Tag Archives: Decapitations

The martyr of equality

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“Orléans (Égalité), looking to the right, stands on the scaffold dressed as a grenadier of the National Guard. He holds out by the hair the decollated head of Louis XVI, while he waves his cap in his right hand. Behind (left) is the guillotine, with the King’s body; streams of blood pour from head and trunk. Below the scaffold (right) are heads and bayonets of the National Guard, and, behind, two large buildings, the windows and roofs filled with spectators; those on the roof wave their hats.”–British Museum online catalogue.

  • Printmaker: Cruikshank, Isaac, 1764-1811, printmaker.
  • Title: The martyr of equality [graphic] / I. Cruikshanks.
  • Publication: London : Pub. Feb. 12, 1793, by S.W. Fores, N. 3 Piccadilly, [12 February 1793]

Catalog Record

793.02.12.02

Acquired September 2023

The consequence of invasion, or, The hero’s reward

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“A very fat and jovial volunteer, dressed as a light horseman, holds ln his left hand a pole on which is the head of Napoleon in profile to the right. and wearing a huge cocked hat decorated with plumes, tricolour cockade, gold lace, and tassels. The hand that holds the pole holds also, by the hair, a bunch of bleeding heads which form a grisly garland round it. In his right hand is his sabre. He is surrounded by women; two embrace him, others hasten up; he swaggers with raised left leg, saying, “There you rouges, there! there’s the Boney Part – twenty more killed them!! twenty more killed them too!! I have destroyed half the Army with this same Toledo.” The women say, respectively: “Bless the Warrior that saved our Virgin charms”; “take care I’ll smother him with Kisses”; “Oh! what frightful Heads how ravishing they look, – they would have used us ill I am sure”; “ha ha, thats, that great man little Boney, how glum he looks.” An elderly spinster exclaims: “ah bless him he has saved us from Death and Vileation.” A handsome woman turns to a tall young man in civilian dress on the extreme left, saying, “There you Poltroon look how that noble Hero’s Caressed!” He turns away, saying, “Ods Niggins I wish I had been a Soldier too then the Girls would have run after me – but I never could bear the smell of Gun powder”.”–British Museum online catalogue.

  • Printmaker: Williams, Charles, active 1797-1830, printmaker.
  • Title: The consequence of invasion, or, The hero’s reward [graphic].
  • Publication: [London] : Pubd. August 1st, 1803, by S.W. Fores, 50 Piccadilly, [1 August 1803]

Catalog Record

803.08.01.01+

Acquired April 2023

After the invasion

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“Three volunteers or militiamen, three-quarter length figures, exult at the head of Bonaparte which one of them (right) holds up on a pitchfork, saying, “Here he is Exalted my Lads 24 Hours after Landing.” The head is in profile to the left, the sharp well-cut features contrast with those of the chubby yokels. The centre figure, holding out his hat, says, turning to the left: “Why Harkee, d’ye zee, I never liked Soldiering afore, but some how or other when I though [sic] of our Sal the bearns, the poor pigs, the Cows and the Geese, why I could have killed the whole Army my own Self.” He wears a smock with the crossed straps of a cartouche-box. The third man (left) in regimentals, but round-shouldered and unsoldierly, says: “Dang my Buttons if that beant the Head of that Rogue Boney – I told our Squire this Morning, what do you think say’s I the Lads of our Village can’t cut up a Regiment of them French Mounsheers, and as soon as the Lasses had given us a Kiss for good luck I could have sworn we should do it and so we have.” All three have hats turned up with favours and oak-twigs, the favours being inscribed respectively (left to right): ‘Hearts of Oak’; ‘Britons never will be Slaves’, and ‘We’ll fight and We’ll Conquer again and again’. In the spaces between these foreground figures is seen a distant encounter between English horse and foot and French invaders, who are being driven into the sea, on which are flat-bottomed boats, all on a very small scale. Two women search French corpses; one says: “why this is poor finding I have emtied the pocketts of a score and only found one head of garlic 9 onions & a parcel of pill Boxes.” Cf. British Museum Satires No. 8145.”–British Museum online catalogue.

  • Printmaker: Williams, Charles, active 1797-1830, printmaker.
  • Title: After the invasion [graphic] : the levée en masse, or, Britons strike home.
  • Publication: [London] : Pub. Augt. 6th, 1803, by S.W. Fores, 50 Piccadilly, [6 August 1803]

Catalog Record

802.08.06.01+

Acquired April 2023

Massacre of the French king!

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Minerva Press broadside detailing the unfortunate end of Louis XVI on the guillotine, January 21, 1793 in Paris. The broadside includes a woodcut illustration of a man lying face down waiting for the blade of the guillotine to drop; the decree of the French National Convention authorizing the execution of “Louis Capet;” descriptions of his execution and of the guillotine–“the modern beheading machine”–and a few anecdotes indicating “that for some time [the king] had been expecting his fate.”

