An officer, perhaps General Bonaparte himself, reviews a line of soldiers from the vantage...
An officer, perhaps General Bonaparte himself, reviews a line of soldiers from the vantage point of an impressive, rearing steed. Behind him billows the smoke of battle through which we catch glimpses of cannon, banners, ranks of soldiers and the castellated walls of a fortress under attack.
A curiously twisted ribbon provides the principle structure of the border and separates the white ground of the plate from a contrasting finely dotted brown field toward the edge. Against this colored ground are alternating classically garbed females (goddesses?) and groups of antique vases. These motifs in addition to the archaic inscriptions on the ribbon itself may reference Napoleon's Mediterranean campaigns which brought a greater European awareness to the antiquities of those regions.