Departure of a Traveling Wagon with Six Bakers Accused of Flour Poisoning

This French etching depicts a bread wagon departing Brussels amid public outcry—six bakers accused of poisoning flour are escorted away by mounted soldiers as crowds jeer. The print belongs to the long tradition of political satire stretching from Hogarth through Gillray and Rowlandson to Daumier, where printmakers used sharp observation and exaggeration to expose public scandal and social anxiety. Here, the composition—soldiers, mob, the prominent wagon as focal point—organizes chaos into visual argument. The numbered captions below anchor specific grievances. Such prints circulated widely as cheap, sharp commentary on events of the day, establishing conventions of visual irony and character-driven narrative that would later shape the comic strip.