To Spite Your Face
William Hogarth and Portraits of British Brutality
From the author of The Rake's Progress, The Harlot's Progress, The Four Stages of Cruelty and the portrait of James Figg, first modern boxing champion, came this illustration of the price of desertion from His Majesty's Military Service. This reader names these three maimed wretches as deserters because a junior officer and a grenadier stand in the lower right foreground. Such men retrieved runaways and deserters and also rounded up their replacements. Enlisted soldiers of this era were predominantly enslaved by grenadiers [large elite soldiers] and junior officers.