CHAPTER VIII.
NAPOLEON DESPOILS ITALY OF HER WORKS OF ART—THE SIEGE OF MANTUA—WÜRMSER’S SURRENDER—EARLIEST ENGLISH CARICATURE OF NAPOLEON—INVASION OF ENGLAND—LANDING IN PEMBROKESHIRE—NELSON’S RECEIPT TO MAKE AN OLLA PODRIDA—‘THE ARMY OF ENGLAND.’
Such a subject as the spoliation of Italian works of art was not likely to go a-begging among caricaturists, so George Cruikshank illustrated the poet Combe.
SEIZING THE ITALIAN WORKS OF ART.
As Nap (for his extortions fam’d),
Of livres twenty millions claim’d;
Which sum, we also understand,
Pope Pius paid upon demand;
And sixteen million more, they say,
Was bound in two months’ time to pay
With these exactions not content,
To further lengths our hero went;
A hundred paintings, and the best,
Were, we are told, his next request.
At his desire, the precious heaps came,
(It was indeed a very deep scheme),
Loretta’s statues so pleased Boney,
They instantly packed up Madona:
These relics then, without delay,
To Paris Boney sent away;
And there they formed an exhibition
As proof of Papal superstition.
At the siege of Mantua, Würmser sent his aide-de-camp Klenau to Napoleon to treat for terms of peace. G. Cruikshank depicts the scene. Klenau is brought in blindfolded, and Bonaparte, surrounded by his guard, strikes a melodramatic attitude, worthy of a pirate captain at a transpontine theatre.
NAPOLEON AND HIS GUARD.