"Let Us eat the Prussian."
By André Gill.
Still another cartoon, thoroughly characteristic of Daumier's later manner, is "The Dream of Bismarck," one which touches upon the idea which has been used allegorically in connection with every great conqueror whose wake is marked by the strewn corpses of fallen thousands. In it Bismarck, frightfully haggard and ghastly of countenance, is sleeping in his chair, while at his side is the grim figure of Death bearing a huge sickle and pointing out over the bloody battlefield.
Of the younger group of cartoonists none is more closely connected with the events of the année terrible than "Cham," the Comte de Noë. The name Noë, it will be remembered, is French for Noah, just as Cham is the French equivalent of Ham, second son of the patriarch of Scripture. The Comte de Noë was also second son of his father, hence the appropriateness of his pseudonym. As a caricaturist, Cham was animated by no such seriousness of purpose as formed the inspiration of Daumier; and this was why he never became a really great caricaturist. It was the humorous side of life, even of the tragedies of life, that appealed to him, and he reflected it back with an incisive drollery which was irresistible. He was one of the most rapid and industrious of workers, and found in the events of l'année terrible the inspiration of a vast number of cartoons. The looting propensities of the Prussians were satirized in a sketch showing two Prussian officers looking greedily at a clock on the mantelpiece in a French château. "Let us take the clock." "But peace has already been signed." "No matter. Don't you see the clock is slow?" The German acquisition of the Rhenish provinces is summed up in a picture which shows a German officer attaching to his leg a chain, at the end of which is a huge ball marked Alsace. The siege having turned every Parisian into a nominal soldier, this condition of affairs is hit off by Cham in a cartoon underneath which is written: "Everybody being soldiers, the officers will have the right to put through the paces anyone whom they meet in the streets." The sketch shows a cook in the usual culinary costume, and bearing on his head a flat basket filled with kettles and pans, marking time at the command of an officer. The attitude of England during the war seemed to the caricaturist perfidious, after the practical aid which France had rendered Albion in the Crimea. Cham hits this off by representing the two nations as women, Britannia looking ironically at prostrate France and saying: "Oh, no! Prussia has not yet entirely killed her! So it is not yet time to go to her aid."
New Design for a Hand Bell proposed by "Charivari" for the Purpose of Reminding the Assembly that Prussian Troops still hold French Territory.
