The Spanish Ulcer*

Goya, Plate 72b, The Disasters of War

By the time Goya published the Caprichos the promise of the Enlightenment had dimmed. Carlos III was dead and his less respected brother assumed the throne. Even in France, the political revolution inspired by the Enlightenment had devolved into violence during an episode known as the Reign of Terror. Soon after, Napoleon became Emperor of France.

The satire of the Caprichos is succeeded by the visceral horrors of The Disasters of War, a series of etching documenting his responses to the events of the guerilla war and Napoleonic invasion in Spain, but unpublished during his lifetime. Plate 72b, 'The Consequences', remakes 'The Sleep of Reason' from the Caprichos, into something less philosophical and more pitiful memorial.

* Contemporary French term for the excessive and prolonged drain on military and economic resources caused by Napoleon's efforts to subjugate the Iberian Peninsula.