Die Erstürmung der Malakow-Redoute

By the time Horace Vernet finished this in 1858, the Crimean War was three years over, but the town of Autun still had a local hero to celebrate. General Patrice de Mac-Mahon, born nearby in Saône-et-Loire, had led the assault that took the Malakoff redoubt on 8 September 1855. That fortified mound was the key to the Russian defences around Sevastopol, and three days after it fell the city surrendered. Vernet shows the moment just after the fighting, Mac-Mahon on the summit while a zouave drives a French flag into the ground. The general points downward, answering a British soldier's salute and echoing the line attached to his name that day, that he was there and there he would stay. The town council had commissioned the picture two years before Vernet delivered it.