Napoleon
- Title:
- Napoleon
- Alternate Title:
- Napoleon
- Collection:
- Persuasive Maps: PJ Mode Collection
- Creator:
- Voltz, Johann Michael, 1784-1858
- Other Creators:
- Ackermann, Rudolph
- Date:
- 1814
- Posted Date:
- 2015-08-25
- ID Number:
- 1035.01
- Collection Number:
- 8548
- File Name:
- PJM_1035_01.jpg
- Style/Period:
- 1800 - 1869
- Subject:
- Satirical
Other War & Peace
Napoleon - Measurement:
- 42 x 25 (sheet) (centimeters, height x width)
- Notes:
- This is an English-language version of the "corpse-head" or "hieroglyphic" map, "the most widely-known of all the caricatures directed against Napoleon." (Broadley 1911, 2:243). On October 19, 1813, Napoleon suffered a major defeat at Leipzig. By the end of the year, the German artist Johann Michael Voltz had produced and distributed this image in Berlin, copying the format of a famous, flattering Napoleon portrait from 1806, but adding scathing satirical elements and text. The broadside was "selling in Berlin as fast as impressions could be run off," (Ibid. 246), and by the spring, it had been reproduced and sold in various forms not only in Germany, England, Russia, Italy, Holland, Spain, Portugal and Sweden -- but in Paris as well! (Herbert 1989, 20).
The English-language version was produced by Rudolph Ackermann, an Anglo-German publisher who had been in Germany at the time Voltz's caricature first circulated. It reproduces the "Hieroglyphic Portrait of the Destroyer" at a much larger scale and adds a few local touches, such as the Garter motto "Honi soit" and the letter "R" for Prince Regent on the wrist-epaulet (Broadley 246). Napoleon is endowed with 13 lines of mock titles (e.g., "First Grave-Digger for burying alive"). A short explanation of the symbolism is provided
for a full discussion, see Broadley 244-46. On the map, a river of blood at the collar feeds the Oder, the Elbe, the Weser and the Rhine. Each of the cities named on the map is the place of a Napoleonic defeat. And the red badge lettered "Ehreforth" is a German-language pun on the town's name: "Honor-Lost." (Ibid).
In Thomas Hardy's "The Trumpet-Major," set at the time of the Napoleonic Wars, the protagonist shows a copy of the broadside to the heroine as "something to make us brave and patriotic." Hardy describes it: "It was a hieroglyphic profile of Napoleon. The hat represented a maimed French eagle; the face was ingeniously made up of human carcases, knotted and writhing together in such directions as to form a physiognomy; a band, or stock, shaped to resemble the English Channel, encircled his throat, and seemed to choke him; his epaulette was a hand tearing a cobweb that represented the treaty of peace with England; and his ear was a woman crouching over a dying child." (Hardy 1881, 2:40-41).
For further information on the Collector’s Notes and a Feedback/Contact Link, see https://persuasivemaps.library.cornell.edu/content/about-collection-personal-statement and https://persuasivemaps.library.cornell.edu/content/feedback-and-contact - Cite As:
- P.J. Mode collection of persuasive cartography, #8548. Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library.
- Repository:
- Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library
- Archival Collection:
- P.J. Mode collection of persuasive cartography
- Format:
- Image
- Rights:
- For important information about copyright and use, see http://persuasivemaps.library.cornell.edu/copyright.