In the center of the sheet, a large, overfed John Bull is embraced by admiring women at his return from battle. In his right hand he holds an unsheathed sword; in the left he grips a pike topped by Napoleon's head and surrounded by a fistfull of decapitated heads hanging by their hair. Undeterred by the gruesome sight, women rush from all sides of the sheet to meet him. The image clearly indicates that for the hero, the motivation and reward of brave acts is the attention of women. The manly figure of John Bull is contrasted with an effetely elegant dandy (l.), who clenches his fists and stamps his feet, lamenting that he was not brave enough to be a soldier.
Notes:
Published by Fores, 1803-08-01.
Caption: The Yeomanry Calvary's First Essay
Dialogue: Dandy at left: "Ods Niggins I wish I had been a Soldier too then the Girls would have run after me, but I never could stand the smell of gunpowder."
Dialogue: Elegant woman in response to the Dandy's lament: "There you Poltroon look how that noble Hero's caressed!"
Dialogue: Women (left to right): "Ah Bless him he has saved us from Death and Vileation." "Bless the Warrior that saved our virgin charms." "Take care I'll smother him with kisses." "Oh what frighfull Heads how ravishing they look, they would have used us ill I am sure." "Ha, ha, that that great man little Boney how glum he looks."
Dialogue: Bull: "There you rouges, there! There's the BonePy part of them- twenty more killed them!! Twenty more killed them too!! I have killed half the army with this same Toledo."
Inscription: Folios of Caricatures lent out for the Evening.
"The consequence of invasion or the hero's reward. None but the brave dsere the fair."
(1803).
Napoleonic Satires from the Anne S. K. Brown Military Collection, Prints, Drawings and Watercolors from the Anne S.K. Brown Military Collection.
Brown Digital Repository. Brown University Library.
https://repository.library.brown.edu/studio/item/bdr:232129/
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