---
title: Revolution, counter-revolution and Napoleon's bulletins, 1789-1815
url: https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/french-revolution-napoleon/
description: 'for twenty-six years every side in the French wars fought with print and paint: revolutionaries drew the king as a pig and the queen as an Austrian…'
section: Case studies
---

![Illustration: a pre-1914 imperial intelligence-dossier collage of colonial telegraph logs, sepia field photography and empire maps.](https://propagandaarchive.org/static/generated/detail/hero-pre1914.jpg)

[Case studies](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/)

# Revolution, counter-revolution and Napoleon's bulletins, 1789-1815

At a glance

For twenty-six years every side in the French wars fought with print and paint: revolutionaries drew the king as a pig and the queen as an Austrian panther, royalists turned the executed king into a martyr…

- **When:** 1785–1815
- **Actor:** Revolutionary printsellers, pamphleteers and journalists…
- **Target:** Parisian and provincial French readers and crowds…
- **Confidence:** **documented** Primary documents, court records, official disclosures
- **Techniques:** [Name-calling](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/name-calling/) [Scapegoating](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/scapegoating/) [Transfer](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/transfer/) [Card stacking](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/card-stacking/) [Fear appeal](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/fear-appeal/) [Plain folks](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/plain-folks/)

Full details

- **Actor:** Revolutionary printsellers, pamphleteers and journalists (anonymous Paris caricaturists, the libelle trade, Jacques-René Hébert's Le Père Duchesne, the Committee of Public Safety); royalist and counter-revolutionary writers and printmakers (Les Actes des Apôtres, Jean-Gabriel Peltier, the printers of Louis XVI's testament); British writers and caricaturists (Edmund Burke, James Gillray, George Cruikshank, John Reeves's loyalist association); Napoleon Bonaparte's government (the Bulletins de la Grande Armée, Le Moniteur, the press decrees, Jacques-Louis David, Antoine-Jean Gros)
- **Target:** Parisian and provincial French readers and crowds; soldiers of the French armies; the British public; European courts and elites

On this page

- [What happened](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/french-revolution-napoleon/#what-happened)
- [How it works](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/french-revolution-napoleon/#how-it-works)
- [Then and now](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/french-revolution-napoleon/#then-and-now)
- [Positions on the record](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/french-revolution-napoleon/#positions-on-the-record)
- [Same-method test](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/french-revolution-napoleon/#same-method-test)
- [How to spot it](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/french-revolution-napoleon/#how-to-spot-it)
- [Images](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/french-revolution-napoleon/#images)
- [Sources](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/french-revolution-napoleon/#sources)

On this page

**Content note:** this page shows a 1792 British print of French revolutionaries as cannibals eating human body parts beside severed heads, a French print attacking Marie Antoinette with xenophobic and misogynist text, and describes pornographic pamphlets about her.

**In one line:** for twenty-six years every side in the French wars fought with print and paint: revolutionaries drew the king as a pig and the queen as an Austrian panther, royalists turned the executed king into a martyr, British caricaturists drew the revolution as cannibalism and Bonaparte as a raving dwarf, and Napoleon's government ran official war bulletins and heroic canvases while closing most of the Paris press.

![Anonymous French print, 1791: Henri IV, in armour, finds Louis XVI as a pig in a barrel among wine bottles. Caption: "Ventre saint gris où est mon fils? Quoi! c'est un cochon?" and "C'est lui même, il noye sa honte"](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/images/ventre-saint-gris-cochon-1791.jpg)

*"Ventre saint gris, where is my son? What! It's a pig?" "It's him; he is drowning his shame." Anonymous Paris etching, 1791, after the flight to Varennes. Henri IV, the popular founder of the Bourbon line, finds Louis XVI as a pig in a wine barrel. Bibliothèque nationale de France (de Vinck collection). Public domain.*

