The Taking of Alexandria, Egypt Campaign, Antique Madou Lithograph, 1827

An original antique lithograph from Jean-Baptiste Madou's Vie de Napoléon, published at Brussels in 1827, lettered "PRISE D'ALEXANDRIE" in open capitals above the image. French infantry swarm up the walls and towers of the city in the background through clouds of smoke, with a minaret rising behind the ramparts. In the foreground an officer seen from behind raises his saber and points toward the walls, soldiers with packs fire and advance at the left past fallen men, and at the center Bonaparte stands in a bicorne with his hand on his sword, his staff beside him at the right. A column of grenadiers in bearskins waits at the far right.

The caption below the image, in lithographic script, reads: "Bonaparte fait attaquer la ville sur trois points différens, et s'en empare dans la journée." In English: Bonaparte has the city attacked at three different points, and takes it within the day. The spelling différens is the old form of différents.

Vie de Napoléon was published at Brussels in 1827 by the Lithographie royale de Jobard, the press of Marcellin Jobard, and this plate belongs to its first volume, which follows Napoleon from his schooldays at Brienne to the camp of Boulogne. The title page names Jean-Baptiste Madou (1796 to 1877), a Belgian lithographer and later a painter of genre scenes, as the author of the plates, drawn after compositions by painters of the French school, and describes the text as written from documents dictated and corrected by Napoleon at Saint Helena.

The army began landing west of Alexandria on the night of 1 July 1798 and attacked the city the next morning in three columns under Kléber, Menou and Bon. The walls were carried within the day; Kléber was wounded in the head and Menou was also hurt. Alexandria became the French base for the campaign that followed up the Nile toward Cairo.

Hung at eye level, where the caption can be read, it pairs naturally with the other Egyptian plates from the series.

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