ABSTRACT
First published in The Examiner, IX, 14 January 1816, pp. 17–20. Reprinted in An Historical Character of Napoleon, by Charles Phillips (London: William Hone, 1816) with Phillips’ piece, ‘A Character of Napoleon by Another Hand’, a ‘Biographical Sketch of Napoleon by Mr Walsh of the United States’, and a vignette by George Cruickshank. This piece takes up the mode of orientalist fantasy to satirize the Regent and to tell the story of Napoleon’s rise and fall. Here, Hing-land, an island off China, is England, ruled by Prince Jee-Auge or George, the Prince Regent, who is backed by his ‘mandarins’, Kah-Stlee-Ra (Castlereagh) and Gen-King-Song (Jenkinson, Lord Liverpool). China (Europe) had been ruled by the Great Kan of Tartary (France), Nah-Po-Lee-Hon (Napoleon). Hunt reminds his readers that Napoleon, having risen upon the successes of the French Revolution and having displaced the BO-UR-BONG (Bourbon) dynasty, had placed his brothers on various thrones: Jo-Zif (Joseph) ruled in Siam (Spain), and Jerum (Jérôme) in Aracan (Westphalia); a third, we are told, was made King of Assam only to resign the crown, and he must be Napoleon’s brother Louis who was king of Holland (1806–10) but was forced to abdicate by Napoleon when he pursued policies in conflict with the Continental System. We also hear that Napoleon’s son-in-law Hu-Jeen (Eugène de Beauharnais) was made viceroy in Italy, while the Pope (here the Grand Lama), after crowning Napoleon, was sent from Rome, and Napoleon’s infant son, Napoleon II was named ‘King of Rome’ (here Teshoo). Napoleon’s son was born to his second wife, Marie Louise (Loo-Her-Sa), daughter of the Holy Roman Emperor Francis II (here the Emperor of 41China). Napoleon also faces the Emperor of TOBOLSKI, or Alexander, Tsar of Russia, and we hear of Napoleon’s disastrous Russian campaign of 1812. We are told as well of the campaign against Napoleon that brought his first abdication in 1814, of the restoration of Louis (Loo-His), then, in greater detail, of Waterloo and his defeat by Vel-Hing-Tong (Wellington) and Blu-Cher/Blue Cur (the Prussian general Blücher), and of his exile at the hands of the British. In other words, Hunt retells through his allegory the events that had filled the Political Examiner the previous year, and, as in his more direct accounts, Hunt is particularly concerned to argue that the victory over Napoleon belongs to the people and not the government and to combat what he sees as a dangerous alliance between politics and religion.
