English Caricature and Satire on Napoleon I. Volume 1 (of 2) — A Closer Reading

Authorial Method and Source Attribution

Ashton’s preface reveals a methodical editorial stance. He acknowledges discrepancies in historical dates—citing three different accounts of Napoleon’s departure from Elba—and explains how he resolved the problem by checking an almanac. This attention to factual precision carries into his descriptions of caricatures, where he names artists like Gillray, Rowlandson, Ansell, and Woodward when known, and otherwise relies on museum attributions. The frontispiece, he notes, is taken from a very rare print showing Napoleon in a non-military uniform, a detail that signals his interest in visual novelty and historical rarity. His voice is that of a compiler and curator, not a polemicist.

Diction in Dialogue and Captions

The caricatures Ashton reproduces often include dialogue that captures contemporary perceptions of Napoleon and British figures. In Ansell’s ‘A Game at Chess’ (1802), Bonaparte says, ‘Check to your King. Remember this is not the first time, and I think a very few Manœuvres more will compleatly convince you that I am better acquainted with the Game I am playing, than you are aware of.’ Cornwallis responds, ‘Curse it, I shall lose this game. You are too much for me.’ The language is direct, colloquial, and laced with anxiety. In ‘Cross examination,’ Bonaparte’s reply is ‘plain and simple’: ‘I have to tell you, Sir, that I do not desire to give you the information you seem to wish for.’ Such phrasing contrasts with the bluster of John Bull in ‘A Peaceable Pipe,’ who says, ‘Here’s to you, Master Boney Party; come, take another whiff, my hearty!’ The caricaturists use dialect and register to signal national character and political tension.

Visual and Verbal Satire of Political Figures

Woodward’s ‘The National Institute’s first Interview with their President’ (March 1802) places Napoleon under a canopy, receiving gifts from Sheridan, Fox, Bedford, and Burdett. Sheridan kneels, holding a phial and box, and begs Napoleon to ‘accept some true poetic Tincture, and a small Box of Pizarro 64 Pills.’ Fox carries ‘a pound and a half of Patriotism,’ Bedford offers ‘a few Bedford biscuits,’ and Burdett presents ‘a Phial of Genuine Bastile Balsam.’ The satire works through absurdly specific, allegorical objects—each tied to the donor’s public persona. Ashton’s description preserves the original captions verbatim, allowing the reader to see how caricaturists weaponized material culture (pills, biscuits, balsam) to mock political sycophancy and the peace negotiations.

Structure and Selection Criteria

Ashton organizes the volume chronologically, with each chapter covering a period of Napoleon’s career. The excerpts show that he includes not only well-known artists but also anonymous prints, and he explains his selection: ‘a careful selection has had to be made’ due to coarseness. He also provides brief historical summaries—for instance, listing the principal articles of the Treaty of Amiens that ‘will be found of use in understanding forthcoming caricatures.’ This structural choice frames the prints as primary documents that require contextual glosses. The result is a hybrid work: part catalogue, part historical commentary, with the author’s voice emerging only in the preface and occasional explanatory notes.

Readers approaching this volume should treat Ashton’s descriptions as a guided tour of a visual archive. The caricatures themselves are not reproduced in the text—only described—so the book functions as a detailed index to prints held in collections like the British Museum. Pay attention to the captions and dialogue Ashton quotes, as they reveal the rhetorical strategies of satirists who used Napoleon as a mirror for British anxieties about power, peace, and national identity.

Flipping through these caricatures, I remembered my grandfather’s worn copy of a natural-history manual, which he used to sketch leaves from memory on rainy afternoons. Both books ask you to pause, squint, and notice the deliberate exaggeration—the cartoonist’s swollen nose, the botanist’s softened vein. There’s comfort in seeing how artists shape the world into meaning. Art-Studies from Nature, as Applied to Design For the use of architects, designers, and manufacturers — Edition Insights felt the same way once.