The Apotheosis of Hoche, published by Hannah Humphrey in 1798 (hand-coloured etching)

Louis Lazare Hoche (1768–97) was a French soldier who rose to be general of the Revolutionary army. He is best known for his defeat of Royalist forces in Brittany. Hoche, seated on a rainbow which spans a landscape undergoing military devastation, plays a guillotine as if it were a lyre. He is a handsome young man wearing only a cloak and sash in which is a pair of pistols. He has just kicked off his two heavy spurred jack-boots which fall towards the ground and is unconscious of a falling noose. host of corpses wearing bonnet rouge; dripping blood from severed heads; hag figure vomits poison onto the earth;