The Battle of Montmirail

Horace Vernet's The Battle of Montmirail of 1822 depicts one of Napoleon's most brilliant defensive victories — the February 1814 defeat of the Prussian corps during the 'Six Days Campaign' when Napoleon fought a series of successful engagements against superior Allied forces as they advanced on Paris. The campaign demonstrated Napoleon's tactical genius at its most concentrated even in the face of strategic inevitability, and Montmirail became one of the legendary last victories celebrated in Napoleonic mythology. Vernet's treatment participates in the post-Waterloo construction of a defeated hero's martial legend.

Vernet captures the winter battlefield with precise rendering of snow-covered terrain and the distinctive uniforms of the French and Russian forces. The dynamic cavalry charges create a sense of the furious speed that characterized Napoleon's 1814 campaign.