A fact from Siege of Mainz (1793) appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 14 January 2007. The text of the entry was as follows:
Did you know... that during the 1793Siege of Mainz, Goethe was a military observer and later wrote a book about the bombardment of the city?
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Goethe, who witnessed the siege, reported the French soldiers singing mostly Ça ira and not the Marseillaise, when they left Mainz. Apparently the Marseillaise wasn't the principal patriotic song yet. 85.180.126.38 (talk) 10:10, 29 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]