Hand-coloured caricature of 'Buonaparte leaving Egypt'. Text in English below image.

Another satire on Napoleon in Egypt, ridiculing the French leader’s campaign there. Napoleon departed secretly on 23 August 1799 on the ‘Muiron’. The caption refers to a group of ‘Intercepted Letters from the Republican General Kléber, to the French Directory’ and denounces Napoleon as ‘the Deserter of the Army of Egypt’. This refers to a batch of letters between Bonaparte and Kléber that was intercepted by the British in the Mediterranean and, as a propaganda ploy, published by the government to great acclaim. They contained Kléber’s account of Napoleon’s sudden departure from Egypt: ‘Bonaparte quitted this country for France … without saying a word of his intention to any person whatsoever. He had appointed me to meet him at Rosetta on the subsequent day!’

Gillray reinforces the propaganda value of the letters by taking as the basis for his print Napoleon’s duplicity, which is everywhere signified: the figurehead on the boat he is about to embark is a crowned Janus. Similarly, while he adopts a heroic pose (based loosely on the Apollo Belvedere), in a conventional gesture of military prowess, he looks back to his abandoned ragbag of an army, whose few tents are lined up against a seemingly limitless Turkish camp. While his gesture points in the direction of the open sea, as though to further, future campaigns, it also points to a vision in the clouds of the Revolutionary symbols of the fasces and axe overlaid with the imperial crown and sceptre, again stressing the idea of doubleness. Meanwhile, the figure of Fame, above, looks and points down at Napoleon and laughs.