Morning of 18 Brumaire, the Paris Garrison, Antique Madou Lithograph, 1827

An original antique lithograph from Jean-Baptiste Madou's Vie de Napoléon, printed at Brussels in 1827. The sheet is lettered "MATINÉE DU 18 BRUMAIRE" in open capitals above the image. Bonaparte stands on the steps before a classical doorway with a heavy corniced lintel and Ionic columns, holding a paper and surrounded by generals. Officers crowd toward him from every side, many raising sabers or stretching out their arms, among them grenadiers in bearskin caps at the left and hussars at the center. At the right, by a low wall beneath tall trees, mounted men press in from the yard, one of them pointing with his sword.

The caption below the image reads: "Le 18 Brumaire an VIII, à la pointe du jour, Napoléon s'assure du dévouement des officiers de la garnison de Paris, et des généraux les plus distingués." In English: "On 18 Brumaire, Year VIII, at daybreak, Napoleon makes sure of the devotion of the officers of the Paris garrison, and of the most distinguished generals."

Vie de Napoléon was published at Brussels in 1827 by the Lithographie royale de Jobard, éditeur propriétaire. Its title page describes a text written by a society of men of letters from new documents dictated and corrected by Napoleon himself on Saint Helena, with plates lithographed by Jean-Baptiste Madou (1796 to 1877) after the first painters of the French school. This plate belongs to the first volume.

On the morning of 18 Brumaire, Year VIII (9 November 1799), officers and generals were summoned early to Bonaparte's house in the rue Chantereine in Paris. The same morning the Council of Ancients voted to move both legislative councils out of Paris to Saint Cloud and placed the troops of the capital under Bonaparte's command. With the garrison behind him, he went before the Ancients to take up that command, and the decisive confrontation followed at Saint Cloud the next day.

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