Napoleon's Star begins to wane. The star of Napoleon was beginning to wane in 1812. The snow made its first appearance in Russia on the 13th of October of that year, and the French emperor already commenced his preparations for retreat. This is referred to in a very clever caricature published by Tegg on the 1st of December, 1812, wherein we find General Frost shaving Boney with a razor marked "Russian steel." Napoleon stands up to his knees in snow, and out of the nostrils of the snow fiend [General Frost] issue blasts labelled "North," "East," "Snow," and "Sleet." Seven days later on, we meet with a roughly-executed cartoon, Polish Diet with French Dessert, wherein we see Napoleon basted by General Benningsen, the spit being turned by a Russian bear. This caricature, no doubt, has reference to the disastrous defeat by Benningsen of the French advanced guard, thirty thousand strong, under Murat, on the 18th of October, 1812, when fifteen hundred prisoners, thirty-eight cannon, and the whole of the baggage of the corps, besides other trophies, fell into the victors' hands.
The retreat from Moscow is referred to in a satire published by Thomas Tegg on the 7th of March, 1813, labelled, The Corsican Bloodhound beset by the Bears of Russia; wherein Napoleon is represented as a mongrel bloodhound with a tin kettle tied to his tail, closely pursued by Russian bears. Various papers are flying out of the kettle, labelled "Oppression," "Famine," "Frost," "Destruction," "Death," "Horror," "Mortality," "Annihilation." "Push on, my lads," says one of the pursuers. "No grumbling; keep scent of him; no sucking of paws this winter, here is food for the bears in all the Russias." The emperor, in truth, had the narrowest escape from being made a prisoner by the Cossacks, a fact alluded to in another caricature published by Tegg in June, 1813, entitled, Nap nearly Nab'd, or a Retreating Jump just in time. Here, the emperor and one of his marshals are depicted leaping out of window, at the very moment when a Cossack with his lance appears outside the palings. "Vite,"says the marshal, in the peculiar patois adopted by the English caricaturists of the early part of the century, "Courez, mon Empereur, ce Diable de Cossack, dey spoil our dinner!!!"
