"End of the Irish Invasion; - or - the Destruction of the French Armada" was first published on 20 January 1797. The artwork satirises the historic, real-world failure of the French Expédition d'Irlande in December 1796, where a massive French armada attempting to support Irish revolutionaries was scattered and destroyed by violent gales before ever setting foot on land.
The French Mission was led by General Lazare Hoche and urged by Irish revolutionary Wolfe Tone. A fleet of 44 ships carrying nearly 20,000 men set sail to spark an Irish rebellion against Great Britain.
Terrible winter weather and dense fog caused chaos, scattering the fleet. Twelve French ships sank, 3,200 men drowned, and the remaining forces were forced to retreat.
Gillray frames this military victory not as a triumph of the British Navy, but as a political stroke of luck and divine intervention engineered by the ruling Tory government.
In the top left corner, Prime Minister William Pitt and his ministers (Henry Dundas, Lord Grenville, and William Windham) are depicted as the personified four winds blowing up the violent sea storm that destroys the French fleet.
Out on the choppy waters, a tiny boat flying the French tricolour and labelled the "Revolutionary Jolly Boat" is capsizing.
The prominent Whig opposition leader, Charles James Fox, is mocked as a carved figurehead strapped to the front of the sinking revolutionary boat, symbolizing his perceived alignment with French revolutionary ideals and the United Irishmen.
Fox’s fellow Whig allies, including Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Lord Erskine, M.A. Taylor, and John Thelwall, are depicted as the helpless crew being violently tossed overboard into the sea.
Gillray was one of five children, and the only one to survive to maturity. In 1770 he was apprenticed to Harry Ashby, a London writing in engraver, and five years later W. Humphrey published a few of Gillray's illustrations including satirical works. By the time Gillray commenced his career satire was old, but personal caricature was in its infancy. Other exponents in this form of art were soon overshadowed by Gillray's superior craftsmanship.
His figures were full of vitality, titillating and reflective of some political crisis or private scandal. As his popularity increased so did demand by the public to see more of his work. In the rapidly changing politics of the late18th century he would produce a plate in twenty-four hours. Although sometimes overlooked his speech bubbles were elaborate and Gillray would spend considerable time composing and redrafting the text.
Between 1791 to 1807 his career continued successfully in association with William and Hannah Humphrey. There after Gillray's health began to suffer. He eventually slipped into madness and died shortly before the Battle of Waterloo on June 1st 1815. Hannah, who had a close relationship with him nursed Gillray through out his final years and following his death the copper plates then formed part of Hannah's estate when she died in 1818.
The executors of Hannah's estate sold Gillray's painstakingly worked plates for there second hand copper weight. Hearing of this, the then publisher, Bohn who had previously expressed an interest in buying the plates set about purchasing them from a variety of different sources, eventually acquiring over 500. In 1851 Bohn republished the engravings in a large folio volume, "The Works of James Gillray".
