Tag: 1870-1871

Rich and ravenous: caricatures of the siege of Paris by the Prussians (September 1870 – January 1871)

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In a previous blog post, we talked about series of caricatures held in Cambridge University Library and other collections (such as Heidelberg University Library) depicting food shortages during the 1870-1871 siege of Paris. The Parisian diet was considerably and disturbingly altered and extended during this time, as people resorted to eating rats, cats, dogs, and horses. The current lockdown, due to the COVID-19 outbreak, with obvious economic consequences, is predicted to increase social inequalities, despite government measures such as the furlough scheme or the extension of free school meals vouchers over the summer holidays. Did the siege of Paris level or increase social differences, and how were they perceived by contemporary caricaturists? Satirical prints specifically targeted the way privileged classes coped with the situation of penury and food shortages. The relative suffering of the wealthy, bourgeois or aristocrats, is treated humourously in many of the caricatures produced at the time. They stress the fact that, though they also experienced rationing, hardship and privations, certain categories of the population did manage to avoid starvation and, as restaurants were open, were still able to enjoy behaviours of their previous life.

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Heidelberg UL, vol. 2 p. 121 and 175 ; Cambridge UL, KF.3.10

In the Album du siège, Cham depicts a manservant informing his lady, reclining languidly in a chair, that her horses are ready – on the dinner table. A print of Paris assiégé shows a helpful manservant jovially reassuring his mistress, a marchioness surrounded by her domestic ménagerie (dogs, cats, fish and birds) that with such an entourage, she need not fear hunger…

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Eating cats and dogs during a lockdown: caricatures of besieged Paris (September 1870 – January 1871)

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150 years ago, in the midst of the Franco-Prussian war and the Commune, the besieged population of Paris experienced situations of lockdown and hardship which to some extent resonate with the confinement we have been through recently. During the COVID-19 outbreak, our confinement may have altered some of our eating habits and consumption, but despite initial panic buying, UK supermarkets have still been stocked and food has been plentiful, whereas the circulation of people, goods and provisions to and from besieged Paris was completely impeded.

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Collection de caricatures et de charges pour servir à l’histoire de la guerre et de la révolution de 1870-1871. Heidelberg UL, vol. 2, p. 91 ; Cambridge UL, KF.3.10

Cambridge University Library, as well as a number of institutions and museums in the UK, France, Germany and the US, holds an important collection of caricatures of the Franco-Prussian war and the Paris Commune, (hand-coloured) lithographs, most of them produced in series. Those focusing on the first siege of Paris include “Souvenirs du siège” (30 prints) and “Paris assiégé: scènes de la vie parisienne pendant le siège” (31 prints) by Draner; the “Album du siège” (39 prints) by Cham and Daumier, and two series by Faustin: “Paris bloqué” (24 prints) and “Les femmes de Paris assiégé (idylles et épopées)” (8 prints). In the context of a research project on 1870-71 Franco-Prussian caricatures, Cambridge Digital Library has already digitised the first of the six volumes of the Cambridge prints, and Cambridge Digital Humanities has funded the photography of the remainder of the collection, due when the library reopens. In the meantime, we can refer to other digitisations of this material, in particular that of Heidelberg University Library. Continue reading “Eating cats and dogs during a lockdown: caricatures of besieged Paris (September 1870 – January 1871)” →

Drawings of the Franco-German war of 1870-71: a new acquisition at Cambridge University Library

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Last year Cambridge University Special Collections acquired, with the help of the Friends of the Library, a notebook of 47 drawings, probably produced by an unidentified soldier towards the end of the 19th century (MS Add. 10300). This acquisition adds to the library’s holdings of primary material relating to the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871, which ranges from bound volumes of contemporary caricatures (KF.3.9-14, see the earlier blogpost) to directories of caricaturists and their work (such as Berleux’s La caricature politique en France pendant la guerre, le siège de Paris et la Commune, 1870-1871, Lib.5.89.27 and Gallica) and facsimiles of posters produced during the Paris Commune (See Les murailles politiques francaises and Les affiches de la Commune). The interest of the notebook does not lie in the artistic talent of its creator, but rather in the examination of his visual culture, through the identification of the illustrations from contemporary books and prints which inspired his own drawings. The investigation of the sources he used reveals the kind of illustrated material he had access to, which is also key for the dating of the manuscript.

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CUL, MS Add. 10300

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Cambridge caricatures of the Franco-Prussian War and the Paris Commune (1870-71)

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Cambridge University Library holds six large volumes of illustrated plates entitled Collection de caricatures et de charges pour servir à l’histoire de la guerre et de la révolution de 1870-1871 (KF.3.9-14). Among those, the digitisation of volume 1 is now available on Cambridge Digital library. This is a set of highly interesting primary material, visual sources dealing with the Franco-Prussian War and the Paris Commune. The caricatures, most of them coloured, make fun of politicians and public figures of the time, soldiers and civil populations during the war and the siege of Paris by the Germans. They were probably assembled in Paris shortly after the events, then brought to London, where several sets were compiled and subsequently sold or donated to different institutions, up to the 1880s: the British Library (at least 10 vols), Heidelberg University Library (9 vols), the Victoria & Albert Museum (9 vols), Cambridge University Library (6 vols) and the Bodleian Library (1 vol.).

French Emperor Napoleon III, Cambridge University Library, KF.3.9

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