CHAPTER XX

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POLITICAL CARICATURE IN ITS INFANCY.--THE REVERS DU JEU DES SUYSSES.--CARICATURE IN FRANCE.--THE THREE ORDERS.--PERIOD OF THE LEAGUE; CARICATURES AGAINST HENRI III.--CARICATURES AGAINST THE LEAGUE.--CARICATURE IN FRANCE IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.--GENERAL GALAS.--THE QUARREL OF AMBASSADORS.--CARICATURE AGAINST LOUIS XIV.; WILLIAM OF FÜRSTEMBERG.

It has been already remarked that political caricature, in the modern sense of the word, or even personal caricature, was inconsistent with the state of things in the middle ages, until the arts of engraving and printing became sufficiently developed, because it requires the facility of quick and extensive circulation. The political or satirical song was carried everywhere by the minstrel, but the satirical picture, represented only in some solitary sculpture or illumination, could hardly be finished before it had become useless even in the small sphere of its influence, and then remained for ages a strange figure, with no meaning that could be understood. No sooner, however, was the art of printing introduced, than the importance of political caricature was understood and turned to account. We have seen what a powerful agent it became in the Reformation, which in spirit was no less political than religious; but even before the great religious movement had begun, this agent had been brought into activity. One of the earliest engravings which can be called a caricature--perhaps the oldest of our modern caricatures known--is represented in our cut No. 171, is no doubt French, and belongs to the year 1499. It is sufficiently explained by the history of the time.

[Illustration: _No. 171. The Political Game of Cards._]

At the date just mentioned, Louis XII. of France, who had been king less than twelve months, was newly married to Anne of Britany, and had resolved upon an expedition into Italy, to unite the crown of Naples with that of France. Such an expedition affected many political interests and Louis had to employ a certain amount of diplomacy with his neighbours, several of whom were strongly opposed to his projects of ambition, and among those who acted most openly were the Swiss, who were believed to have been secretly supported by England and the Netherlands. Louis, however, overcame their opposition, and obtained a renewal of the alliance which had expired with his predecessor Charles VIII. This temporary difficulty with the Swiss is the subject of our caricature, the original of which bears the title "Le Revers du Jeu des Suysses" (the defeat of the game of the Swiss). The princes most interested are assembled round a card-table, at which are seated the king of France to the right, opposite him the Swiss, and in front the doge of Venice, who was in alliance with the French against Milan. At the moment represented, the king of France is announcing that he has a flush of cards, the Swiss acknowledges the weakness of his hand, and the doge lays down his cards--in fact, Louis XII. has won the game. But the point of the caricature lies principally in the group around. To the extreme right the king of England, Henry VII., distinguished by his three armorial lions, and the king of Spain, are engaged in earnest conversation. Behind the former stands the infanta Margarita, who is evidently winking at the Swiss to give him information of the state of the cards of his opponents. At her side stands the duke of Wirtemberg, and just before him the pope, the infamous Alexander VI. (Borgia), who, though in alliance with Louis, is not able, with all his efforts, to read the king's game, and looks on with evident anxiety. Behind the doge of Venice stands the Italian refugee, Trivulci, an able warrior, devoted to the interests of France; and at the doge's right hand, the emperor, holding in his hands another pack of cards, and apparently exulting in the belief that he has thrown confusion into the king of France's game. In the background to the left are seen the count Palatine and the marquis of Montserrat, who also look uncertain about the result; and below the former appears the duke of Savoy, who was giving assistance to the French designs. The duke of Lorraine is serving drink to the gamblers, while the duke of Milan, who was at this time playing rather a double part, is gathering up the cards which have fallen to the ground, in order to make a game for himself. Louis XII. carried his designs into execution; the duke of Milan, Ludovico Sforza, nick-named the Moor, played his cards badly, lost his duchy, and died in prison.

