help restore a "proper" (absolute) monarchy. The Rhine Army (meaning, a French army stationed in Alsace) wanted a song to accompany it while going to war. Rouget de Lisle, with others, wrote and composed that war song and titled it Chant de Guerre pour l’armée du Rhin (War Song for the Rhine Army). The words of the song rest heavily on propaganda placards plastered throughout Strasbourg, that included injunctions such as "Immolez sans remords les traîtres" (immolate traitors without remorse) or "dissipez les armées des despotes" (dispel despots' armies). The specific image of blood as fertilizer seems to come from a poem by Nicolas Boileau from 1656 (about a possible war with England): "Et leurs corps pourris dans nos plaines / N’ont fait qu’engraisser nos sillons" (And their rotten bodies in our plains / Only fed our furrows). It has been obvious for everyone for at least two centuries that the "impure blood" was the blood of the ennemies. It's true that it's not "racist" because there was no real concept of race in the sense given to that term in the 19th century, but it is demeaning. The pure ones are the French and the impure ones are the others. (Rouget de Lisle was himself a nobleman and a monarchist). A possible, non-polemic translation of "impur" would be "alien": let the blood of the aliens rain on our land.