File:Buonaparte Ambition and Death (NAPOLEON 167).jpeg

English: This drawing shows Napoleon's oversized ambition and how it leads to his downfall. It is one of many caricatures on the consequences of the Battle of the Nations at Leipzig, generally regarded to be Napoleon's most decisive defeat until Waterloo.

The left panel shows him victorious on the battlefield, dripping blood from his saber and trampling on dead bodies, including an infant and its mother. Napoleon is leading a bloodthirsty and rapacious band of Jacobins, complete with their red bonnets. A winged Ambition flies above him, luring him with a globe and a leering smile.

The second panel shows Napoleon fleeing a battlefield, cannons blazing behind him, and being chased by Death, who tramples on the French flag. Ambition, much diminished, has fallen behind and appears to be tumbling out of the sky.

The third panel shows Napoleon on his throne holding his infant son, the King of Rome, who already wears soldier boots. Flames are encroaching on the throne, with specters visible in the flames that harken back to defeated political enemies: the Duc d'Enghien (member of the Bourbon family), John Wesley Wright (British captain), and General Charles Pichegru (French royalist living in exile), all of whom were involved in a British-financed plot in 1804 to kidnap and assassinate Napoleon while he was First Consul. Also in the flames is Toussant [d'Ouverture], leader of a successful Haitian revolution who was deported to France in 1801 and imprisoned until his death. In front of the throne dance six little blue devils, plus two others playing a fiddle and bagpipes. Death, behind the throne, is working eagerly on a grave.

Reference source: George #12171.

• Subjects (LCSH): Political cartoons; History--Caricatures & cartoons; Napoleon I, Emperor of the French, 1769-1821; Napoleonic Wars, 1800-1815