[Illustration: _No. 172. The Three Orders of the State._]

Such is this earliest of political caricatures--and in this case it was purely political--but the question of religion soon began not only to mix itself up with the political question, but almost to absorb it, as we have seen in the review of the history of caricature under the Reformation. Before this period, indeed, political caricature was only an affair between crowned heads, or between kings and their nobles, but the religious agitation had originated a vast social movement, which brought into play popular feelings and passions: these gave caricature a totally new value. Its power was greatest on the middle and lower classes of society, that is, on the people, the _tiers état_, which was now thrown prominently forward. The new social theory is proclaimed in a print, of which a fac-simile will be found in the "Musée de la Caricature," by E. J. Jaime, and which, from the style and costume, appears to be German. The three orders, the church, the lord of the land, and the people, represented respectively by a bishop, a knight, and a cultivator, stand upon the globe in an honourable equality, each receiving direct from heaven the emblems or implements of his duties. To the bishop is delivered his bible, to the husbandman his mattock, and to the knight the sword with which he is to protect and defend the others. This print--see cut No. 172--which bears the title, in Latin, "Quis te prætulit?" (Who chose thee?) belongs probably to the earlier half of the sixteenth century. A painting in the Hôtel de Ville of Aix, in Provence, represents the same subject much more satirically, intending to delineate the three orders as they were, and not as they ought to be. The divine hand is letting down from heaven an immense frame in the form of a heart, in which is a picture representing a king kneeling before the cross, intimating that the civil power was to be subordinate to the ecclesiastical. The three orders are represented by a cardinal, a noble, and a peasant, the latter of whom is bending under the burthen of the heart, the whole of which is thrown upon his shoulders, while the cardinal and the noble, the latter dressed in the fashionable attire of the court minions of the day, are placing one hand to the heart on each side, in a manner which shows that they support none of the weight.

Amid the fierce agitation which fell upon France in the sixteenth century, for a while we find but few traces of the employment of caricature by either party. The religious reformation there was rather aristocratic than popular, and the reformers sought less to excite the feelings of the multitude, which, indeed, went generally in the contrary direction. There was, moreover, a character of gloom in the religion of Calvin, which contracted strongly with the joyousness of that of the followers of Luther; and the factions in France sought to slaughter, rather than to laugh at, each other. The few caricatures of this period which are known, are very bitter and coarse. As far as I am aware, no early Huguenot caricatures are known, but there are a few directed against the Huguenots. It was, however, with the rise of the Ligue that the taste for political caricature may be said to have taken root in France, and in that country it long continued to flourish more than anywhere else. The first caricatures of the ligueurs were directed against the person of the king, Henri de Valois, and possess a brutality almost beyond description. It was now an object to keep up the bitterness of spirit of the fanatical multitude. In one of these caricatures a demon is represented waiting on the king to summon him to a meeting of the "Estates" in hell; and in the distance we see another demon flying away with him. Another relates to the murder of the Guises, in 1588, which the ligueurs professed to ascribe to the councils of M. d'Epernon, one of his favourites, on whom they looked with great hatred. It is entitled, "Soufflement et Conseil diabolique de d'Epernon à Henri de Valois pour faccager les Catholiques." In the middle of the picture stands the king, and beside him D'Epernon, who is blowing into his ear with a bellows. On the ground before them lie the headless corpses of the _deux frères Catholiques_, the duke of Guise, and his brother the cardinal, while the executioner of royal vengeance is holding up their heads by the hair. In the distance is seen the castle of Blois, in which this tragedy took place; and on the left of the picture appear the cardinal de Bourbon, the archbishop of Blois, and other friends of the Guises, expressing their horror at the deed. Henri III. was himself murdered in the year following, and the caricatures against him became still more brutal during the period in which the ligueurs tried to set up a king of their own in his place. In one caricature, which has more of an emblematical character than most of the others, he is pictured as "Henri le Monstrueux;" and in others, entitled "Les Hermaphrodites," he is exhibited under forms which point at the infamous vices with which he was charged.

