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Details

SANDGATE AGAINST THE FRENCH 1833.

Item Description

Original satirical cartoon in pen and ink with watercolour wash, a single leaf 7.5 x 4.5 inches, sometime mounted onto card and framed, Overall size 13.5 x 11 inches.

Notes

An artillery man, possibly in the uniform of the Royal Artillery or of a Cinque Ports detachment (faded blue uniform with red facings) is shown setting off a canon,which has fired a chain shot at a caricature French soldier. Along the barrel of the cannon is the signature, H Thompson - Sandgate July 30 1833. The artillery man exclaims; ' Go where glory waits thee!.' The Frenchman makes a somewhat longer speech as he flies through the air with his limbs severed and cockaded hat flying off [English translation]: 'Zounds! Ah this English villain has without doubt killed me! Never again will I see my dear wife and my eighteen children! Oh my beautiful France! Oh my native land! My sons will certainly avenge me. Only GLORY is left to me!!!
This scene is almost certainly set at the coastal defence battery of Sandgate Castle. The castle built by Henry VIII, had been converted into a martello style tower during the Napoleonic wars. Rutton (1895) refers to William Daniell's description of the Castle in 1822 while he was preparing his Voyage around Great Britain. He 'found but two guns mounted, and for garrison but four or five worn-out artillery-men! Even this remnant of a garrison soon afterwards faded away, and the Castle, seems to have been left in charge of a single 'keeper'.' It was part of Royal Artillery policy to use so-called 'invalid' companies to man coastal batteries, sometimes under the charge of a master gunner. In an 1824 list of Sandgate is simply recorded as being part of the Cinque Ports Detachment linked with Dover, Deal and Walmer. This 1833 caricature obviously reflects this period of post war decay with perhaps a veteran of the French wars reflecting on his own glory days to while away the boredom of garrison duty. For a period of one hundred years the British coast defence artillery never fired a shot in anger, although Sandgate was rearmed after 1859 when French invasion was once more perceived as a threat. The guns were removed again in 1881 when the Castle was sold to the South Eastern Railway for a projected coastal route.