La Feste des trois Rois aux Invalides

This Dutch etching satirizes the flight of King James II to France, depicting him as a fool among beggars and invalids outside the Hôtel des Invalides in Paris. The composition crowds the foreground with labeled figures—soldiers, vagrants, the infirm—while an ornate cityscape recedes behind. The engraver uses the printmaker's traditional arsenal: dense hatching, sharp line work, and emblematic poses to mock both the deposed monarch and his French refuge. This print belongs to the seventeenth-century tradition of political satire through engraving and etching, ancestors of the modern cartoon. Like later caricaturists—Gillray, Rowlandson, Daumier—the artist weaponizes costume, physical distortion, and crowded narrative scenes to expose folly and corruption. The labeled masses and topical setting exemplify how prints reached literate publics with partisan commentary during dynastic crisis.