Plague Victims of Jaffa, Napoleon and the Sick, Antique Madou Lithograph, 1827

An original antique lithograph from Madou's Vie de Napoléon, published at Brussels in 1827, lettered "PESTIFÉRÉS DE JAFFA" in open capitals above the image. The scene is a hall of pointed arches opening onto a courtyard, with the town of Jaffa on its hill beyond, a minaret and a flag on the skyline. Napoleon, in bicorne and sash, stands at the center left with his hand on the bare chest of a sick man supported by attendants. Beside him stand a robed and turbaned man, officers and grenadiers in bearskins. At the left a bent man lifts a sick figure from the floor; at the right an officer in a bicorne kneels by an open chest to attend a sick man, while others lie, sit or crawl on the floor.

The script caption below the image reads: "Napoléon fait retirer des hopitaux les malades en état d'être transportés." In English: Napoleon has the sick who are fit to be moved taken out of the hospitals. 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 French stormed Jaffa on 7 March 1799, and plague broke out among the troops soon afterward. Hospitals were set up in the town, and Bonaparte visited the sick there in March. When the army fell back from Acre in May 1799 it passed through Jaffa again, and the sick and wounded who could be moved were evacuated, which is the order the caption records.

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