## What happened

- **1774-1789. The libelle trade.** Scandal pamphlets about the court, many printed abroad or under false imprints, circulate in France. Several target Marie Antoinette, such as *Les Amours de Charlot et Toinette* (1779), a sexual satire about the queen and the comte d'Artois. The crown tries to buy up and destroy editions; in 1774 it sends Beaumarchais to London on such a mission. Simon Burrows argues that much of the London libelle trade before 1789 worked as blackmail: the pamphlet was written to be bought off.
- **1785-1786. The Diamond Necklace affair.** Jewellers are defrauded of a diamond necklace by the adventuress Jeanne de La Motte, who persuades Cardinal de Rohan that the queen wants it. On 31 May 1786 the Paris Parlement acquits Rohan. Historians agree the queen had no part in the fraud, but the trial fixes an image of her as extravagant and secretive. La Motte, branded and imprisoned, escapes to London in 1787 and publishes memoirs in 1789 that accuse the queen.
- **1789-1793. Pornographic pamphlets.** After press controls collapse in 1789 the attacks become explicit. The *Essai historique sur la vie de Marie-Antoinette* circulates in expanded editions, and *Les Fureurs utérines de Marie-Antoinette* appears in 1791. These texts accuse the queen of orgies, lesbianism and plotting with Austria. At her trial in October 1793 the prosecution adds Hébert's charge of incest with her son, which she answers with an appeal to all mothers in the courtroom. She is executed on 16 October 1793.
- **June 1791. Varennes.** The royal family's flight is stopped at Varennes on 21 June and brought back to Paris. Printsellers answer with a run of pig caricatures: Louis XVI as a hog, the family as "pigs brought back to the sty". *Le Roi Janus* shows him with two crowned faces, one promising a man holding a book marked "Constitution" *"Je soutiendrai la Constitution"* (I will uphold the Constitution), the other telling a cleric *"Je détruirai la Constitution"* (I will destroy it). He formally accepts the Constitution on 14 September 1791.

![Le Roi Janus, ou l'homme à deux visages: Louis XVI with two crowned heads, one telling a man with a book "Je soutiendrai la Constitution", the other telling a cleric "Je détruirai la Constitution"](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/images/roi-janus-deux-visages-1791.jpg)

*Le Roi Janus, ou l'homme à deux visages ("The Janus king, or the two-faced man"). Anonymous Paris etching, 1791-1792. Bibliothèque nationale de France. Public domain.*

- **1789-1791. Royalist satire.** The counter-revolutionary journal *Les Actes des Apôtres* (from late 1789; Jean-Gabriel Peltier, Antoine de Rivarol and others) mocks the National Assembly's deputies by name.
- **1790. Burke and his answerers.** Edmund Burke's *Reflections on the Revolution in France* (London, J. Dodsley, 1 November 1790) answers Richard Price's sermon of November 1789. Its set piece is the queen driven from Versailles on 6 October 1789, with the lament that "the age of chivalry is gone". It warns that learning will be "trodden down under the hoofs of a swinish multitude". Mary Wollstonecraft (1790) and Thomas Paine (*Rights of Man*, 1791) answer him; Paine's line is that Burke "pities the plumage, but forgets the dying bird". Radicals take up the insult as a banner: Thomas Spence's weekly *Pig's Meat* (1793-1795).
- **1790-1794. Le Père Duchesne.** Jacques-René Hébert writes his paper in the voice of a foul-mouthed stove merchant, calling for the punishment of aristocrats, priests and the queen. Hébert is guillotined in March 1794.
- **20 September 1792.** Two weeks after the September Massacres in Paris prisons, Hannah Humphrey in London publishes Gillray's *Un petit souper à la Parisienne*: a sans-culotte family eats eyes, hearts and entrails, a child roasts on a spit and the heads of victims lie on the table. **21 December 1792:** Gillray's *French Liberty, British Slavery* sets a starving Frenchman chewing onions beside a fat John Bull eating beef and grumbling that taxes make "slaves" of Englishmen. The same winter John Reeves founds the Association for Preserving Liberty and Property against Republicans and Levellers (November 1792), and loyalist tracts such as Hannah More's *Village Politics* (1792) circulate.