[Illustration: _No. 173. The Assembly of Apes._]

The tide of caricature, however, soon turned in the contrary direction, and the coarse, unprincipled abuse employed by the ligueurs found a favourable contrast in the powerful wit and talent of the satirists and caricaturists who now took up pen and pencil in the cause of Henri IV. The former was, on the whole, the more formidable weapon, but the latter represented to some eyes more vividly in picture what had already been done in type. This was the case on both sides; the caricature last mentioned was founded upon a very libellous satirical pamphlet against Henri III., entitled "L'Isle des Hermaphrodites." It is the case also with the first caricatures against the ligueurs, which I have to mention. The Estates held in Paris by the duke of Mayenne and the ligueurs for the purpose of electing a new king in opposition to Henri of Navarre, were made the subject of the celebrated "Satyre Ménippée," in which the proceedings of these Estates were turned to ridicule in the most admirable manner. Four large editions were sold in less than as many months. Several caricatures arose out of or accompanied this remarkable book. One of these is a rather large print, entitled "La Singerie des Estats de la Ligue, l'an 1593," in which the members of the Estates and the ligueurs are pictured with the heads of monkeys. The central part represents the meeting of the Estates, at which the lieutenant-general of the kingdom, the duke of Mayenne, seated on the throne, presides. Above him is suspended a large portrait of the infanta of Spain, _L'Espousée de la Ligue_, as she is called in the satire, ready to marry any one whom the Estates shall declare king of France. In chairs, on each side of Mayenne, are the two "ladies of honour" of the said future spouse. To the left are seated in a row the celebrated council of sixteen (_les seize_), reduced at this time to twelve, because the duke of Mayenne, to check their turbulence, had caused four of them to be hanged. They wear the favours of the future spouse. Opposite to them are the representatives of the three orders, all, we are told, devoted to the service of "the said lady." Before the throne are the two musicians of the Ligue, one described as Phelipottin, the blind performer on the viel, or hurdy-gurdy, to the Ligue, and his subordinate, the player on the triangle, "kept at the expense of the future spouse." These were to entertain the assembly during the pauses between the orations of the various speakers. All this is a satire on the efforts of the king of Spain to establish a monarch of his own choice. On the bench behind the musicians sit the deputies from Lyons, Poitiers, Orleans, and Rheims, cities where the influence of the Ligue was strong, discussing the question as to who should be king. Thus much of this picture is represented in our cut No. 173. There are other groups of figures in the representation of the assembly of the Estates; and there are two side compartments--that on the left representing a forge, on which the fragments of a broken king are laid to be refounded, and a multitude of apes, with hammers and an anvil, ready to work him into a new king; the other side of the picture represents the circumstances of a then well-known act of tyranny perpetrated by the Estates of the Ligue. Another large and well-executed engraving, published at Paris in 1594, immediately after Henri IV. had obtained possession of his capital, also represents the grand procession of the Ligue as described at the commencement of the "Satyre Ménippée," and was intended to hold up to ridicule the warlike temper of the French Catholic clergy. It is entitled, "La Procession de la Ligue."

Henri's triumph over the Ligue was made the subject of a series of three caricatures, or perhaps, more correctly, of a caricature in three divisions. The first is entitled the "Naissance de la Ligue," and represents it under the form of a monster with three heads, severally those of a wolf, a fox, and a serpent, issuing from hell-mouth. Under it are the following lines:--

_L'enfer, pour asservir soubs ses loix tout le monde, Vomit ce monstre hideux, fait d'un loup ravisseur, D'un renard enveilly, et d'un serpent immonde, Affublé d'un manteau propre à toute couleur._

The second division, the "Declin de la Ligue," representing its downfall, is copied in our cut No. 174. Henri of Navarre, in the form of a lion, has pounced fiercely upon it, and not too soon, for it had already seized the crown and sceptre. In the distance, the sun of national prosperity is seen rising over the country. The third picture, the "Effets de la Ligue," represents the destruction of the kingdom and the slaughter of the people, of which the Ligue had been the cause.

[Illustration: _No. 174. The Destruction of the Ligue._]

[Illustration: _No. 175. General Galas._]

The caricatures in France became more numerous during the seventeenth century, but they are either so elaborate or so obscure, that each requires almost a dissertation to explain it, and they often relate to questions or events which have little interest for us at the present day. Several rather spirited ones appeared at the time of the disgrace of the mareschal d'Ancre and his wife; and the inglorious war with the Netherlands, in 1635, furnished the occasion for others, for the French, as usual, could make merry in their reverses as well as in their successes. The imperialist general Galas inflicted serious defeat on the French armies, and compelled them to a very disastrous retreat from the countries they had invaded, and they tried to amuse themselves at the expense of their conqueror. Galas was rather remarkable for obesity, and the French caricaturists of the day made this circumstance a subject for their satire. Our cut No. 175 is copied from a print in which the magnitude of the stomach of General Galas is certainly somewhat exaggerated. He is represented, not apparently with any good reason, as puffed up with his own importance, which is evaporating in smoke; and along with the smoke thus issuing from his mouth, he is made to proclaim his greatness in the following rather doggrel verses:--

