[_Exit Buonaparte, Talleyrand looking after him._
Your fortune, I fear, Sir, will play you a trick:-- Notwithstanding his vaunts, he is touch’d to the quick. What folly! what madness, this project inspires, To conquer a nation, whom liberty fires. Even now from their shores, loudly echoed, I hear The song of defiance appalling mine ear. Their spirit once rous’d, what destruction awakes! What vengeance, the wretched invaders o’ertakes. Prophetic, I plead, but my warning is vain, Ambition still urges, and maddens his brain: Fired with hopes of rich booty, his soldiers all burn, THEY MAY GO, SOME MAY LAND, BUT NOT ONE WILL RETURN.
J. B. (November 5, 1803) produced ‘Boney in time for Lord Mayors Feast.’ At this banquet a sailor produces Napoleon chained, and with a collar round his neck. He thus introduces him: ‘Here he is, please your Honors. We caught him alive, on the Suffolk Coast. He was a little queerish at first, but a few Stripes at the Gangway soon brought him about. I told him he was just in time for the Lord Mayor’s Show. What does your honor think of him for the Man in Armour?’ The Lord Mayor, glass in hand, says: ‘Ay, you see how we live at this end of the town, but you get no Roast beef here, Master Boney--Let him have plenty of Soup Maigre--and in the evening take him up to the Ball Room for the amusement of the Ladies--Come, heres the glorious Ninth of November.’
‘Destruction of the French Gun Boats--or Little Boney and his friend Talley in high Glee’ is presumably by Gillray, though not signed by him (November 22, 1803). It represents the total destruction of the French flotilla by the English fleet--which Napoleon, mounted on Talleyrand’s shoulder, is watching with great glee through a rolled-up paper (Talleyrand’s plan for invading Great Britain), which is being used in lieu of a telescope. He shouts out, in great delight, ‘Oh my dear Talley, what a glorious sight! We’ve worked up Johnny Bull into a fine passion! My good fortune never leaves me! I shall now get rid of a Hundred Thousand French Cut Throats whom I was so afraid of! Oh, my dear Talley, this beats the Egyptian Poisoning hollow! Bravo Johnny! pepper ’em Johnny!’
Ansell is answerable for ‘Boney’s Journey to London, or the reason why he is so long in coming, i.e. because he travels like a Snail with his house at his back’ (November 23, 1803). He is portrayed as being in a wooden house, drawn by his soldiers, who are being unmercifully whipped with a knout-like weapon. Napoleon, calling out to the officer who is administering the punishment, ‘You Vagabones, make haste, Vite, Vite, or I shall not get to London by Christmass. Give them more of the Fraternal Whip, the dam Rascals do not know the value of Liberty.’