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STORIES OF
doubtless substituted by the French soldiers in after years out of bravado and impudence.
The song was printed upon fans and screens, with an engraving representing the funeral pro-cession of Marlborough, the lady on the tower, the page dressed in black, and so on. This picture was imitated in all shapes and sizes. It circulated through the streets and villages, and gave the dead Duke of Marlborough a more popular celebrity than all his victories. M. Bagger. says : " Barras sang it; so did Marat; Charlotte Corday doubtless knew it by heart; and it vied with ' La Carmagnole* and ' jQa Ira* as the most popular song of those days. And it has survived in many a French air of later times. In 'Partant pour la Syrie/ Queen Hortense, unconsciously perhaps, has adopted the same underlying musical theme; and in Andre Chenier's ' Mourir pour la Patrie* it will readily be recognized, though in different time and colour. In Helberg's vaudeville, performed at the Royal Theatre at Copenhagen in 1826, we find almost identically the same air; and in one of the folk-lays of Finland we recognize it in a more marked degree." " Napoleon hummed the old military air of ' Marlborough' as he crossed the Niemen in setting out upon his disastrous Russian campaign of 1812." Du
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