English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century Part 3

John of Jerusalem had been rendered impossible by the action of France and Spain, who had destroyed the independence of the Order itself.

Reference was made to Bonaparte's attempts to interfere with the liberty of the English press, and the indignities he had offered to our amba.s.sador; but the real ground of quarrel was to be found in an official gasconade of Bonaparte's, in which he declared that "Britain could not contend single handed against France," a vainglorious boast, which (in those days at least) touched a chord which thrilled the patriotic feelings of every Englishman that loved his country.

Napoleon's next step--a simply detestable action--was quite in accordance with the faithless policy which he pursued towards this country. The treaty of Amiens had induced crowds of English to cross the Channel, and on the specious pretext that two French ships had been captured prior to the actual declaration of war, he issued a decree on the 22nd of May, 1803, for the arrest and imprisonment of all Englishmen in France, over eighteen and under sixty years of age, all subjects of the king of England between those ages being considered, for the purpose of this outrageous order, _as forming part of the English militia_. This measure was carried out with the utmost rigour, and the eleven thousand English who thus became prisoners of war were deprived of their liberty fifteen years, and regained it only in 1814.

[Ill.u.s.tration: JAMES GILLRAY. _January 11th, 1796._

TWOPENNY WHIST.

Mistress Humphrey and Betty, of St. James' Street, their neighbour Mortimer (a well-known picture dealer) and a German guest.

[A satire, by contrast, on the high stakes of "White's" and "Boodle's."]

_Face p. 16._]

ENGLISH ENTHUSIASM.

The feeling of the nation at this time may be judged by the debates in the Houses of Parliament. In the Commons, Mr. Grey moved an amendment, which, while it a.s.sured His Majesty of support in the war, expressed _disapprobation of the conduct of Ministers_. This amendment was rejected by 398 to 67. The unanimity in the Lords was still greater.

The official statement that England was unable to contend single-handed with France produced a violent outburst of indignation, and the amendment moved by Lord King, to omit words which charged France with the actual guilt and responsibility of breaking the treaty, was negatived by 142 to 10. This was on the 23rd of May. On the 20th of June a great meeting was held at Lloyds, for the purpose of promoting a subscription for carrying on the war. Six days later on, five thousand merchants, bankers, and other persons of position met at the Royal Exchange, and unanimously agreed to a declaration which expressed their determination to "stand or fall with their king and country." This resolution or declaration was seconded by the Secretary to the East India Company, and the meeting did not separate until "G.o.d save the King" and "Rule Britannia" had been sung, and nine cheers had been given for England and King George. On the 26th of August, His Majesty reviewed the London volunteers in Hyde Park, in the presence of the French princes, General Dumouriez, and two hundred thousand spectators; this military spectacle being followed on the 28th by a review, in the same place, of the Westminster, Lambeth, and Southwark corps. The number of volunteers actually enrolled in the metropolis and outparishes at this time was forty-six thousand.

The following year saw the final end of the great French Revolution; the names of the puppet "second" and "third" consuls had been long omitted from the public acts of the French Government. The motives of this omission were soon abundantly apparent; and in the month of May, 1804, Bonaparte was proclaimed Emperor of the French.

Some writers have doubted whether Napoleon entertained any serious intention of invading this country; but to doubt such intention would be really to doubt whether Nelson fell at Trafalgar, for that crushing defeat was simply the sequel and outcome of the collapse of the emperor's plans. The details of the invasion scheme were fully explained to General Sir Neil Campbell by Napoleon himself at Elba, in 1814, and afterwards confirmed by him in precisely similar terms to O'Meara at St.

Helena. Those plans were defeated by the suspicions and vigilance of Lord Nelson; by his habit of acting promptly upon his suspicions; by the alacrity with which the Admiralty of the day obeyed his warnings; by the prescience of Lord Collingwood; and by the consequent intercepting of the combined French and Spanish fleets off Ferrol by Sir Robert Calder, in July, 1806. The moment this happened, Napoleon saw that his game--so far at least as England was concerned--was at an end; and fertile in resources, he immediately carried out the second part of his programme.

Then followed, as we know, the campaign of Austerlitz, the treaty of Presburg, the war with Prussia, and finally the battle of Jena, in October, 1806.

BERLIN DECREE.

