I · THE OBJECT · BRITISH MUSEUM
The Allied Bakers
▶ Listen · narrated
One engraving from April 1814 puts the closing months of the Napoleonic Wars in a bakehouse, and shows how London wanted to see its allies on the edge of victory.
At a glance
- Date
- 1 April 1814
- Creator
- George Cruikshank
- Medium
- Engraving
- Dimensions
- 254 × 361 mm (14.21 in)
- Collection
- British Museum
- Inventory
- 1978,U.826
Look closer
Bakers round an oven
The alliance against Napoleonic France is staged as a bakehouse. To the left, the bakers of the Sixth Coalition are led by Marshal Blücher of Prussia and Bernadotte, Crown Prince of Sweden. A Dutch figure sits below the bakers beside the oven. The joke is domestic and plain: the war is being finished not on a parade ground but in a kitchen, with Napoleon as the dish.
Pies and a stiff door
The Duke of Wellington strides forward with two fresh pies, a nod to British victories in the campaign in south-west France. Francis I of Austria, Napoleon’s father-in-law, is shown pretending the oven door is too stiff to open — a visual reading of Austria’s perceived ambiguous status. Energy and hesitation share the same room.
Russia without the Tsar
Tsar Alexander I, a key figure in the alliance, is absent. The Russians appear instead through Mikhail Vorontsov, who stands between Bernadotte and Blücher. Vorontsov was already familiar in Britain as the son of a former Russian ambassador to London. The choice replaces a distant sovereign with a face British viewers might recognise.
The story
The Allied Bakers, also called the Corsican Toad-in-the-hole, is a caricature — a drawing that exaggerates real people to make a political point — by the British illustrator George Cruikshank, dated 1 April 1814. It is an engraving, a print pulled from lines cut into a metal plate, 254 millimetres (10 in) high and 361 millimetres (14.21 in) wide. The British Museum holds a copy under the inventory number 1978,U.826.
By the spring of 1814 the wars against Napoleonic France were nearly over. The allied armies had closed on Paris, and everyone reading a London print shop window knew it. Cruikshank did not draw a battlefield. He drew a bakehouse.
The title works by folding two jokes together. The allies become a crew of bakers at an oven. Napoleon becomes the dinner. Toad-in-the-hole is a plain British dish — meat baked inside batter — and Napoleon was born on Corsica, so the caricaturist calls him a Corsican toad and puts him in the oven. The enemy stops being a general on a horse and becomes something to be cooked and carried to the table.
The bakers are the Sixth Coalition, the alliance of states then fighting France. On the left they are led by Marshal Blücher of Prussia and Bernadotte, Crown Prince of Sweden. A Dutch man sits below the group, next to the oven. Every figure is doing a piece of argument.
Austria gets the sharpest treatment. Francis I was Emperor of Austria and also Napoleon's father-in-law, which left him fighting a man who had married his daughter. Cruikshank draws him at the oven door, pretending it is too stiff to pull open. The reading is direct: Austria is in the kitchen but will not do the work. Against that, the Duke of Wellington strides in with two fresh pies, already baked — a claim that Britain, after its campaign in south-west France, was delivering results while others fumbled at the handle.
One face is missing. Tsar Alexander I of Russia, one of the most powerful men in the alliance, does not appear. Russia stands instead in the person of Mikhail Vorontsov, placed between Bernadotte and Blücher. Vorontsov's father had been the Russian ambassador in London, so British buyers knew the family name. The print swaps a distant emperor for a man they could place.
Cruikshank was by then the leading caricaturist in Britain, working in the gap left by James Gillray's retirement. The plate was published by Hannah Humphrey, the London printseller who had issued much of Gillray's work. Other impressions survive elsewhere, including at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston; the British Museum's sheet is the one catalogued here.
What the engraving gives us is not a record of the coalition. It is a British opinion of the coalition: who is pushing, who is stalling, who has been left out, and how a long continental war could be reduced, for a London audience, to a row about who opens the oven.
Why it mattered then
In early April 1814 the ending of the war was public knowledge. Paris was under pressure, and readers expected the fighting to stop within weeks. Political prints lived on moments like that. They turned a tangle of treaties and armies into one scene a person could take in at a glance, standing in the street outside a print shop. Cruikshank's bakehouse did several jobs at once. Wellington's two finished pies claimed credit for Britain. The stiff oven door accused Austria of holding back. The Dutch and Swedish figures kept the smaller partners visible without filling the sheet with uniforms and ceremony. And calling Napoleon a Corsican toad-in-the-hole was an insult anyone could repeat: it took the man's foreign birth and served it up in a dish from an English kitchen. Leaving out Tsar Alexander I and using Vorontsov instead suited the London market for the same reason. A caricaturist needs faces his buyers already half-know, or the joke fails. An ambassador's son was more use on the plate than an emperor nobody in the shop had seen. Published by Hannah Humphrey, the print sat in the trade Gillray had made central to British political life. It mattered in 1814 because this is how many people met the coalition — not as a signed agreement, but as a joke about who would open the oven.
Why it matters now
The sheet is still a clear example of how early nineteenth-century Britain pictured international politics: as people, gestures and kitchen business rather than strategy on a map. It rewards slow looking, because each figure carries a claim. Blücher and Bernadotte work. Francis I hangs back. Wellington arrives with the job already done. It also marks a turn in British caricature. Cruikshank rose to the front after Gillray stopped, and Humphrey went on publishing from the same shop, so the trade kept its methods and premises even as the wars ended. For anyone studying how a public learns to recognise its allies and its enemies, the print is evidence. Rank, doubt and national pride are all carried by who holds a pie and who will not touch the door. As an object it is modest — an engraving on a sheet, not a state portrait — yet it keeps one dated, partisan view of 1814 intact. Official histories tend to smooth such views away. This one leaves the bias where a viewer can see it.
The surprising detail
The boldest choice on the plate is an absence. Tsar Alexander I, ruler of Russia and one of the alliance's most powerful members, is not drawn at all. Russia appears instead as Mikhail Vorontsov, standing between Bernadotte and Blücher. Vorontsov's advantage was local: his father had served as Russian ambassador in London, so British viewers knew the name. Fame in the capital, rather than rank in the coalition, decided who got a face.
What is disputed
The print’s composition is described from surviving impressions and standard catalogue accounts; individual sheets can differ slightly in hand-colouring and condition. The British Museum inventory number identifies this impression, but the reference material does not record the precise path by which this particular sheet entered the collection.
How it got here
The caricature was published by Hannah Humphrey, the London printseller who had issued much of James Gillray’s work. Impressions are held in the British Museum (1978,U.826) and in the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. No contested-ownership claim is recorded in the sources used here.
Remember this
A bakehouse joke from April 1814: the allies as bakers, Napoleon as toad-in-the-hole in the oven, and Russia present only through Vorontsov.
Test yourself
Why might Cruikshank have shown Mikhail Vorontsov for Russia instead of Tsar Alexander I, even though the Tsar was the more powerful figure in the alliance?
Because a London caricature had to work with recognition. Vorontsov was already familiar in Britain as the son of a former Russian ambassador to London, so he could stand in for Russian participation without the distant emperor’s face. The print’s diplomacy is visual and local: it prefers a known name and a readable pose over strict rank. That choice is a reminder that satirical images of coalitions are not roll-calls; they are arguments about who counts for the audience holding the sheet.
Go deeper
Image: George Cruikshank / Hannah Humphrey, CC0. Licence: CC0. Source.