**Content note:** Caricature showing cannibalism. This object is shown as it was published. [Why](https://propagandaarchive.org/about/#as-it-was) ![Gillray, Un petit souper à la Parisienne, 1792: a sans-culotte family eats human eyes, hearts and entrails around a table bearing a severed head, a child roasts on a spit, corpses lie on the floor](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/images/gillray-petit-souper-1792.jpg)

*James Gillray, Un petit souper, à la Parisienne, or, A Family of Sans-Culotts Refreshing after the Fatigues of the Day, published by Hannah Humphrey, London, 20 September 1792. Yale Center for British Art. Public domain (CC0 scan).*

![Gillray, French Liberty, British Slavery, 1792: left, a starving Frenchman eats onions by a cold hearth; right, a fat Englishman carves roast beef and complains of taxes](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/images/gillray-french-liberty-british-slavery-1792.jpg)

*James Gillray, French Liberty, British Slavery, published by Hannah Humphrey, London, 21 December 1792. Library of Congress. Public domain.*

- **1793. The royalist martyr.** Louis XVI is executed on 21 January 1793. His testament, written on 25 December 1792, is printed again and again, often with mourning emblems such as urns, weeping figures and willows. In the Vendée, insurgents wear the Sacred Heart badge.

![Royalist print, 1793: a mourning woman leans on a draped funeral urn beside a tablet inscribed "Testament de Louis XVI"; a weeping cherub carries a scroll dated 21 janvier 1793](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/images/testament-louis-xvi-print-1793.jpg)

*21 janvier 1793: Testament de Louis XVI. Anonymous royalist mourning print, 1793. Bibliothèque nationale de France. Public domain.*

- **1794.** The Committee of Public Safety asks Jacques-Louis David to design caricatures against the British government (Cuno, 1988).
- **1797-1799. Bonaparte's own papers.** As general in Italy, Bonaparte sponsors army newspapers (*Courrier de l'Armée d'Italie*, *La France vue de l'Armée d'Italie*) that carry his version of the campaign to Paris (Hanley, 2005).
- **March 1799. Jaffa.** After taking Jaffa (7 March) the French army kills a large number of Ottoman prisoners who had surrendered; figures vary by source, in the thousands. French accounts justify it on grounds of broken parole and lack of food. On 11 March Bonaparte visits the plague hospital.
- **28 December 1799 and 17 January 1800.** *Le Moniteur universel* becomes the government's official paper. The decree of 27 Nivôse Year VIII (17 January 1800) allows only thirteen political newspapers to keep publishing in Paris, closing about sixty. By 1811 Paris has four. A 1810 decree sets up a directorate to censor books and printing.
- **1801.** Charles IV of Spain commissions David's *Bonaparte Crossing the Grand Saint-Bernard*: the First Consul on a rearing horse, pointing uphill, with the names Bonaparte, Hannibal and "Karolus Magnus" cut into the rock at his feet. David and his studio paint five versions by 1805.

![David, Bonaparte Crossing the Grand Saint-Bernard, 1801: Bonaparte on a rearing white horse on a mountain path, cloak blowing, pointing upward; names carved in the rock below](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/images/david-bonaparte-crossing-alps-1801.jpg)

*Jacques-Louis David, Bonaparte Crossing the Grand Saint-Bernard, first version, 1801. Musée national du Château de Malmaison. Public domain.*

![Delaroche, Bonaparte Crossing the Alps, 1850: Bonaparte, in a grey coat and hunched against the cold, rides a mule led by a guide through snow](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/images/delaroche-bonaparte-crossing-alps-1850.jpg)

*Paul Delaroche, Bonaparte Crossing the Alps, 1850, commissioned by the 3rd Earl of Onslow. Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool. Public domain.*

- **1802-1804. The Jaffa dispute.** Robert Wilson's *History of the British Expedition to Egypt* (London, 1802) publishes the prisoner killings and alleges that Bonaparte also had French plague patients at Jaffa poisoned with opium before the retreat. French witnesses deny the poisoning or give conflicting accounts. In 1804 Gros shows *Bonaparte Visiting the Plague-Stricken at Jaffa* at the Salon, with Bonaparte touching a sick man's sore while an officer beside him holds a cloth to his face.

![Gros, Bonaparte Visiting the Plague-Stricken at Jaffa, 1804: under Moorish arches Bonaparte touches the armpit sore of a half-naked plague victim; an officer beside him covers his mouth; the sick and dying lie in the foreground](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/images/gros-plague-stricken-jaffa-1804.jpg)

*Antoine-Jean Gros, Bonaparte Visiting the Plague-Stricken at Jaffa (11 March 1799), Salon of 1804. Musée du Louvre. Public domain.*

- **1803.** Peltier, now an émigré in London, is tried there in February 1803 for libelling the First Consul, at French request, and convicted. On 13 March Bonaparte berates the British ambassador Lord Whitworth at the Tuileries. War resumes in May, and Gillray publishes *Maniac-Ravings, or Little Boney in a Strong Fit* (24 May), which cites Whitworth's account; among the words exploding from Bonaparte's head are "Liberty of the British Press" and "London Newspapers". From 1797 Gillray had received a government pension (Godfrey, 2001).

