Napoleon Lost. His March Won | The Story of Napoleon’s March
The Final Nigun, on the Final Journey
Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, founder of Chabad Hasidism and known as the Alter Rebbe, composed ten sacred melodies of his own. He began composing them while still a disciple of the Maggid of Mezritch, and continued to develop and refine them throughout the years of his leadership.
Yet one of the melodies most closely associated with the Alter Rebbe was not composed by him at all.
It came from Napoleon’s army.
The story of this melody takes us to the final months of the Alter Rebbe’s life — and to his final journey. It was then, in the midst of one of the great wars of the age, that he took a foreign military tune and elevated it into the realm of holiness: Napoleon’s March.
As war raged between the Russian Empire under Tsar Alexander I and Napoleon’s France, Russian Jewry faced a question with profound consequences: what would a victory by either side mean for Jewish life?
The Alter Rebbe supported a Russian victory and foretold Napoleon’s eventual defeat, as documented at length by Rabbi Yehoshua Mondshine in HaMasa HaAcharon (The Last Journey).
In 1812, Napoleon invaded Russia at the head of the Grande Armée — the “Great Army,” one of the largest military forces Europe had yet seen. On June 24, Napoleon himself crossed the Niemen River near Kovno (present-day Kaunas), entering the Russian Empire. Over the following days, the main body of his army — some 300,000 men — crossed the river there over three pontoon bridges.
Imagine the scene: hundreds of thousands of soldiers crossing the Niemen on their way into Russia — to the victory march of Napoleon’s army. About six weeks later, while fleeing Liadi before that same advancing army, the Alter Rebbe would ask for that very melody to be brought to him.
The enormous scale of the invading army puts what followed into perspective. Within months, the force that had entered Russia with such overwhelming strength would suffer a devastating defeat and retreat — just as the Alter Rebbe had foretold.
But to the Alter Rebbe, this was not merely a military conflict.
His son and successor, Rabbi Dovber of Lubavitch — the Mitteler Rebbe — wrote a lengthy letter describing his father’s flight from the advancing French forces and the extraordinary events that occurred along the way. In it, he refers to Napoleon as “the enemy, the oppressor, the persecutor, and the notorious universal murderer”[1] — avoiding even the mention of his name.
He then records an even more forceful description in the name of the Alter Rebbe:
“He is the Satan who opposes with the full opposition of evil against good; he is the force of the kelipah and of severe judgment, the very opposite of kindness and goodness — only death and evil, and all his vitality is directed toward doing evil.” [2]
These sources show that, in the Alter Rebbe’s understanding, a spiritual struggle was unfolding alongside the physical war.
And within that struggle, music would play a surprising role.
In the Midst of the Escape: Bring the March
The story of Napoleon’s March was related by Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, the sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe, at the conclusion of the traditional Seudat Mashiach gathering on the last day of Passover in 1943.
The Alter Rebbe had left Liadi together with his family and a large group of Hasidim. The convoy consisted of sixty wagons, in addition to those traveling on foot, and was accompanied by Russian military officials assigned to protect it along the way. The first stage of the journey brought them across the Dnieper River.
The flight from Napoleon’s army began on Friday, the 29th of Av, 5572 (1812), on the eve of Shabbat and the eve of the Hebrew month of Elul.
It was at precisely this moment that the Alter Rebbe made an unexpected request:
“When the Alter Rebbe left Liadi because of Napoleon’s war, on the Friday preceding Shabbat Mevarchim Elul 5572 [1812],[3] he instructed that he be informed of the ‘march’ melody with which the French army had crossed the Russian border from the Prussian side. When the melody was brought and sung before the Alter Rebbe, he said that it was a melody of victory. He entered a state of profound deveikut, and at its conclusion declared: ‘Ultimately, didan notzach — ours will be the victory.’” [4]
The scene is extraordinary: while fleeing Napoleon’s advancing army, the Alter Rebbe asks to hear its own victory march.
He recognizes the essential character of the music — “a melody of victory” — enters a state of profound spiritual absorption, and then declares:
“Ultimately, didan notzach — ours will be the victory.”
The following day, on that very Shabbat, the Alter Rebbe delivered a short Hasidic discourse on the musical styles of different nations and the way music expresses the distinctive character of each people — a subject I explore in greater depth in my article on Eastern and Western music in the teachings of the Alter Rebbe.
The proximity of the two events is striking. The day before, the Alter Rebbe had asked to hear the march of Napoleon’s army; now, on the very next day, he was speaking about the music of different peoples and the distinctive character expressed through it.
