The Last Cartridges

De Neuville painted this in 1873, only three years after the war with Prussia that France had lost badly. The scene is a real one. On the 1st of September 1870, French marines held out in a village inn at Bazeilles near Sedan, firing until they had nothing left to fire. Thousands died there over two days. The country was hungry for something to be proud of in all that wreckage, and de Neuville gave it to them, painting the smoke, the dust, and the last defiant gestures in a shuttered room. The picture caused a sensation the moment it was shown. It hangs today in that very house at Bazeilles, now a museum named for the last cartridges.