![Gillray, Maniac-Ravings, or Little Boney in a Strong Fit, 1803: a small Bonaparte kicks over a chair and globe, words about the British press, Malta, invasion and revenge exploding from his head](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/images/gillray-maniac-ravings-little-boney-1803.jpg)

*James Gillray, Maniac-Ravings, or Little Boney in a Strong Fit, London, 24 May 1803. Library of Congress. Public domain.*

- **1805.** Gillray's *The Plumb-pudding in Danger* (26 February) shows Pitt and Bonaparte carving up the globe between them: British caricature did not spare its own prime minister.

![Gillray, The Plumb-pudding in Danger, 1805: Pitt and Bonaparte, seated at a table, carve a globe-shaped pudding, Pitt taking the ocean and Bonaparte Europe](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/images/gillray-plumb-pudding-in-danger-1805.jpg)

*James Gillray, The Plumb-pudding in Danger, or, State Epicures Taking un Petit Souper, London, Hannah Humphrey, 26 February 1805. Library of Congress. Public domain.*

- **1805-1812. The bulletins.** The *Bulletins de la Grande Armée* are drafted under Napoleon's direction, printed in *Le Moniteur*, reprinted by prefects and posted across France. They cut French losses and inflate enemy ones; the bulletin on the costly battle of Eylau (February 1807) is a commonly cited example. The phrase *mentir comme un bulletin*, "to lie like a bulletin", passed into French as a saying. The 29th bulletin (Molodechno, 3 December 1812) does admit the destruction of the army in Russia by cold, but ends: *"La santé de S.M. n'a jamais été meilleure"* ("His Majesty's health has never been better").

![Printed poster of the 29th Bulletin de la Grande Armée, Molodechno, 3 December 1812, printed by order of the prefect of the Bouches-du-Rhône](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/images/twenty-ninth-bulletin-grande-armee-1812.jpg)

*Vingt-neuvième Bulletin de la Grande Armée, dated Molodechno, 3 December 1812, reprinted at Marseille by order of the prefect of the Bouches-du-Rhône (Imprimerie de Mossy). Public domain.*

![British print, December 1812: Napoleon, buried in snow to the neck, dictates a bulletin to a secretary while frozen soldiers' heads poke out of the drifts](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/images/cruikshank-boney-hatching-bulletin-1812.jpg)

*Boney Hatching a Bulletin, or Snug Winter Quarters!!!, London, December 1812. Attributed to George Cruikshank (the Bibliothèque nationale impression is signed "G Ck"); the Library of Congress lists the artist as unknown. Public domain.*

- **December 1812.** A London print answers the bulletin directly: Napoleon, buried in snow, dictates news of "comfortable winter quarters" and tells his secretary to "tell any thing but the Truth". George Cruikshank's prints of "Boney" continue through 1814 and 1815.

## How it works

- [Name-calling](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/name-calling/): labels do the work before any charge is argued. *La Panthère autrichienne* calls the queen "cette affreuse Messaline" and "la Médicis du 18e siècle"; Varennes prints call the royal family pigs; Burke's "swinish multitude" and Gillray's "Little Boney" compress a class and a head of state into an animal or a child. The method is the same whether the label points at a queen, a crowd or an emperor.

