In 1875, France became officially a republic for the third time. Scarred by the short-lived fate of France’s two previous republics (1792–9, 1848–51), the leaders of the Third Republic set about instilling in the French people the idea that the identity of their nation was inseparable from republicanism. In 1879, the revolutionary hymn the ‘Marseillaise’ became France’s national anthem; in 1881 the anniversary of the storming of the Bastille, 14 July, became a national holiday; statues of ‘Marianne’, the female incarnation of the Republic, were erected all over the country.
