Waterloo : Tableaux historiques des campagnes d'Italie, depuis l'an IV jusqu'à la bataille de Marengo

Waterloo

<p style='text-align: justify;'>This remarkable example of triumphalist printing appeared when Napoleon was at the height of his powers. It celebrated his campaigns in Italy, and this late issue of the work also contains a suffixed ‘Précis’ covering the more recent campaign in Germany which culminated with the Battle of Austerlitz in 1805. Both the size of the volume—the pages are almost two feet tall—and the sumptuous scale and detail of the engravings expressed an ambition to serve as an adequate testimony to those whose achievements it chronicled. The immortality of these heroes, the book claimed, had begun during their own lifetimes, and in the Introduction the publishers attested that they had ‘overlooked nothing in order that the execution of the work should be worthy’ of the ‘invincible general’, Napoleon, and the soldiers whom he guided to victory.</p>