**Content note:** Print attacking Marie Antoinette as a foreigner, "the Austrian panther". This object is shown as it was published. [Why](https://propagandaarchive.org/about/#as-it-was) ![La Panthère autrichienne: a profile medallion of Marie Antoinette labelled "la Médicis du 18e siècle" hangs inside a street lantern, with a text calling her "cette affreuse Messaline" of mixed foreign blood, like Judas](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/images/panthere-autrichienne-1792.jpg)

*La Panthère autrichienne, vouée au mépris et à l'exécration de la nation française, Paris, Villeneuve, after 1792. The queen's portrait hangs in a lantern, the lamp-posts used for lynchings in 1789. Bibliothèque nationale de France. Public domain.*

- [Scapegoating](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/scapegoating/): the panther print's text says the queen is made "of several races", Lorraine, German, Austrian, Bohemian, and "put her hands in the dish to steal and squander the treasures of France". France's debt and military failure are loaded onto one foreign-born woman. The *Essai historique* and *Fureurs utérines* pamphlets do the same with sexual accusation.
- [Transfer](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/transfer/): David carves Hannibal and Charlemagne into the rock under Bonaparte, borrowing their prestige. Gros shows him touching a plague sore, which Walter Friedlaender (1941) read as a borrowing of the French kings' "royal touch" for scrofula. Royalist mourning prints transfer the imagery of Christian martyrdom (urn, cherub, testament) onto the executed king.
- [Card stacking](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/card-stacking/): the bulletins select and order the facts; the 29th sets a lost army beside the emperor's excellent health. Gros's canvas shows the visit of 11 March and none of the prisoner killings days earlier. On the other side, Burke's account of 6 October puts the queen's peril at the centre, which Paine answered by saying Burke "pities the plumage, but forgets the dying bird". Gillray's *French Liberty, British Slavery* compares a starving Frenchman with a well-fed Englishman as if these were the two countries' typical conditions.
- [Fear appeal](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/fear-appeal/): *Un petit souper* offers British readers cannibal neighbours two weeks after the September Massacres; *Maniac-Ravings* spells out "Invasion!" and "British Slavery & everlasting Chains" in Bonaparte's own mouth. Hébert's *Père Duchesne* warned daily of plots by aristocrats, priests and the Austrian queen.
- [Plain folks](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/plain-folks/): Hébert writes as a stove merchant who swears, not as a Paris journalist; John Bull in Gillray and the country characters of Hannah More's *Village Politics* speak for the loyalist side in the same homely register.

## Then and now

**Content note:** Dehumanizing caricature of Germans as an ape, implied sexual violence and partial nudity. This object is shown as it was published. [Why](https://propagandaarchive.org/about/#as-it-was) ![Destroy This Mad Brute - Enlist (1917)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/destroy-this-mad-brute-1917.jpg)

*[Destroy This Mad Brute — Enlist](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/destroy-this-mad-brute-1917/), U.S. Army recruiting poster by Harry R. Hopps, 1917. Public domain.*

Gillray's cannibal sans-culottes and Hopps's ape in a German helmet use the same move: the enemy is drawn as a creature that eats or carries off the viewer's own people, so the war becomes defence of the home. The differences are plain. Gillray's print was a private commercial sheet, sold in a London shop to buyers who knew the September Massacres had happened; the 1917 poster was issued by a government recruiting service to fill an army. The later ['Mission Accomplished' banner on USS Abraham Lincoln](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/mission-accomplished-banner-2003/) shows a government staging a success message around a war that went on; the Napoleonic bulletins were a regular official series under one ruler's direction, backed by a press he had cut to a handful of titles. For the print wars on either side of these, see [The English Civil War pamphlet war, 1641-1649](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/english-civil-war-pamphlets/) and [Join or Die to the Boston Massacre: patriot and loyalist print, 1754-1783](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/american-revolution-prints/).

## Positions on the record

- **Revolutionary printmakers and journalists:** they presented the king's flight as proof of betrayal and the queen as the channel of Austrian and aristocratic plotting. Hébert's paper presented itself as the voice of the common people.
- **Royalists and counter-revolutionaries:** they presented the revolution as usurpation and the king as a Christian martyr, and Peltier's counsel, James Mackintosh, defended his London writings against Bonaparte as free comment on a foreign ruler.
- **Burke and British loyalists:** Burke argued that the revolution destroyed inherited liberty and would end in tyranny; the Reeves association said it defended "liberty and property".
- **Napoleon's government:** the 1800 decree's preamble said some Paris papers were instruments in the hands of the Republic's enemies, and the bulletins were issued as the army's official news.
- **Historians:** Darnton, Hunt, Thomas and de Baecque treat the anti-queen pamphlets as a key strand of the monarchy's loss of sacred standing; Burrows stresses that much of the pre-1789 trade was blackmail aimed at payment, not at revolution. Holtman documents the bulletins' distortions, Hanley the Italian army papers. On Jaffa, historians accept the killing of prisoners; the poisoning of French plague patients is still disputed.
- **This archive's reading:** documented: the prints, texts and paintings shown here, their dates and publishers, the 1800 and 1810 decrees, the prisoner killings at Jaffa, and Gillray's government pension. **Not shown:** that Marie Antoinette did what the libelles describe (no evidence supports the sexual charges, and the necklace trial cleared her of the fraud); that Bonaparte ordered the poisoning of patients at Jaffa (Wilson's allegation is contested); and that Gillray's 1792 prints were commissioned by the government (the pension dates from 1797). Every side's surviving material is shown at similar length; royalist caricature survives less well in open collections than revolutionary and British prints, so royalist material here is mostly texts and mourning prints.

