ABSTRACT
On 26 July 1803, when panic about an imminent French invasion was at its height, James Gillray published one of his most striking, yet most ambiguous, prints. An English volunteer soldier, oak leaves flourishing from his three-cornered hat like holly out of a Christmas pudding, waves aloft a pitchfork. On top of it is the head of Napoleon Bonaparte. It is just 48 hours since the French have landed, and the man who has conquered most of continental Europe has been brought to heel and destroyed by a corps of plebeian volunteers, the Union Jack raised high in their midst. So far, so inspiring: a typically professional piece of patriotic propaganda from a master artist. Yet the closer we look at this imaginary scene, the more likely we are to feel troubled. The face of the volunteer hero is bloated and coarse, his lips are gluttonous, his eyes dull. Bumptious and trite, he celebrates his victory as if the French consul were deaf not dead: ‘Plunder old England, hay? Make French slaves of us, hay? Ravish all our wives and daughters, hay? O Lord help that silly head!’ Yet, for all this boasting, it is in fact the victim’s severed head, and not the oafs who have decapitated him, which captures our attention. Gaunt, drained of blood, ruthlessly exposed, Napoleon Bonaparte still retains his high cheek-bones, his finely chiselled Roman nose, his hair fashionably cut à la Titus, his altogether classical profile. The arch-enemy, he is still in death an officer and a gentleman, and Gillray clearly cannot resist drawing him as such. Equally clearly, the artist has found it impossible to celebrate the ordinary civilian volunteer who is his fellow countryman without simultaneously demeaning him. 1
