Bonaparte Crossing the Rhine: A Song History
"Bonaparte Crossing the Rhine" is a stately old-time march in D, and like many tunes with Napoleon in the title, its melody seems to be older than its name. The first strain turns up in several marches from Ireland, Scotland and England, and one writer has suggested the core tune was already in use as a military march during the Peninsular War, though he cited no evidence for it.[1] In America a related "Caledonian March" was in print by 1837 in Philadelphia and in Elias Howe's Musician's Companion of 1842.[1] The folklorist Samuel Bayard, writing in 1944, knew it as a common march in western Pennsylvania, his main collecting ground, where it went by local names such as "Bruce's March" and "The Star of Bethlehem"; he also linked it to the shape-note hymn tunes "Family Bible" (Southern Harmony, 1835) and "France" (New Harp of Columbia, 1867).[1]
Passage du Rhin à Kehl, etching and engraving after Martinet, c. 1820–1830, showing French troops crossing the Rhine on June 24, 1796, under General Moreau rather than Napoleon. Library of Congress. No known restrictions.
Among revival musicians, the Fuzzy Mountain String Band recorded it on their 1973 Rounder album Summer Oaks and Porch, having learned it from the Indiana fiddler John Summers, and John McCutcheon recorded it in 1975.[1][2] It is now a standard at old-time jams.[3] Be aware that a different march with the same title, in A minor, belongs to the Irish tradition: it appears in O'Neill's Irish Music (1915) and, under the same name, in an American musician's manuscript from the early 1800s.[4]
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