How to stop an invader

 Isaac Cruikshank the Elder

How to stop an invader

London, Thomas Williamson , July 28^th 1803

Etching

Original hand colouring

200 x 265 mm

£320

Napoleon, in Consular dress, and huge cocked hat, throws up both his arms, dropping his sabre which flies through the air, as he receives a stab in the breast from a pitchfork thrust at him by John Bull (r.), a brawny and not uncomely yokel in a smock. He has asked: “Which is the way to London?” John: “Why thro’ my Body – but I’ze be thro’ your’n virst.” His buxom wife beside him flings the contents of a chamber-pot in the invader’s face. A French soldier lies on the ground on the extreme left behind Napoleon; he is savaged by John’s bulldog, its collar inscribed ‘John Bull’. In the background French soldiers flee ignominiously before countryfolk; one is attacked by a bulldog, another is tossed high by a bull.