Battle of Aboukir, the Ottoman Surrender, Antique Madou Lithograph, 1827

An original antique lithograph from Madou's Vie de Napoléon, published at Brussels in 1827, lettered "BATAILLE D'ABOUKIR" in open capitals above the image. Napoleon sits a white horse at the left center beside an officer on a dark horse, with mounted officers and palm trees behind them and a drummer and a grenadier with a pack in the left foreground. At the right turbaned Ottoman men surrender before him: two kneel, one bows to the ground and robed elders stand before him, one with a hand on his chest, while two standards rise behind them and a musket and a turban lie on the ground. Grenadiers in bearskins line the middle distance, and a fort with towers stands on the horizon. A dead man lies in the foreground.

The script caption below the image reads: "Napoléon avait remporté une victoire signalée sur 18,000 Turcs débarqués à Aboukir; le 2 Août 1799, les débris de cette armée furent forcés par la famine et par la misère à déposer leurs armes aux pieds du vainqueur." In English: Napoleon had won a signal victory over 18,000 Turks landed at Aboukir; on 2 August 1799 the remnants of that army were forced by hunger and misery to lay down their arms at the feet of the victor. No scene number or printer's line is lettered on this sheet.

The plate comes from the first volume of Vie de Napoléon, published at Brussels in 1827 by the Lithographie royale de Jobard, the press of Marcellin Jobard, which the title page names as publisher and owner. The title page describes a text written by a society of men of letters from new documents dictated and corrected by Napoleon himself at Saint Helena, and plates lithographed by Jean-Baptiste Madou (1796 to 1877) after the first painters of the French school.

An Ottoman army landed on the Aboukir peninsula in July 1799. Bonaparte attacked it on 25 July 1799 and drove most of it into the sea. The remainder held out in the fort of Aboukir until 2 August, the date the caption gives.

This is an original antique print, not a modern reproduction. This item is sold unframed.