Verse on a Satire of Napoleon

This Dutch broadside verse accompanies a political print from the Napoleonic Wars, when anti-French sentiment swept across occupied Europe. The text, printed in italic type on cream paper, celebrates Napoleon's military defeats and the hoped-for liberation of the Netherlands. It exemplifies the popular print tradition—rooted in Hogarth and Gillray—where verse and image together attacked political enemies through exaggeration, wordplay, and nationalist fervor. Such broadsides circulated cheaply among the literate public, blending folk sentiment with satirical art. The form survived into 19th-century German Bilderbogen and eventually informed early comic narratives, proving that sequential visual and textual humor served political resistance long before the comic book emerged.