Description of the magnificent and beautiful peristrephic panorama, now exhibiting in Sackville-Street, Dublin: illustrative of the most interesting events that have occured to Bonaparte, from the evening of the 18th of June, 1815, to his taking up his residence in St. Helena
Dublin: printed by M. West, [1815?]
Hib.7.815.29, frontispiece

The capture of the carriage featured in a ‘peristrephic’ panorama—a series of painted views unfolded by mechanical means as a way of telling a story—exhibited in Dublin. This dark, inky frontispiece to the pamphlet published to accompany the display vividly captures the confusion and violence of the hours after Waterloo. The pamphlet related that ‘The horrors of the night of the 18th of June, surpassed if possible the tremendous scenes of that eventful day.… A mutual and deadly hatred animated the pursuing and pursued, and the sanguinary scenes of Ligny, were amply atoned in the streets of Genappe’. The coachman is shown lifting an arm to fend off a Prussian sabre-stroke; wounded in three places, the limb was eventually amputated six days later. Napoleon, hatless, is shown fleeing on the right. In the pamphlet, credit for the capture is given to a brigade of lancers, and the attackers are shown as cavalrymen; but von Keller’s unit was a battalion of fusiliers, a much smaller body than a brigade and one which ordinarily fought on foot.