Protest and freedom · Work song · 1790 · Europe

Ça Ira

Ça ira

A cheerful song of the French Revolution from 1790. Its name means "It'll be fine", words Benjamin Franklin liked to say.

Words: Ladré (original words); later sans-culotte stanzas anonymous
Music: Jean-Antoine Bécourt
Culture: French revolutionaries; the sans-culottes
Language: French
Place: France
Date: first heard in May 1790
Type: Protest and freedom · Work song
The words: Public domain (words by Ladré, a street singer (1790))

This song is about hard things from the past, like war, cruelty or death. You can read about it with a grown-up.

The story

"Ça ira" (French for "It'll be fine") was first heard in May 1790, in the early years of the French Revolution. Its words were written by Ladré, a former soldier who made his living as a street singer. The tune was a popular contredanse, "Le carillon national", by Jean-Antoine Bécourt, a musician of the Théâtre Beaujolais; Queen Marie Antoinette is said to have often played it on her harpsichord. The title phrase is said to come from Benjamin Franklin, who was very popular in France during his stay as the Continental Congress's representative from 1776 to 1785 and reportedly answered questions about the American war with "Ça ira, ça ira" in his imperfect French.

The song first caught on as a work song during the preparations for the Fête de la Fédération of 1790, and it became an unofficial anthem of the revolutionaries. Its words changed several times, but every version kept the title words in the refrain. As the Revolution grew more radical, many sans-culottes sang far more aggressive stanzas that called for the nobility and the clergy to be lynched. In 1792 the warship La Couronne was renamed Ça Ira after the song.

The song outlived the Reign of Terror but was forbidden under the Directory in 1797. Its enemies took it up too: at the Battle of Famars in 1793, the British 14th Regiment of Foot attacked the French to its tune, and the regiment was later awarded it as a battle honour and quick march, a tradition the Yorkshire Regiment keeps. It remained a song of protest. Carl Schurz recalled French exiles in England singing it, and dancing the Carmagnole, in anger at Louis Napoleon's coup of 1851, and Nikolay Chernyshevsky's novel What Is to Be Done? has its heroine sing a song with the refrain.

Composers quoted it, from Friedrich Witt in the 1790s to Nikolai Myaskovsky, who used it with the Carmagnole in his Symphony No. 6 (1923). Édith Piaf sang a sans-culotte-like version for Sacha Guitry's film Si Versailles m'était conté (1954). The opening ceremony of the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris was titled Ça Ira, and there the metal band Gojira and the mezzo-soprano Marina Viotti performed a version from the windows of the Conciergerie, which won a Grammy Award for Best Metal Performance.

What it says

In its first form, a confident, dancing refrain of optimism: whatever obstacles stand in the way, the Revolution will succeed. The later sans-culotte stanzas turn that confidence into open threats against aristocrats and priests.