Battle of Mount Tabor, Napoleon Relieves Kleber, Antique Madou Lithograph, 1827

An original antique lithograph from Madou's Vie de Napoléon, published at Brussels in 1827, lettered "BATAILLE DU M.T THABOR" in open capitals above the image. A smoky valley full of massed troops stretches below hills, with the steep flank of a mountain at the right. Napoleon rides a pale horse at the center with his staff, preceded by a plumed officer on a dark horse. Gunners serve a field piece on a rise at the right. At the left a French grenadier guards captives in tall caps and turbans, and a fallen soldier lies in the foreground.

The script caption below the image reads: "Le 16. Avril 1799, 2,000 français, commandés par Kléber, étaient aux prises avec 30,000 Orientaux; Napoléon quitta le siège de S.t Jean d'Acre, accourut, et mit l'armée turque dans une déroute complette." In English: On 16 April 1799, 2,000 Frenchmen commanded by Kléber were engaged with 30,000 Orientals; Napoleon left the siege of Saint Jean d'Acre, hastened up, and put the Turkish army to complete rout. 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.

The battle was fought in the plain below Mount Tabor in Galilee during the siege of Acre. General Jean-Baptiste Kléber's division, sent to meet an Ottoman army advancing from Damascus, held out in square through the morning. Bonaparte came up from Acre with reinforcements in the afternoon, and the Ottoman army broke and withdrew.

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