- Museum number
- 1868,0612.1238
- Title
- Object: French invasion or Brighton in a bustle.
- Description
-
A scene at Brighton; some Frenchmen have landed on the beach; others are in broad clumsy boats which have left French men-of-war. In the foreground old women and yokels are dealing with the invaders. A woman resembling Martha Gunn, the bathing-woman, trampling on prostrate bodies, holds out at arm's length a kicking French soldier. Two lean and ragged fops (left) kneel before two irate women, one wielding a spit, the other an oar. A yokel uses his pitchfork to raise a prostrate man; he is smoking a pipe. Fat soldiers or volunteers advance from the right, one carrying a basket of pistols. Behind (right) is the high sea-front backed by houses. From this upper level guns are being fired at the boats, some of which founder, and at the ships. The nearest boat, half sunk, displays a guillotine. In bathing-boxes inscribed 'Smoaker' ('7') and ('8') are Fox and Sheridan, furtively looking out. The figures in the foreground are burlesqued, the fighting absurd. In the distance soldiers are drawn up on the beach firing at the invaders under the command of a mounted officer. The first row kneel, the second fire standing. Spectators watch from behind a sea wall and from the windows of the nearest house. 1 March 1794
Etching
- Production date
- 1794
- Dimensions
-
Height: 458 millimetres
-
Width: 594 millimetres
- $Inscriptions
-
- Curator's comments
- (Description and comment from M.Dorothy George, 'Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires in the British Museum', VII, 1942)
The invasion and revolutionizing of England was the declared policy of the Republic, and there had already been paper schemes for putting it into execution, all abortive through the weakness of the navy. See Desbrières, 'Projets de débarquement aux îles britanniques', 1900, i. 13 ff.; Rose, 'Pitt and the Great War', 1911, pp. 101-3; Sorel, 'L'Europe et la rév. fr.' iii. 272, 344. Cf. Danton, 10 Mar. 1793, '. . . si la France marchait, les républicans d'Angleterre vous donneraient la main, et l'univers serait libre'. Ibid. John Miles or 'Smoaker' was for many years 'chief bather' at Brighton, see 'True Briton', 17 Feb. 1797 (obituary). See BMSats 8346, 8518, 8642, 8979, 9034, 9160, &c, 9164, 9165, 9176, &c, 9180-3, 9187, 9207.
- Location
- Not on display
- Acquisition date
- 1868
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 1868,0612.1238