Subject (Name): Dumouriez, Charles François Du Périer, 1739-1823. / Subject (Topic): Foreign relations

You Searched For

1. Harm watch, harm catch, or, The commissioners become hostages, or, The French vermin in the German trap [graphic].

Published / Created:: [approximately 1793]
Call Number:: 793.00.00.180+
Image Count:: 1
Resource Type:: still image
Abstract:: In this anti-Jacobin, pro-Girondist print, seven prisoners, in various postures of distress and exclamation are seated on stools in a prison cell. Each one wears a feathered Liberty cap and each is tied to the cell wall by a rope around his neck. The cell is bare save a circular grated window in its top left corner. Speech bubbles hover above each prisoner reading: “Oh Damn it! Is this proper treatment for the Commissioners of a great nation?”, “Oh curse him this false Dumourier.”, “He has finaly trapt us”, “no hole to creep out at”, “Now I feel for the poor prisoners in the Temple”, “It’s all up. With us”, “Oh I could beat my brains out for making the motion that as brought us like asses to it”. The print alludes to the arrest of Charles Dumouriez who despite having played a key role in the victory of the Battle of Valmy in 1972 suffered a significant defeat in the Battle of Neerwinden (March 1793) at the hands of the Austrians which fuelled suspicion amongst the Jacobins of his loyalties. Believing that Dumouriez harboured royalist sympathies several commissioners representing the National Convention were sent to investigate him. Instead of cooperating with the investigation, Dumouriez turned against the deputies and the Minister of War (Pierre Riel de Beurnonville), arresting the commissioners and handing them over to the Austrian forces
Alternative Title:: Commissioners become hostages and French vermin in the German trap
Description:: Title etched below image., Date of publication inferred from the reference to events occurring in 1793., Reversed English copy, with English text, of a French print entitled "A qui Mal veut, Mal arrive." For the original French print, see Princeton University Library Graphic Arts Collection, call no.: GA 2012.01066., Text beneath title: Being a representation of the present situation of the commissioners, Bournonville, Memoire, Villeneuve, Camus, Lamarque, Luinette and Bancal who were sent to arrest Dumouriez, but the tables being turned upon them they were delivered up to the Austrians and by them imprisoned where they may reflect on the long and cruel confinement they subjected their unfortunate monarch to previous to his martyrdom., and Not in the Catalogue of prints and drawings in the British Museum.
Publisher:: Pubd. by J. Aitken, No. 14 Castle Street, Leicester Fields, London
Subject (Geographic):: France and Austria
Subject (Name):: Dumouriez, Charles François Du Périer, 1739-1823.
Subject (Topic):: Girondists, Prisons, Cells (Rooms & spaces), Prisoners, Liberty cap, History, Campaigns, Foreign public opinion, British, and Foreign relations
Found in:: Lewis Walpole Library > Harm watch, harm catch, or, The commissioners become hostages, or, The French vermin in the German trap [graphic].