English Caricature and Satire on Napoleon I. Volume 2 (of 2)Ashton, John
History
English Caricature and Satire on Napoleon I. Volume 2 (of 2)
Ashton, John
Napoleon I, Emperor of the French, 1769-1821 -- Caricatures and cartoons
But these things cost money, and that was one of the things wanting to
Napoleon. The conditions of the treaty with him were shamefully broken.
Hear what he says himself about it:[44] ‘It was stipulated and agreed
to, that all the members of my family should be allowed to follow me
to Elba; but, in violation of that, my wife and child were seized,
detained, and never permitted to join a husband and a father. They were
also to have had the Duchies of Parma, Placentia, and Guastalla, which
they were deprived of. By the treaty, Prince Eugene was to have had a
principality in Italy, which was never given. My mother and brothers
were to receive pensions, which were also refused to them. My own
private property, and the savings which I had made on the civil list,
were to have been preserved for me. Instead of that, they were seized
in the hands of Labouillerie the treasurer, contrary to the treaty, and
all claims made by me rejected. The private property of my family was
to be held sacred: it was confiscated. The dotations assigned to the
army on the Mont Napoleon were to be preserved: they were suppressed;
nor were the hundred thousand francs which were to be given as pensions
to persons pointed out by me, ever paid. Moreover, assassins were sent
to Elba to murder me. Never,’ continued Napoleon, ‘have the terms of a
treaty been more evidently violated, and indeed openly scoffed at, than
those were by the allies.’
Louis the Eighteenth was very tame after Napoleon, who, in spite of
his draining France of men and treasure, had implanted a deep personal
love for him in the hearts of his people; and, from some fancied saying
of his, that ‘he would return in the spring,’ the violet, the flower
of spring, was taken as his emblem, and so worn. He was spoken of
under the name of Caporal Violette, or Papa Violette, and the people
comforted themselves with ‘En printemps il reviendra.’
There were several coloured engravings of bunches of violets,
bearing the portraits of Napoleon, Maria Louisa, and the King of
Rome--or Prince of Parma, as he was then called--published in France;
notably one by Cann, ‘Violettes du 20 Mars 1815,’ from which, in all
probability, Cruikshank took his caricature of ‘The Peddigree of
Corporal Violet (G. H. inv^t et del. etched by G. Cruikshank 9 June
1815)’; but, in the arrangement of the flowers, it is superior to any
of the French pictures that I have seen.
[Illustration: THE PEDDIGREE OF CORPORAL VIOLET.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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