Napoleon and Sennacherib
In a discourse from the same period, the Alter Rebbe compares Napoleon, emperor of France, with the biblical Sennacherib, king of Assyria.
He explains[5] that the spiritual force represented by Sennacherib is one of denial and disbelief, even exceeding that of Pharaoh, reaching the point of complete rejection of the Divine. According to the Mitteler Rebbe’s account cited above, the Alter Rebbe perceived a similar danger in Napoleon: the severing of humanity from faith.
He also connects Napoleon’s downfall with the downfall of Sennacherib.
There is a particularly intriguing musical detail in that comparison. Regarding the destruction of Sennacherib’s camp, the Talmud relates that his soldiers “heard song from the mouths of the holy creatures and died.”[6]
To Take the Nigun Was to Take the Victory
More than 160 years later, at a farbrengen on Shabbat Bereishit 1973, shortly after Simchat Torah, the Lubavitcher Rebbe offered a striking interpretation of what the Alter Rebbe had done:
The Alter Rebbe took the march from Napoleon — and by doing so, took the victory from him as well.[7]
This turns the story into something far more profound than the simple adoption of a foreign tune.
The Alter Rebbe did not erase the melody’s power or strip it of its character. On the contrary: he recognized within it the force of victory — and redirected that force toward holiness.
Napoleon’s army had swept deep into Russia after a series of major victories. Yet the campaign ultimately ended in the devastating retreat of the French army.
On another occasion, the Rebbe described the transformation of the melody in these words:
“A melody named after the adversary, ‘Napoleon’s March’ — this is a melody that was elevated into holiness.” [8]
And so the march entered the musical treasury of Chabad.
It did not lose its military character, its forward momentum, or its sense of confidence and victory. But its meaning was transformed completely.
The same musical force now became an expression of the victory of holiness.
The Final Victory: Napoleon’s March at the Close of Yom Kippur
The story of the march did not end with the Alter Rebbe’s final journey.
The final moments of Neilah, the closing prayer of Yom Kippur, lead into the last Kaddish and the shofar blast that marks the conclusion of the holiest day of the Jewish year.
To understand the power of this moment, one must understand the place of Yom Kippur within the Jewish Days of Judgment. Beginning on Rosh Hashanah, the individual — and the world itself — stands in judgment. As Yom Kippur draws to a close, the final moments of Neilah are understood as the time of sealing, when the judgment for the coming year reaches its culmination. And it is precisely at this climactic moment that the victory march breaks forth.
It is no longer the victory of one army over another. The march now gives voice to joy and confidence in the victory of holiness — of good over evil, of light over darkness — as the spiritual judgment reaches its conclusion Above.
Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn related that the Chabad Rebbes — including the Alter Rebbe himself — would sing a joyous melody during these final moments, before the shofar blast at the close of Neilah. In 1898, at the instruction of Rabbi Sholom Dovber Schneersohn, the fifth Lubavitcher Rebbe, Napoleon’s March began to be sung at this moment. The custom continued under Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn and later with the Lubavitcher Rebbe.
And so the transformation was complete.
A march once associated with Napoleon’s army as it advanced into Russia became the melody sung by Jews at the closing moments of Yom Kippur — a march of victory at the very hour of judgment and sealing.
The army disappeared.
The empire fell.
The march remained — but the victory now meant something entirely different.
Seven generations later, a remarkably similar story would unfold when the Lubavitcher Rebbe would take the national anthem of France and elevate its melody into the realm of holiness as well .
Sources and Notes
- Igrot Kodesh, Rabbi Dovber of Lubavitch (the Mitteler Rebbe), p. 33. ↩
- Ibid., p. 35. ↩
- See Rabbi Yehoshua Mondshine, HaMasa HaAcharon [The Last Journey], for an extensive account. ↩
- Sefer HaSichot 5703 (1943), p. 118, Pesach, sec. 97. It is noteworthy that the same talk also discusses a melody of the Mitteler Rebbe’s choir intended for the “attack” upon the animal soul. ↩
- Derush Ta’ar HaSekhirah, 5572 (1812). ↩
- Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 95b; Torat Chaim, Shemot 75c; ibid. 30c, and sources cited there. ↩
- Heichal HaNeginah, pp. 191, 314, 330. ↩
- Sichot Kodesh 5734, vol. 1, p. 101; Hebrew translation in Heichal HaNeginah, p. 193. ↩
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