In addition to paintings, architecture, and literature, the Battle of Waterloo inspired caricature art immediately after the victory and for some time after. Prints detailing the outcome and effects of the famous battle appeared in Europe and Great Britain, and they make fascinating viewing today.
In England, many of these cartoons were featured in Ackermann’s Repository of Arts, a periodical published in London by Rudolph Ackermann. One of Ackermann’s most noted contributors was the caricaturist Thomas Rowlandson.
Here’s Rowlandson’s take on the Treaty of Paris, signed on November 20, 1815. News of the treaty reached England three days after the signing, and on November 27, the day General Peace was celebrated in London, this Rowlandson etching was exhibited at Ackermann’s shop in the Strand:
Here you can see Wellington leading the Bourbon King Louis XVIII up to the French throne while Blücher fires his gun at Napoleon, who falls down the stairs. The figure of Justice reclines on a cloud above the scene, holding her scales and her sword. The message here is that Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo has brought peace throughout Europe, and the rightful order of government has been restored to France.
Here’s another Rowlandson cartoon, also published in 1815 in the aftermath of the great battle:
Napoleon, his arms held up in surrender, is being attacked on both sides by Wellington and Blücher. Notice how the emperor’s crown is knocked off his head, while Napoleon’s Imperial Eagles desert him and fly away.
Caricaturists on both sides of the English Channel didn’t hold back their opinions on the more gruesome outcome of the famous battle. For example, here a French artist comments on the dreadful cost of Napoleon’s defeat. Death, holding his scythe, fiddles as Napoleon rides into the fray.
And here’s a British satire comparing the battle to a fox hunt. “Death of the Corsican-fox,” shows Wellington capturing Napoleon and holding him up in triumph to a pack of baying hounds.
This print is a revision of a remarkably similar 1803 cartoon by the noted caricaturist and printmaker, James Gillray. In Gillray’s print, the Corsican-fox (again Napoleon) is caught alive during a hunt by King George III. Gillray died on June 1 of 1815, but had he lived to see Waterloo I think he probably would have done this Wellington version, or something very much like it, himself.
There may not have been social media in 1815, much less cable news shows delivering endless commentary and divergent opinions. But the talented caricaturists of the time, both British and French, certainly knew how to get their points of view across!
Images from the Bodleian Libraries and Wikimedia Commons