Ever bent on humiliating and crippling the resources of England, Napoleon on the 1st of November, 1806, issued his memorable "Berlin Decree," containing eleven clauses, of which this country formed the exclusive topic. By it, all trade and correspondence with the British Isles was prohibited; all letters and packets at the post office, addressed to England, or to an Englishman, or "written in English," were to be seized; every subject of England found _in any_ of the countries occupied by French troops or those of their allies, was to be made prisoner of war; all warehouses, merchandise, and property belonging to a subject of England were declared lawful prize; all trading in English merchandise forbidden; every article belonging to England, or coming from her colonies, or of her manufacture, was declared good prize; and English vessels were excluded from every European port.[10] This outrageous "decree" Bonaparte imposed upon every country that fell under the iron sway of his military despotism.

[Ill.u.s.tration: NAPOLEON FORTY-EIGHT HOURS AFTER LANDING.

"Ha, my little Boney! what dost think of Johnny Bull now? Plunder Old England, hay? Make French slaves of us all, hay? Ravish all our wives and daughters, hay? O, Lord help that silly head! To think that Johnny Bull would ever suffer those lanthorn jaws to become King of Old England's Roast Beef and Plum Pudding!"]

[Ill.u.s.tration: JOHN BULL OFFERING LITTLE BONEY FAIR PLAY.

BONAPARTE--"I'm a-coming! I'm a-coming!"

JOHN BULL--"You're a-coming!

If you mean to invade us, why make such a route?

I say, Little Boney,--why don't you come out?

Yes, d---- you, why don't you come out?"

FIGURES FROM GILLRAY'S NAPOLEONIC CARICATURES.

_Face p. 18._]

BASE POLICY OF BONAPARTE.

The policy, therefore, of the emperor towards England, which was contrary to all the usages of civilized warfare, will explain the bitter animosity with which he was regarded in this country. The English were molested everywhere; they were made prisoners at Verdun and in Holland; their property was confiscated in Portugal; Russia was cajoled, Prussia forced into a league against them, and Sweden menaced, because she persisted in maintaining her alliance with this country. The "Berlin Decree" was an infamous doc.u.ment, worthy rather the policy of a bandit chief than of a fair and honourable antagonist. It proclaimed war not against individuals, but against private property, and specially appealed to the cupidity of those to whom it was addressed. This base policy towards English subjects recoiled inevitably against its perpetrator; and its effects were soon felt in the fields of the Peninsula, the banishment to Elba, and above all, in the final consignment to the rock of St. Helena. We, on our part, ignored Bonaparte's right to the t.i.tle of emperor. With us, he was invariably "General Bonaparte," and nothing more; and in the graphic lampoons of Gillray, Rowlandson, and Cruikshank, he was exhibited under the most ludicrous circ.u.mstances in connection with the divorce, the defeats of Russia and the Peninsula, and even the paternity of his son the young king of Rome. These caricatures were brought to his notice by his spies and emissaries in England; they rendered him furious; and one of them--Gillray's admirable and, as it subsequently proved, prophetic satire of _The Handwriting on the Wall_--is said to have given him not only offence, but even serious uneasiness.

The tone of the English caricaturists may be gathered from one of the best of Woodward's satires, published in 1807. It is ent.i.tled _A Political Fair_, in which the various shows are labelled Russian, Danish, Swedish, Westphalian, Austrian, Dutch, Spanish, and even American. The best show in the fair is kept of course by John Bull & Co., whilst Bonaparte is the proprietor of a humble stall, whereat gingerbread kings and queens are sold wholesale and retail by his Imperial Majesty.[11] The same artist, in another but distinctly inferior satire (published in November, 1807), gives us _The Gallick Storehouse for English Shipping_: on one side we see Napoleon acc.u.mulating vast stores of Spanish, Danish, Dutch, and Swedish vessels, intended to annihilate the naval power of England--the shipbuilder, however, shrugs his shoulders and suggests it is but time thrown away, for as fast as the ships are built, John Bull "claps them into his storehouse over the way." The satire was suggested of course by the victory of Trafalgar in October, 1805; by Sir J. Duckworth's capture of French shipping in January, 1806; and by the surrender of the Danish fleet after the bombardment of Copenhagen, in September, 1807.[12]

BATTLE OF BAYLEN.