## Same-method test

Swap the flags and the finding holds. An animal label for a queen (the panther) and for a crowd ("swinish multitude") is [Name-calling](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/name-calling/) either way. A war report that pairs a destroyed army with the ruler's good health is [Card stacking](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/card-stacking/) whether it comes from Napoleon or from a British or Russian headquarters. Gillray's cannibal family and a French print of Pitt as a devil would be scored the same way here; so would David's Hannibal inscription and a royalist print turning Louis XVI into a saint.

## How to spot it

- Ask who printed the sheet and who paid: a shop, a pensioned artist, a prefect, a party paper or an anonymous press abroad.
- Check the date against the event. Gillray's *Petit souper* came two weeks after the massacres; Gros's canvas came five years after Jaffa and two after Wilson's charge.
- Look for borrowed names and gestures (Hannibal, the royal touch, Judas, the martyr's urn) that let an image claim more than it says.
- Read the whole bulletin: the admission and the reassurance are often in the same document.
- Compare with the other side's version of the same day, such as David's horse with Delaroche's mule.

## Images

| Image | Source | Licence |
| --- | --- | --- |
| *Ventre saint gris... c'est un cochon?* (1791) | [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ventre_saint_gris_ou_est_mon_fils_%3F_Quoi_!_c%27est_un_cochon_%3F_C%27est_lui_m%C3%AAme,_il_noye_sa_honte_-_estampe_-_non_identifi%C3%A9_-_btv1b69478264.jpg), Bibliothèque nationale de France | Public domain (PD-US-expired) |
| *Le Roi Janus, ou l'homme à deux visages* (1791-1792) | [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Le_Roi_Janus,_ou_l%27homme_%C3%A0_deux_visages_-_estampe_-_non_identifi%C3%A9_-_btv1b6948132r.jpg), Bibliothèque nationale de France | Public domain |
| *La Panthère autrichienne* (after 1792) | [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:La_Panth%C3%A8re_Autrichienne_Vou%C3%A9_(sic)_au_m%C3%A9pris_et_%C3%A0_l%27ex%C3%A9cration_de_la_nation_fran%C3%A7aises_dans_sa_post%C3%A9rit%C3%A9_la_plus_recul%C3%A9e_-_estampe_-_btv1b6941783z.jpg), Bibliothèque nationale de France | Public domain (PD-France) |
| Gillray, *Un petit souper à la Parisienne* (1792) | [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:James_Gillray_-_Un_Petit_Souper,_a_La_Parisienne,_-_or_-_A_Family_of_Sans-Culotts_Refreshing,_After_the_Fatigues_of_-_B1981.25.956_-_Yale_Center_for_British_Art.jpg), Yale Center for British Art | Public domain (CC0 scan) |
| Gillray, *French Liberty, British Slavery* (1792) | [Library of Congress](https://www.loc.gov/item/98514300/) | Public domain; no known restrictions |
| *21 janvier 1793: Testament de Louis XVI* (1793) | [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:21_janvier_1793_-_Testament_de_Louis_XVI_-_estampe_-_non_identifi%C3%A9_-_btv1b69497005.jpg), Bibliothèque nationale de France | Public domain |
| David, *Bonaparte Crossing the Grand Saint-Bernard* (1801) | [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:David_-_Napoleon_crossing_the_Alps_-_Malmaison1.jpg), Château de Malmaison | Public domain (PD-Art) |
| Delaroche, *Bonaparte Crossing the Alps* (1850) | [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Paul_Delaroche_-_Napoleon_Crossing_the_Alps_-_Google_Art_Project_2.jpg), Walker Art Gallery | Public domain (PD-Art) |
| Gros, *Bonaparte Visiting the Plague-Stricken at Jaffa* (1804) | [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Antoine-Jean_Gros_-_Bonaparte_Visiting_the_Plague_Victims_of_Jaffa.jpeg), Musée du Louvre | Public domain (PD-Art) |
| Gillray, *Maniac-Ravings, or Little Boney in a Strong Fit* (1803) | [Library of Congress](https://www.loc.gov/item/94509079/) | Public domain; no known restrictions |
| Gillray, *The Plumb-pudding in Danger* (1805) | [Library of Congress](https://www.loc.gov/item/2001695072/) | Public domain; no known restrictions |
| 29th *Bulletin de la Grande Armée* (1812) | [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Vingt-neuvi%C3%A8me_bulletin_de_la_Grande_Arm%C3%A9e.JPG) | Public domain (PD-Art) |
| *Boney Hatching a Bulletin* (1812) | [Library of Congress](https://www.loc.gov/item/2002715332/) | Public domain; no known restrictions |
| *Destroy This Mad Brute* (1917) | FRAME gallery | Public domain |

