“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]
803.08.01.01+
Acquired April 2023
Invitation to a dinner of the Guardians of the Asylum for Female Orphans. At top is a scene of a woman leading three orphan children away to the left, while the bodies of soldiers are taken away to the right; text with the details of the meeting engraved below. The whole is enclosed within a border of leaves.