In a caricature published by Walker in 1808, we see Joseph Bonaparte (one of these Imperial ginger-bread monarchs) driven from Madrid by Spanish flies; the satire is ent.i.tled _Spanish Flies, or Boney taking an Immoderate Dose_, and has reference to the results of the Battle of Baylen, in Andalusia, one of the _very_ few victories ever obtained by the Spaniards against the French, where a division of 14,000 men surrendered to Castanos. This was on the 20th of July, and nine days afterwards Joseph retreated to Burgos with the crown jewels. The wretched Spaniards, however, were incapable of improving their victory; and General Castanos instead of following up the retreating enemy, went to Seville to fulfil a vow he had made of dedicating his unexpected victory to St. Ferdinand, on whose tomb he deposited the crown of laurel presented to him by his grateful countrymen. Of the Bonaparte caricatures of this year, no less than nineteen are due to the pencil of Thomas Rowlandson, and will be found fully described in Mr. Joseph Grego's exhaustive work[13] upon that artist and his works.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE KING OF BROBDINGNAG AND GULLIVER.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: TALLEYRAND, KING-AT-ARMS, BEARING HIS MASTER'S GENEALOGICAL TREE, SPRINGING FROM BUONE, BUTCHER.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: NAPOLEON IN HIS CORONATION ROBES.

FIGURES FROM GILLRAY'S NAPOLEONIC CARICATURES.

_Face p. 20._]

The year 1809 witnessed the divorce from Josephine, and the marriage of the emperor to Marie Louise. The purposes for which this matrimonial alliance was effected were made no secret of by the emperor, and were indicated of course in the plainest possible terms by the English contemporary caricaturists, who were certainly not troubled with any unnecessary scruples of prudery or delicacy. One of these satires, published by Tegg, on the 16th of August, 1810, is ent.i.tled _Boney and his New Wife, or a Quarrel about Nothing_, and indicates in the plainest possible terms that the purposes for which the divorce had been effected were as distant as ever. The result of this union, however, was the birth of the young king of Rome on the 20th of March, 1810, an event which set the pencils of our pictorial satirists once more in motion, and the young heir and his father were complimented by Rowlandson in a rough caricature, published by Tegg on the 9th of April, 1811, as _Boney the Second, the little Babboon [sic] created to devour French Monkies_.

BATTLE OF BAROSSA.

In March, 1811, was fought the battle of Barossa; while the same month Ma.s.sena, finding it difficult to maintain his army in a devastated country, instead of fulfilling his vain-glorious boast of driving "the English into their native element," began his own retreat from Santarem, abandoning part of his baggage and heavy artillery. Marching in a solid ma.s.s, his rear protected by one or two divisions, he retired towards the Mondego, preserving his army from any great serious disaster, though watchfully and vigorously pursued by Lord Wellington. The skilful generalship of the French marshal elicited of course no encomiums from the English caricaturists. On the contrary, we see (in "The Scourge" of 1st May, 1811) Wellington in the act of basting a French goose before a huge fire, a British bayonet forming the spit. While basting the goose with one hand, the English general holds over the fire in the other a frying-pan filled with French generals, some of whom--to escape the overpowering heat--are leaping into the fire; another British officer (probably intended for General Graham) blows the flames with a pair of bellows labelled "British bravery." Napoleon appears in a stew-pan over an adjoining boiler, while we find Marshal Ma.s.sena himself in a pickle-jar below. This satire is ent.i.tled, _British Cookery, or Out of the Frying-pan into the Fire_.

NAPOLEON'S STAR BEGINS TO WANE.

The star of Napoleon was beginning to wane in 1812. The snow made its first appearance in Russia on the 13th of October of that year, and the French emperor already commenced his preparations for retreat. This is referred to in a very clever caricature published by Tegg on the 1st of December, 1812, wherein we find _General Frost shaving Boney_ with a razor marked "Russian steel." Napoleon stands up to his knees in snow, and out of the nostrils of the snow fiend [General Frost] issue blasts labelled "North," "East," "Snow," and "Sleet." Seven days later on, we meet with a roughly-executed cartoon, _Polish Diet with French Dessert_, wherein we see Napoleon basted by General Benningsen, the spit being turned by a Russian bear. This caricature, no doubt, has reference to the disastrous defeat by Benningsen of the French advanced guard, thirty thousand strong, under Murat, on the 18th of October, 1812, when fifteen hundred prisoners, thirty-eight cannon, and the whole of the baggage of the corps, besides other trophies, fell into the victors' hands.

