A satire on Napoleon’s Russian campaign. “Cossacks, led by Platoff, pursue, across a river, a fox with the head and huge bicorne of Napoleon. The Russians ride their horses through the water. The fox, larger in scale than the other figures, takes a flying leap to the shore (right). He says: “Hark, I hear the Cry of Cossacks. The [sic] have got Scent of me -I must take to my heels once more, the are close to my Brush.” His tail is inscribed ‘Corsican Fox’. Across the lower edge of the design runs a strip of land on which are frogs; one, inscribed ‘French Frog’, waddles off, while one on the extreme left is being speared. Of the other frogs a few turn to oppose the Cossacks with bayonets; these have a tricolour flag; the majority are escaping to the right, a row of heads and sloped bayonets, with one eagle. Platoff, whose high fur cap has a long plume inscribed ‘Platoff’, riding with levelled spear, shouts: “Hark forward my boys get along! he runs in view. Yoics. Yoics. There he goes, Tally-ho!” His daughter, in the middle distance, rides through the water, pointing with the hand that holds the reins, and raising a whip; she shouts: “Hi, ho, Tally, ho! For a husband.” Cossacks gallop up from the background (left), leap from a low cliff into the river, and swim through it, one carrying a standard with the Russian eagle, behind the two Platoffs. In the background is a town flying a flag inscribed ‘Leapsic’; tiny horsemen, evidently Cossacks, gallop out of the city gate.”–British Museum online catalogue.

• Printmaker: Elmes, William, active 1797-1814, printmaker.
  
• Title: Cossack sports, or, The Platoff hunt in full cry after French game [graphic] / Wm. E.
  
• Publication: [London : Pubd. Novr. 9th 1813 by Thos. Tegg, No. 111 Cheapside, 9 November 1813]

Catalog Record & Digital Collection

813.11.09.01 Impression 2

Acquired June 2015