Kings and Leaders

Abstract

Much of the graphic satire produced in England on the subject of France was not targeted towards the French people as such, but against their rulers, primarily kings, and later Napoleon who was accused of aspiring to be a king in all but name. Religious leaders also featured, usually depicted as generic malicious or gluttonous monks, although their appearances became less frequent in the second half of the century, a phenomenon that undermines the pertinence of cultural anti-Catholicism and common Protestant identity to conceptions of British identity. Depictions of French leaders were used to convey the perceived superiorities of British rulers and the British system of government. They also, however, made more general comments about the nature of power, authority, religion and legitimacy, and regularly exposed and criticised the inadequacies of domestic monarchs and statesmen, both explicitly and implicitly, and, at times unintentionally perhaps, as satirists projected British failings onto images of the French ‘Other’. Along with the projection of British anxieties onto images of France, and the habitual contrasts and comparisons between British and French rule, the prominence of France in graphic satire gave observers at home the opportunity to share and experience France’s political turbulences, albeit in a skewed and often inaccurate form.