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Following his defeat at the Battle of Leipzig of 1813, Napoleon and his army were forced to retreat to France. This picture shows one of Napoleon’s last military successes on French soil before his initial fall from power. On 11 February 1814 he defeated two allied forces – the Russians and the Prussians – at Montmirail, around 100 kilometres west of Paris. Painted in 1822, this was the second of the four battle scenes commissioned from Vernet by the duc d‘Orléans. Here we see the French infantry attack the Russian forces, who flee the field. Vernet doesn’t shirk from showing soldiers being wounded or lying dead in the foreground. Instead of showing the entire battle, he emphasises the vanishing points formed by the rows of troops, which structure the composition and lead our eye to the distant horizon below which the sun is sinking.