Alexandre de Laborde in or about 1807.
The song was popular during the remainder of the First Empire, popular with Hortense in her exile, and with the bonapartists during the Bourbon Restoration. During the Second Empire Partant pour la Syrie was the unofficial national anthem, while La Marsaillaise was forbidden but for the very end. With the collapse of Napoleon III’s rule the popularity of the song waned. The song was played to the emperor Napoleon III as he departed from Schloss Wilhelmshöhe to his exile in England in 1871. It remains part of the repertoire of French military music
