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.

Roughly paraphrasing Shakespeare's Anthony, Mason's intent with this pattern was doubtless to profit from Napoleon, "not to praise him." While the British antagonism for the French emperor was slow to subside, in many regions Napoleon continued to be much admired, and export trade for Midlands potters in the post-Napoleonic world was bustling. The Legend of Napoleon by Sudhir Hazareesingh offers a detailed account of the cult that continued after Waterloo.

Take special note of the classical vase group in the border. This motif provides the easiest way to distinguish "Napoleon" from John Beech's "Texian Campaigne," which, one can assume with some confidence, derived from the Mason pattern.