Maggs Bros.

OCLC reports impressions at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Brown, UCLA and Harvard only in the USA; British Museum only in the UK and BnF in France. The National Library of Ireland have a reversed Dublin copy of the print by McClearly.

A satire on the aftermath of Napoleon’s disastrous Russian campaign of January 1813 which prompted the French to conscript 300,000 additional troops. In this print, Cruikshank imagines a future in which the French army is comprised of infants who struggle under the weight of their military equipment.

A grotesque and mutilated adult veteran calls to the children assembled round him:

“Come along my pretty little Heros. I will lead you to the Horrible Climate there you shall see the Dancing bears & play at snow balls & you shall get all the nice sugar plumbs & if you behave yourself like good Children you may perhaps get a pair of pretty wooden legs & your heads coverd with nice patches of Glory”

A child solder wearing an over-sized helmet says “Peep bo” and another infant is struggling to hold a rifle, pleading, “I want to do [go] home to my Mamme.”