The retreat from Moscow is referred to in a satire published by Thomas Tegg on the 7th of March, 1813, labelled, _The Corsican Bloodhound beset by the Bears of Russia_; wherein Napoleon is represented as a mongrel bloodhound with a tin kettle tied to his tail, closely pursued by Russian bears. Various papers are flying out of the kettle, labelled "Oppression," "Famine," "Frost," "Destruction," "Death," "Horror,"

"Mortality," "Annihilation." "Push on, my lads," says one of the pursuers. "No grumbling; keep scent of him; no sucking of paws this winter, here is food for the bears in all the Russias." The emperor, in truth, had the narrowest escape from being made a prisoner by the Cossacks, a fact alluded to in another caricature published by Tegg in June, 1813, ent.i.tled, _Nap nearly Nab'd, or a Retreating Jump just in time_. Here, the emperor and one of his marshals are depicted leaping out of window, at the very moment when a Cossack with his lance appears outside the palings. "Vite," says the marshal, in the peculiar _patois_ adopted by the English caricaturists of the early part of the century, "Courez, mon Empereur, ce Diable de Cossack, dey spoil our dinner!!!"

THE BULLETIN.

Napoleon collected his marshals around him at Smorgoni, on the 5th of December, 1812, and dictated a bulletin which developed the horrors of the retreat, and explained to them his reasons for returning to Paris.

"I quit you," he said, "but go to seek three hundred thousand men." He then proceeded to lay the blame on the King of Westphalia, and his trusted and tried friend the Duc d'Abrantes; alleged that English torches had turned Moscow into a heap of ashes; and added (with greater truthfulness) that the cold had done the rest of the mischief. He entrusted the command to Murat, and bidding them farewell set out, accompanied only by Generals Coulaincourt, Duroc, and Mouton, the Mameluke Rustan, a captain of the Polish lancers, and an escort of Neapolitan hors.e.m.e.n. This event is referred to in a caricature, published by S. W. Fores on the 1st of January, 1813, ent.i.tled, _Boney returning from Russia covered with Glory, leaving his army in comfortable winter quarters_. Napoleon and Coulaincourt are seated in a sleigh driven by another general in jack boots, with a tremendous c.o.c.ked hat on his head, a huge sword by his side, and a formidable whip in his hand. Coulaincourt inquires, "Will your Majesty write the bulletin?"

"No," replies Napoleon; "you write it. Tell them we left the army all well, quite gay; in excellent quarters; plenty of provisions; that we travelled in great style; received everywhere with congratulations; and that I had almost completed the _repose_ of Europe" (a favourite expression of his). By way of contrast to these grandiloquent phrases, the eye is attracted to the surroundings. The ground is thickly coated with snow; in the foreground, two famished wretches cut and devour raw flesh from a dead horse. On all sides lie dead and dying men and animals, while in the distance we behold the flying and demoralized troops chased by a cloud of Cossacks. The English caricaturists follow the emperor into the sanct.i.ty of his private life; they depict in their own homely but forcible fashion the astonishment of the empress at his unexpected return, and the disgust of young "Boney the Second," who not only expresses surprise that his imperial sire had forgotten his promise to "bring him some Russians to cut up," but suggests that they seem to have "cut _him_ up" instead. These incidents are described in a satire ent.i.tled, _Nap's Glorious Return; or, the Conclusion of the Russian campaign_, published by Tegg, in June, 1813.

The crushing defeat of Vitoria, the crowning disaster of Leipzig--sustained the same year, the subsequent abdication of Bonaparte, the return from Elba, the brief incident of the "hundred days," the catastrophe of Waterloo, and the subsequent consignment of the great emperor to St. Helena, form of course the subjects of a host of graphic satires. Foremost amongst them (for Gillray's intellect was gone), must be mentioned the caricatures of Thomas Rowlandson and of George Cruikshank. The first being fully described in Mr. Grego's work, we are not called on to mention them here, while the last will be fully set out when we come to treat of the caricature work of George Cruikshank.

FRENCH ROYALIST SATIRES.

The French royalist satirists of course expressed their views on the situation. A French royalist caricature, published after Waterloo, represents Napoleon as a dancing bear forced to caper by England, his keeper, who makes an unsparing use of the lash, whilst Russia and Prussia play pipe and drum by way of music. A good answer, however, to this is found in a French caricature (published in the Napoleon interest), like most of the French satires of that period without date, ent.i.tled, _L'apres dinee des Anglais, par un Francais prisonnier-de-guerre_, which satirizes the after-dinner drinking propensities of the English of the period. The caricature, although neither flattering nor altogether decent, is probably not an exaggerated picture of English after-dinner conviviality while the century was young.