"The Oven of the Allies."
From an anonymous French cartoon.
Napoleon's escape from Elba was commemorated by Rowlandson in "The Flight of Bonaparte from Hell Bay." In it the foul fiend is amusing himself by letting his captive loose, to work fresh mischief in the world above. He has mounted the Corsican upon a bubble and sends him careering upward back to earth, while hissing dragons pour forth furious blasts to waft the bubble onward.
"The New Robinson Crusoe."
From a German caricature.
"Hell Hounds Rallying around the Idol of France" is the title of still another of Rowlandson's designs, which appeared in April, 1815. The head and bust of the Emperor drawn on a colossal scale, a hangman's noose around his throat, is mounted on a vast pyramid of human heads, his decapitated victims. Demons are flying through the air to place upon his brow a crown of blazing pitch, while a ring of other excited fiends, whose features represent Maréchal Ney, Lefebre, Davoust and others, with horns, hoofs, and tails, are dancing in triumph around the idol they have replaced. Closely resembling this cartoon of Rowlandson is the German cartoon, which is reproduced in these pages, showing a double-faced Napoleon topping a monument built of skulls. Rowlandson's "Hell Hounds Rallying around the Idol of France" was the last English cartoon directed against Napoleon when he was at the head of France. Two months later the Emperor's power was finally broken at Waterloo.