[Victorian Web Home —> Visual Arts —> Illustration —> Phiz (Hablot K. Browne) —> The Knight of Gwynne —> Next]

Passage Illustrated: The Battle near Cairo where Leonard dies heroically

Victory had even more unequivocally pronounced for the British on the heights. By this time every battery was in their possession. The enemy were in full flight towards Alexandria, the tumultuous mass occasionally assailed by our light infantry, to whom, from our deficiency in cavalry, was assigned the duty of harassing the retreat. It was here that Darcy's Volunteers, now reduced to one third of their original number, highly distinguished themselves, not only attacking the flank of the retiring enemy, but seizing every opportunity of ground to assail them in front and retard their flight.

In one of these onslaughts, for such they were, the Volunteers became inextricably entangled with the enemy, and although fighting with the desperation of tigers, volley after volley tore through them; and the French, maddened by the loss they had already suffered at their hands, hastened to finish them by the bayonet. It was only by the intervention of the French officers, a measure in itself not devoid of peril, that any were spared; and those few, bleeding and mangled, were hurried along as prisoners, the only triumph of that day's battle! The strange spectacle of an affray in the very midst of a retiring column was seen by the British in pursuit, and the memory of this scene is preserved among the incidents of that day's achievements. [Chapter LXIII, "The Landing at Aboukir," pp. 526-527]

Commentary: The Knight as Commander at the Battle of Abukir, Egypt (March 1801)

The top-secret mission on which the Knight of Gwynne, Forster, and Leonard have sailed "south" turns out to be a British expeditionary force bound for Egypt. The fleet has landed troops, including Darcy's Irish Volunteers, at Abukir on the Egyptian coast; three actions immediately succeeded: the Battle of Abukir, the Battle of Alexandria (21 March), and the Siege of Alexandria (17 August — 2 September), which culminated in the capitulation of the French, who had held the delta city since 2 July 1798. Thus, in The Knight of Gwynne Lever introduces a subject that long fascinated him, the Irish contribution to the Napoleonic Wars, which he deals with more extensively in Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon (1841), Jack Hinton, The Guardsman (1843), and Tom Burke of Ours (1844). The British attack on French forces in Egypt was logical since Napoleon's invasion threatened British trading access to the eastern Mediterranean and critical trade routes to India, long before the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869. Significantly, Lever presents the British as not merely brave and resolute, but loyal to each other and enlightened in both conduct and discourse, in contrast to the radical, enraged and savage minions of the French Revolution whom they defeat.

Once again Phiz delights in having the opportunity to depict horses under duress in a violent battle scene. The illustrator supplements Lever's description of the decimation of the blue-uniformed Irish Volunteers, drawing on a paragraph from the next chapter to realise Maurice Darcy's heroic defiance of the French, who menace him on every side:

The exasperation of a defeat so totally unlooked for had made the French almost savage in their vindictiveness, and nothing but the greatest efforts on the part of the officers could have saved the prisoners from the cruel vengeance of the infuriated soldiery. As it was, insulting epithets, oaths, and obnoxious threats met them at every moment of the halt; and at each new success of the British their fury broke out afresh, accompanied by menacing gestures that seemed to dare and defy every fear of discipline. [Chapter LXIV, "The French Retreat," 529]

Darcy seems to be signalling British troops beyond the ranks of the French who have him surrounded. Six of his comrades lie wounded or dying on the ground about him as an aide attempts to hold his horse (right). Despite the fact that a French officer is pointing a pistol in his face, Darcy seems unperturbed. He is not, like the majority of British prisoners whom the French drag off to Alexandria, "bleeding and mangled" (526), although in the next chapter Lever specifies that the Knight of Gwynne is "wounded and bleeding" (528), that he has sustained a sabre cut, and that one arm is now "powerless" (529). In contrast, Phiz's figure seems strangely unconcerned.

Related Material: The Napoleonic Wars and Phiz's Seven Other Horse Scenes in the Novel

• Napoleon’s Surprising Popularity in Nineteenth-Century England
• The Role of the Victorian Army: The Pre-Victorian period
• The Peninsular War, 1812
• Horses by "Phiz" for Charles Lever's The Knight of Gwynne; A Tale of the Time of the Union (January 1846 — July 1847)

Bibliography

Buchanan-Brown, John. Phiz! Illustrator of Dickens' World. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1978.

Lester, Valerie Browne Lester. Chapter 11: "'Give Me Back the Freshness of the Morning!'" Phiz! The Man Who Drew Dickens. London: Chatto and Windus, 2004. Pp. 108-127.

Lever, Charles. The Knight of Gwynne; A Tale of the Time of the Union. London: Chapman and Hall, serialised January 1846 through July 1847.

Lever, Charles. The Knight of Gwynne. Illustrated by Phiz [Hablột Knight Browne]. Novels and Romances of Charles Lever. Vol. I and II. In two volumes. Project Gutenberg. Last Updated: 28 February 2018.

Steig, Michael. Chapter Four: "Dombey and Son: Iconography of Social and Sexual Satire." Dickens and Phiz. Bloomington: Indiana U. P., 1978. Pp. 86-112.

Stevenson, Lionel. Chapter IX, "Nomadic Patriarch, 1845-1847." Dr. Quicksilver: The Life of Charles Lever. London: Chapman and Hall, 1939. Pp. 146-164.

_______. "The Domestic Scene." The English Novel: A Panorama. Cambridge, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin and Riverside, 1960.

---

Victorian
Web

Illustra-
tion

Phiz

Knight
of Gwynne

Next

Created 17 August 2023