Early Modern (1450 CE - 1800 CE)
Abstention Rate in Napoleonic Plebiscites
All regions of France did not support Napoleon equally. His rule aroused most enthusiasm in the east (a prerevolutionary border region crucial in the Napoleonic wars) and the center of the country, least in the west, which had long provided a home to royalist counterrevolution.
A Positive View?
This composition of the scene, in which a helpless Louis seems to be looking upward to heaven with his confessor, communicates humility. The executioners are relatively passive, leaving the King and confessor center stage.
A Grateful France Proclaims Napoleon the First Emperor of the Frence
In this engraving, Roman and contemporary themes are combined to glorify the new emperor. The absence of any clear representation of revolutionary liberty shows Napoleon moving away from the events of the preceding decade.
A French Gentleman of The Court of Louis XVI
A sarcastic treatment from England of French manners that contrasts the weakness of the old regime with revolutionary arrogance. The engraver also seems to be pointing toward two entirely different views of masculinity.
A Foreign Tree
These painted engravings ridicule the unrest wrought by French revolutionaries by contrasting French subversion with British stability.
A Democrat, or Reason and Philosophy
This cartoon by the popular British caricaturist James Gillray depicts the British politician Charles James Fox as a sans–culotte. Wearing a cockade in his wig and a bandage on his forehead, the unshaven Fox raises his bloody left hand as he lifts his left leg to break wind.
20 June 1791, Anonymous Drawing
In this depiction of the King’s arrest, the Queen risks her body to save her son, the crown prince.
Day of 10 August 1792
This engraving gives a ground–eye view of the action; far from an orderly operation, the "day" appears chaotic and menacing, as the inspired people face what appear to be cannons being fired by royal soldiers. This romantic image would become the predominant view of this event.
"The Song of the End": The Whole World Now Chases Him
Where Napoleon was once the conqueror, the world now avenges itself. This sense of reversal, felt widely outside of France, characterized a number of the caricatures of Napoleon, and indeed of the entire Revolution.
The Little Cartesian Devil
The reversal of circumstances that German cartoonists emphasized seemed generally to exercise considerable sway over this use of symbols. Here, Napoleon, who strode so large over Europe, is bottled and examined.