### Image gaps

- **The pornographic libelles themselves** (*Les Amours de Charlot et Toinette*, *Fureurs utérines*) and their frontispieces. Scans exist in French library collections, but none was found on Commons or the Library of Congress with a verified free licence during this build; they are described, not shown.
- **Burke's *Reflections* title page and the 1790 satirical prints about Burke.** Public domain and available on Commons, but not added in this pass. **This gap can be filled.**
- **Royalist caricature proper**, such as prints mocking the National Assembly or the "hidden profile" mourning prints of the royal family (1794-1795). No free copy was found in the searches run for this page. **Could be filled** from Bibliothèque nationale scans on Commons.
- **The Varennes print *La famille des cochons ramenée dans l'étable*** (1791). A free Bibliothèque nationale scan was downloaded, then left out because the pig print above makes the same point.
- **Pages of *Le Moniteur* and of *Le Père Duchesne*.** Public domain, not added in this pass. **Fillable.**

## Sources

- Edmund Burke, *Reflections on the Revolution in France* (London: J. Dodsley, 1790).
- Thomas Paine, *Rights of Man* (London: J. S. Jordan, 1791).
- Robert Thomas Wilson, *History of the British Expedition to Egypt* (London: T. Egerton, 1802).
- *Bulletins de la Grande Armée*, as printed in *Le Moniteur universel*, 1805-1812; 29th bulletin, Molodechno, 3 December 1812 (poster reproduced above).
- Robert Darnton, *The Forbidden Best-Sellers of Pre-Revolutionary France* (New York: W. W. Norton, 1995).
- Lynn Hunt (ed.), *Eroticism and the Body Politic* (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991), including Hunt, "The Many Bodies of Marie Antoinette".
- Chantal Thomas, *The Wicked Queen: The Origins of the Myth of Marie-Antoinette*, trans. Julie Rose (New York: Zone Books, 1999; French ed. 1989).
- Simon Burrows, *Blackmail, Scandal and Revolution: London's French Libellistes, 1758-92* (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006).
- Antoine de Baecque, *La Caricature révolutionnaire* (Paris: Presses du CNRS, 1988).
- James Cuno (ed.), *French Caricature and the French Revolution, 1789-1799* (Los Angeles: Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts, UCLA, 1988).
- Robert B. Holtman, *Napoleonic Propaganda* (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1950).
- Wayne Hanley, *The Genesis of Napoleonic Propaganda, 1796-1799* (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005).
- Walter Friedlaender, "Napoleon as 'Roi Thaumaturge'", *Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes* 4 (1941).
- Darcy Grimaldo Grigsby, *Extremities: Painting Empire in Post-Revolutionary France* (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002).
- Draper Hill, *Mr. Gillray, the Caricaturist* (London: Phaidon, 1965).
- Richard Godfrey, *James Gillray: The Art of Caricature* (London: Tate Publishing, 2001).
- Library of Congress Prints and Photographs records for the Gillray and 1812 prints, and Wikimedia Commons records for the French prints and paintings (linked in the Images table).