Entry into Syria, Bonaparte Gives Up His Horse, Antique Madou Lithograph, 1827

An original antique lithograph from Madou's Vie de Napoléon, published at Brussels in 1827, lettered "ENTRÉE EN SIRIE" in open capitals above the image. A column of the French army crosses open sand under a wide pale sky. At the left a robed guide with a lance leads a gray horse on which a wounded soldier rides, one leg bound. Napoleon walks on foot at the center in uniform and bicorne, one hand tucked into his coat, followed by officers and grenadiers. Behind them a camel, a wounded man carried on a stretcher and a cluster of palms appear, and at the far right a soldier rides a small mule.

The script caption below the image reads: "Bonaparte s'associe aux fatigues et aux privations de l'armée. Il cède son cheval à un soldat blessé." In English: Bonaparte shares the fatigues and privations of the army. He gives up his horse to a wounded soldier. 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.

In February 1799 Bonaparte led part of the Army of the Orient out of Egypt across the Sinai desert toward Syria, to meet an Ottoman force gathering there. The French took El Arish, Gaza and then Jaffa in March before laying siege to Acre. The march across the desert was hard on the troops, and the caption presents the general as sharing their hardships on foot.

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