By James Gillray.
Satire inspired by the September massacres of 1792.
Below caption title: Epigram extempore on seeing the above Print. "Here as you see, and as 'tis known, "Frenchmen mere Cannibals are grown; "On Maigre Days each had his Dish "Of Soup, or Sallad, Eggs, or Fish; "But now 'tis human Flesh they gnaw, "And ev'ry Day is Mardi Gras.
Library's copy imperfect, two rectangular sections have been removed at the lower corners, with no loss to image or text.
Print shows a French family engaged in a cannibal feast in a ramshackle room. Five persons sit at a round table on which is a head in a dish. The head of the family (left) is seated on a sack inscribed 'Propriété de la Nation', which disgorges a crown, sceptre, and mitre, with jewels, &c. Opposite him, a man is seated on the body of a woman whose throat is cut; a blood-stained axe is thrust through his belt. All eagerly devour human fragments. An old hag is seated opposite a large fire in which plunder is burning; she bastes the body of an infant, transfixed on a spit. In the foreground three small children, one wearing a dagger, crouch round a tub, eating the entrails which it contains. Heads and corpses appear through a door and in a rack slung to the ceiling. On the wall is rudely drawn figure of 'Petion', wearing a cocked hat, holding out an axe in one hand, a head in the other, with the inscription 'Vive la Liberte Vive le Egalitè'. Near it is the headless figure of Louis XVI as 'Lewis le Grand'.