English Caricature and Satire on Napoleon I. Volume 1 (of 2)Ashton, John
History
English Caricature and Satire on Napoleon I. Volume 1 (of 2)
Ashton, John
Napoleon I, Emperor of the French, 1769-1821 -- Caricatures and cartoons
The Court being opened, and John Bull on the bench, Napoleon
Buonaparte was put to the Bar, charged with various high
crimes, thieving, and misdemeanours. Counsellor Tell Truth
opened the case on the part of the prosecution, as follows:
_Counsellor._ May it please your worship Mr. John Bull, and
Gentlemen of the Jury, From the Indictment now before you,
you will perceive the prisoner stands charged as follows:
that he, Napoleon Buonaparte, on the 28th of December, 1793,
caused at Toulon, when the siege was over, fifteen hundred
men, women, and children, to be fired upon with grape shot;
that by these means he became a favourite of Robespierre, and,
in concert with that destroyer, did on the 13th Vendemaire,
October 4, 1795, sweep the streets of Paris near the Pont Neuf
with artillery, and covered the steps of St. Roch with heaps
of slaughtered bodies; the persons massacred on the whole
amounted to about eight thousand. At Pavia, the magistrates
having interfered to save the people from the bayonet, were
bound together, and shot by his order; he also burnt the town
of Benasco, and massacred the inhabitants. At Alexandria he
gave up the city to his soldiers for four hours; the old
people, women, and children, flew to the mosques, but the
mosques were no protection from brutal fury, though Buonaparte
professed himself a Turk;--at Jaffa, horrid to relate! three
thousand eight hundred prisoners were marched to a rising
ground, and there destroyed by means of musquetry, grape shot,
and the bayonet; in short, his various massacres, robberies,
and pillage, are too numerous to bring forward. I shall only
observe, that this gentle, this merciful man, at the above
place, Jaffa, finding his hospitals crowded with sick of his
own army, caused the whole to be poisoned; thus, in a few
hours, five hundred and eighty soldiers died miserably by order
of their General--; so says Sir Robert Wilson.
_John Bull._ Mercy on me, Mr. Tell Truth, let me hear no more,
it will lift my wig off with horror!!!
_Counsellor T. T._ I shall briefly observe, that this man,
after overrunning all Italy, France, Holland, Switzerland,
stealing our beloved George’s horses at Hanover, and various
other sacrifices to his unbounded ambition, had the audacity to
declare he would invade the happy shores of Great Britain, and
disturb the fireside of honest John Bull and his children; but
he was stopped in his career by a single English seaman, who
will lay the particulars before the Court. Crier, call in Tom
Mizen.
_Crier._ Tom Mizen, come into Court.
_John Bull._ Now, Mister Mizen, what have you to say?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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