By James Gillray.
Satire inspired by the September massacres of 1792.
Below caption title: Epigram extempore on seeing the above Print. "Here as you see, and as 'tis known, "Frenchmen mere Cannibals are grown; "On Maigre Days each had his Dish "Of Soup, or Sallad, Eggs, or Fish; "But now 'tis human Flesh they gnaw, "And ev'ry Day is Mardi Gras.
Print shows a French family engaged in a cannibal feast in a ramshackle room. Five persons sit at a round table on which is a head in a dish. The head of the family (left) is seated on a sack inscribed 'Propriété de la Nation', which disgorges a crown, sceptre, and mitre, with jewels, &c. Opposite him, a man is seated on the body of a woman whose throat is cut; a blood-stained axe is thrust through his belt. All eagerly devour human fragments. An old hag is seated opposite a large fire in which plunder is burning; she bastes the body of an infant, transfixed on a spit. In the foreground three small children, one wearing a dagger, crouch round a tub, eating the entrails which it contains. Heads and corpses appear through a door and in a rack slung to the ceiling. On the wall is rudely drawn figure of 'Petion', wearing a cocked hat, holding out an axe in one hand, a head in the other, with the inscription 'Vive la Liberte Vive le Egalitè'. Near it is the headless figure of Louis XVI as 'Lewis le Grand'.