_Je suis ce grand Galas, autrefois dans l'armée La gloire de l'Espagne et de mes compagnons; Maintenant je ne suis qu'un corps plein de fumée, Pour avoir trop mangé de raves et d'oignons. Gargantua jamais n'eut une telle panse, &c._

[Illustration: _No. 176. Batteville Humiliated._]

Caricatures in France began to be tolerably abundant during the middle of the seventeenth century, but under the crushing tyranny of Louis XIV., the freedom of the press, in all its forms, ceased to exist, and caricatures relating to France, unless they came from the court party, had to be published in other countries, especially in Holland. It will be sufficient to give two examples from the reign of Louis XIV. In the year 1661, a dispute arose in London between the ambassador of France, M. D'Estrades, and the Spanish ambassador, the baron de Batteville, on the question of precedence, which was carried so far as to give rise to a tumult in the streets of the English capital. At this very moment, a new Spanish ambassador, the marquis de Fuentes, was on his way to Paris, but Louis, indignant at Batteville's behaviour in London, sent orders to stop Fuentes on the frontier, and forbid his further advance into his kingdom. The king of Spain disavowed the act of his ambassador in England, who was recalled, and Fuentes received orders to make an apology to king Louis. This event was made the subject of a rather boasting caricature, the greater portion of which is given in our cut No. 176. It is entitled "Batteville vient adorer le Soliel" (Batteville comes to worship the sun). In the original the sun is seen shining in the upper corner of the picture to the right, and presenting the juvenile face of Louis XIV., but the caricaturist appears to have substituted Batteville in the place of Fuentes. Beneath the whole are the following boastful lines:--

_On ne va plus à Rome, on vient de Rome en France, Mériter le pardon de quelque grande offence. L'Italie tout entière est soumise à ces loix; Un Espagnol s'oppose à ce droit de nos rois. Mais un Français puissant joua des bastonnades, Et punit l'insolent de ses rodomontades._

From this time there sprung up many caricatures against the Spaniards; but the most ferocious caricature, or rather book of caricatures, of the reign of Louis XIV., came from without, and was directed against the king and his ministers and courtiers. The revocation of the edict of Nantes took place in October, 1685, and was preceded and followed by frightful persecutions of the Protestants, which drove away in thousands the earnest, intelligent, and industrious part of the population of France. They carried with them a deep hatred to their oppressors, and sought refuge especially in the countries most hostile to Louis XIV.--England and Holland. The latter country, where they then enjoyed the greatest freedom of action, soon sent forth numerous satirical books and prints against the French king and his ministers, of which the book just alluded to was one of the most remarkable. It is entitled "Les Heros de la Ligue, ou la Procession Monacale conduite par Louis XIV. pour la Conversion des Protestans de son Royaume," and consists of a series of twenty-four most grotesque faces, intended to represent the ministers and courtiers of the "grand roi" most odious to the Calvinists. It must have provoked their wrath exceedingly. I give one example, and as it is difficult to select, I take the first in the list, which represents William of Fürstemberg, one of the German princes devoted to Louis XIV., who, by his intrigues, had forced him into the archbishopric of Cologne, by which he became an elector of the empire. For many reasons William of Fürstemberg was hated by the French Protestants, but it is not quite clear why he is here represented in the character of one of the low merchants of the Halles. Over the picture, in the original, we read, _Guillaume de Furstemberg, crie, ite, missa est_, and beneath are the four lines:--

_J'ay quitté mon pais pour servir à la France, Soit par ma trahison, soit par ma lacheté; J'ay troublé les états par ma méchanceté, Une abbaye est ma recompense._

[Illustration: _No. 177. William of Fürstemberg._]

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