 

  • Title: Massacre of the French king! : view of la guillotine, or the modern beheading machine, at Paris, by which the unfortunate Louis XVI (late King of France) suffered on the scaffold, January 21st, 1793.
  • Publication: London : Printed at the Minerva Office, for William Lane, Leadenhall-Street, and sold wholesale at one guinea per hundred : And retail by every bookseller, stationer, &c. in England, Scotland and Ireland, [1793]

Catalog Record

File 82 793M++

Acquired November 2022

Hell hounds rallying round the idol of France

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“A colossal but life-like bust of Napoleon is placed on a mound of decollated human heads. He gazes fixedly upwards in profile to the left; round his neck and bare breast is twisted a noose of rope. Round this idol dance demons with human heads, holding hands. They are naked except for head-coverings, and have horns, hairy legs, tail, with one leg terminating in a cloven hoof, the other in the claw of a bird of prey. These ‘Hell Hounds’ have labels hanging from a collar of rope, showing that they are ‘Caulincourt’, ‘Fouché’, ‘Savory’, with a pen in his hat (he succeeded Fouché as Minister of Police in 1810), ‘Vandamme’, ‘Davoust’, ‘Ney’, ‘Lefebre’. Two demons fly towards the emperor, holding a large wreath which is on fire, with the inscription ‘He Deserves A Crown of Pitch.’ This they are about to place on the idol’s head, towards which gallops through the air a small demon (right) on a goat, blowing a horn. In the foreground lie dead and dying soldiers, one is decapitated, another (right) is naked and has lost an arm which he holds out with an agonized expression towards the idol. In the background (left) soldiers are feeding a bonfire with ‘English Goods’. On the right is a blazing town.”–British Museum online catalogue.

 

  • Printmaker: Rowlandson, Thomas, 1756-1827, printmaker.
  • Title: Hell hounds rallying round the idol of France [graphic].
  • Publication: [London] : Pubd. April 8, 1815, by R. Ackermann, No. 101 Strand, [8 April 1815]

Catalog record

815.04.08.01+

Acquired November 2022

The ghost of Eustace Budgel Esqr. to the *man in blue

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The ghost of Eustace Budgel Esqr. to the *man in blue. Detailed description below

“A broadside satirising Robert Walpole with an etching in two parts. In the left-hand scene Frederick, Prince of Wales, stands with the Duke of Argyll and other gentlemen, pointing to the left where George II embraces Britannia. In the foreground, the grotesque figure of Walpole, wearing a coronet, kneels holding in five hands, bags of French and Spanish gold and another lettered, “I am Lord Corruption”. Behind him stands his daughter, Lady Mary, toying with a coronet. On the ground beside Walpole, the French cock perches on the back of the exhausted Imperial Eagle, but the British lion watching the conflict growls, “Now I’m rousing”. In the background, the white horse of Hanover kicks a man off a high rock; the man cries, “I’m lost”; a ship lies at anchor off Cartagena observed from another high rock to right by Admiral Vernon whose impetus towards the city is restrained by General Wentworth; below these two men sits Admiral Haddock chained to a rock (a reference to the limitation of his resources in dealing with the combined Spanish and French Mediterranean fleets). In the right-hand scene Walpole raises his hands in horror at the appearance in a cloud of smoke of the ghost of Eustace Budgell who holds out a paper described in the verses to left as a “black Account …Full twenty Winters of Misdeeds”; on the table at which Walpole is sitting is a large candlestick and letters addressed “A son Eminence” (Cardinal Fleury) and “à don [Sebastian] de la Quadra” and a book on “The Art of Bribery”. Budgell’s ghost raises his hand above his head to point at a scene of a beheading in the background above which flies Time while Justice sits on a column beside the scaffold and a crowd cheers below; over a doorway to right is a portrait of a Cardinal, presumably intended for Wolsey who is mentioned in the verses on the right. Engraved title and dedication to the Prince of Wales on a cloth above the scene supported by two putti; verses in two columns on either side condemning Walpole for his maladministration and celebrating the new prominence of the Prince of Wales and his followers; lines of music in two columns below the etching.”–British Museum online catalogue.

  • Title: The ghost of Eustace Budgel Esqr. to the *man in blue [graphic] : most humbly inscrib’d to His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales *see the Chinese Orphan, a tragedy for the reason of this term / designd by N.S. ; engrav’d by G.S.
  • Publication: [London] : Printed for Eliza Haywood at Fame in the Piazza, Covent Garden, and sold by the printsellers and pamphlet shops of London and Westminster, according to act of Parliament, [1742]

Catalog Record 

742.00.00.10++ Impression 2

Acquired January 2019