Le roi esclave ou Les sujets rois : female patriotism.

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Isaac Cruikshank
1756?-1811?
Le roi esclave ou Les sujets rois : female patriotism.
etching, hand colored
image: 180 x 713 mm; palte mark: 200 x 718 mm; sheet: 221 x 733 mm
Purchased by J. Pierpont Morgan, 1900.
Peel 1670
Published: 
[London] : Pub Oct 31 1789 by S W Fores No 3 Piccadilly, [31 October1789]
Provenance: 
Formerly owned by Sir Robert Peel.
Notes: 

Caption title: Le roi esclave ou les sujets rois Female patriotism.
A satire on the removal of the King and royal family from Versailles to Paris on 6 Oct. 1789.
With another print, "An amphitheatrical attack on the Bastile", affixed to the verso (see Peel 1669).

Summary: 

Print shows the King, Queen, and Dauphin of France driven (right to left) by a procession of women from Versailles to Paris. On the extreme left Marie-Antoinette walks between the little Dauphin, whose left hand she holds, and Louis XVI, who raises his left arm and looks behind him, exclaiming, "oh ma femme qu'avez vous fait". The Queen says "oh mon cher pour cette fois le C------a emporté la tete". The child wears a large cocked hat and a ribbon inscribed 'quam dolendo'; he says "Mon père étoit pot ma mère etoit brocey (?) et ne pouvoit etre autrement". Beside them is a signpost, pointing (right) 'To Versailes' and (left) 'To Paris' (reversed). Behind them is a cannon pushed by a band of women carrying muskets with fixed bayonets, and with cartouche boxes slung across their shoulders. A woman of meretricious appearance sits astride the cannon, holding a long sharp spit with which she threatens the King. The women say: "Nous savons ausi [sic] bien que les Canoniers mettre le feu au canon; tuez les, tuez les tous" and (twice) "Vive la Nation". Behind this band walks a woman carrying a man's head on a pike; she turns to say to Lafayette who marches behind her: "si vous êtes traitre on vous traitera ainsi". He is more caricatured than the other figures, his thin legs are in large jack-boots; he puts his hand on his breast with a rhetorical gesture. Beside him, on the ground, are frogs. The next band of women, also with muskets, has a banner inscribed 'District des cordeliers'; it is headed by a woman wearing a long sword and holding a rope. Some of them, one wearing a large sabre, drag a covered wagon in which are sacks of corn. They say, "Dieu soit Loué nous ne manquerons plus! nous avons notre Boulanger et la Bouchere et la petit mitron avec nous oh vous ne vous echaperai [sic] plus". They have a flag inscribed 'Vive la Nation'. Behind is a crowd of women and a lamp-post with two arms from which hang five bodies. Behind the centre of the procession is a body of soldiers evidently intended for the National Guard. In the foreground on the extreme right stands a little demon wearing a large cocked hat; he blows a trumpet, saying, "chacun y trouve son avantage." Cf. BM Satires.

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