'Destruction of the French Gun-Boats - or - Little Boney and his Friend Talley in high Glee' (caricature) RMG PW4005

'Destruction of the French Gun-Boats - or - Little Boney & his Friend Talley in high Glee' (caricature)
Hand-coloured print depicting the 'Destruction of the French Gun-Boats - or - Little Boney & his Friend Talley in high Glee (caricature)'.
In this extravagant satire, Gillray derides Napoleonic plans for a French invasion of England, suggesting that such a scheme was instead conceived by a devious Napoleon as a deliberate means of ridding himself of difficult, oppositional elements in the army and navy, by sending them to certain death. Set on the northern French coast, with Dover Castle visible across the Channel, Bonaparte is seated like a puppet on Talleyrand’s shoulder. He peers through a rolled-up document, inscribed ‘Talleyrand’s plan for INVADING Great Britain’, at the French gunboats being destroyed and sunk by British cannon. Gillray shows Napoleon overjoyed at this sight, exclaiming ‘my good fortune never leaves me! – I shall now get rid of a hundred-Thousand French Cut Throats whom I was so afraid of! … Bravo, Johnny! – pepper ’em, Johnny!’.

'Destruction of the French Gun-Boats - or - Little Boney & his Friend Talley in high Glee' (caricature)