The holding in common of the same ideas and feelings was even more accentuated at the time of the Revolution, and no part of France was better prepared by her past history for the coming of a rule of Democracy and Equality. In 1787, Alsace was called upon for the first time to elect a Provincial Assembly which would represent the interests of a large number of domains, princely seignorial, and municipal, the commission chosen to make a report to the Assembly declared: "That which tends to feudalism carries a mark of servitude not to be tolerated in a well-constituted society." In the elections for the États Généraux, the little bourgeoisie won in all the cities against the oligarchy which desired to retain the control. Reubell, who played an important rôle in the Revolution, and who was a member of the Directory, was elected at Colmar. The peasants hailed with enthusiasm the decree of August 4, 1789, which marked the end of the feudal régime. The suppression of the custom-house duties between Alsace and the rest of France sealed the economic union between the new and the old countries so that the creation of the departments of the Upper and the Lower Rhine was effected without any difficulty. After the proclamation of the equality of the French people, the right to levy on the feudal rents in France, which the German princes who owned property in Alsace had exercised, could no longer exist. The Germans protested and the conflict which followed, in 1792, was the first war against the French Republic. In the report which the well-known civilian, Merlin de Douai, made to the _Constituante_, October 28, 1790, is the following passage, very characteristic of the bonds which unite Alsace to France: "The Alsatian people have united themselves to France because they wish so to do; it is their own desire, therefore, and not the treaty of Münster which has legalized the union." In February, 1790, Dietrich was elected mayor of Strasbourg against the conservative candidate, and in June, 1790, the partisans of the _Constituante_ celebrated amid great pomp and with the co-operation of the clergy of different denominations, the fêtes of the Federation of the Rhine. The Alsatian National Guard set up in the middle of a bridge over the Rhine, a tri-coloured flag which bore the inscription: "Here the Land of Liberty begins." It was on the night following the day that it was known at Strasbourg (April 25, 1792), that war had been declared, that Captain Rouget de l'Isle composed "the War Song for the Army of the Rhine," which under the name of _La Marseillaise_ became the national hymn of France. Kléber, who at that time commanded a battalion from the Upper Rhine, writes, November 15, 1792, in reference to the warlike enthusiasm of the Alsatian volunteers, "not one of them ever dreams of deserting his flag; the wounded, yes, and even the sick have implored me for mercy's sake, to keep them with the battalion."