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Chapter 1: How did the Napoleonic Wars influence the British national anthem?
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Chapter 2: What are the Jacobite origins of 'God Save the King'?
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Sancti gloria, abbia gloria, con su reina.
So that is the stirring song that England's finest will be belting out next week when we meet Croatia for the first match in our ultimately victorious 2026 World Cup campaign. So the campaign that will go down in history, seeing Thomas Tuchel rewarded with a knighthood. Harry Kane, hat trick in the final, all very exciting. So hello everybody.
Welcome to the second in our World Cup themed series about the history behind the national anthems of the most interesting contenders. I was about to say the top contenders, but I don't think South Africa are a top contender, but they're the most interesting.
Now, obviously, Tom, we were always going to do God Save the King because we are, of course, a patriotic podcast, but also because this is a brilliant example of how a very familiar anthem can open up this window into a very interesting area of history.
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Chapter 3: Which British monarch was 'God Save the King' originally written for?
Specifically in this case, a period of history we haven't done as much of on this show as we should have done, which is the 18th century. So we'll be talking a lot about the politics of the 18th century, but before then, just on the anthem itself, I think, very unfairly, people often diss this anthem, and they say it's a bit... I think because it's often played badly by the... A dirge.
They say it's a dirge.
A dirge. I think it's a legal requirement to say that it is a dirge. I don't think it is a dirge, but there you go. Well, I'm quite fond of it as well, I have to say. But I would... I mean, maybe you would disagree.
Chapter 4: What role did religion play in the anthem's significance during the Napoleonic Wars?
I don't think it has the kind of operatic power. Strutting. Bombastic. So we've done two national anthems before this. One was the previous one, the Star Spangled Banner. Yeah. burning the White House, attacking Baltimore, all of that. But before that, as part of our French Revolution series, we did the Marseillaise, episode 507, for people who haven't heard it.
Now, I know that you disagree on this. I think it is a thrilling national anthem.
Chapter 5: How did 'God Save the King' become enshrined as the national anthem?
I'm a little bit envious of it. And just to remind people the background to the Marseillaise, written in 1792 as the infant French Republic was – seriously facing the prospect of being strangled in its cradle by the invading armies of Austria and Prussia. This invasion was the opening shot in a war that Britain was going to enter very soon afterwards, following the execution of Louis XVI.
For both the American and the French revolutionaries, Britain really constitutes the great rival, the great opponent to their respective revolutions. The consequence of this is decades of conflict. With the Americans, they're at war for eight years through the War of Independence. Their republic would not have been established without that war.
The French, what begins as a revolutionary war, will end up the Napoleonic Wars and go on all the way from 1793 through to 1815, kind of on and off. Of course, this isn't just a military or naval conflict.
Chapter 6: What theories exist about the composer of 'God Save the King'?
It is an ideological one because both the American and the French revolutions, establish republics. And those republics proselytise a kind of militant repudiation of monarchy. And Britain is the monarchy par excellence.
But the way that ideological conflicts work, it's a ratchet effect, isn't it? So the more radical one side becomes, the more the other side doubles down on its previous ideological commitments. And that's true of British monarchism, isn't it?
That people more and more come to see the British monarchy not just as part of the furniture, but the more that tax evaders in the United States and Jacobins in France rail against the principle of monarchy, the more that the Edmund Burks of this world...
come to construct a kind of ideological defence of it and to actually see monarchy not just as something they've inherited, but as an intrinsically good and worthwhile thing in itself. Or the Jack Albreys, played by Russell Crowe.
Chapter 7: Why do some people view 'God Save the King' as a dirge?
Do you want to see a guillotine in Piccadilly?
Yes. Absolutely. The more that the French, for instance, go on about their republic, the more the British cling to the ideal of monarchy, the figure of George III as, you know, Farmer George, a kind of homely, lovable figure, as opposed to the menacing figure of Robespierre or Napoleon.
And of course, with the French Revolution, you also get the whole closing down churches and turning Notre Dame into a temple of reason kind of thing. And Britain is a very God-fearing country in this period. So people like Nelson, absolutely appalled by what they see as this kind of atheistic state that has emerged across the channel.
And it confirms them in their opinion that they are fighting people who have absolutely terrible opinions. They're anti-monarchy, they're anti-Christianity. And because of that, the inevitable corollary is that God must be
Chapter 8: How has the perception of 'God Save the King' changed over time?
on Britain's side. And if that is the case, then why shouldn't he save the king? It seems perfectly reasonable to ask God to save the king. And I think that particularly during the Napoleonic Wars, where it's a life or death struggle for Britain, this request to God to save the British king, it's not an idle formula. I mean, it is a really kind of desperately heartfelt prayer, I think.
Would you agree with that?
Well, I mean, if you're sailing to action at Trafalgar or something, you believe that you are on the side of what is right, that God is with you. Yeah. That Britain is defending God's cause against these atheistical Frenchmen under their corrupt, usurping tyrant, the Corsican monster. So, yeah, absolutely. I think people take it really seriously. And the Jack Albrey character... Or Nelson.
I mean, they're brilliant examples of that. Yeah.
And so the God aspect of the God Save the King is important. And this is something that I hadn't really appreciated until I started looking into the backstory of God Save the King. It is in this period, the Napoleonic Wars, that God Save the King is enshrined as the national anthem. And I'm putting the emphasis there on the word anthem. anthem.
I think we're so used to that as a phrase today that it's very easy to forget what anthem originally meant, which is essentially a musical setting for a religious text. Again, the context for why it matters that the God Save the King is an anthem is the fact that Britain sees itself at being a war with a militantly atheist rival. This atheism for the British is
focused by the fact that on the 14th of July 1795, the Marseillaise is officially enshrined France's Chant National, so the national song. And the British respond to that by terming God Save the King an anthem. So they are effectively sacralizing the idea of a national song. They are explicitly Christianizing it.
And this formulation, I'm glad to say, is so influential that by the end of the 19th century, so in 1879, even the French succumb and the Marseillaise is retrospectively titled by the French a national hymn rather than a national song.
Can I ask a question about, you say, you know, it's this point that it becomes enshrined as the country's anthem, but it's enshrined by convention rather than by parliamentary statute or something. Yeah.
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