The humor piece at left, "The Italian Quadrille" (click to enlarge), appeared in the June 4, 1859, issue of the famous British humor magazine, Punch. It's obvious from the timing that it's satirizing the brief Franco-Austrian War of 1859, also known as the Second Italian War of Independence. I love it when dance terms get used this way. This one isn't as clever overall as the near-contemporaneous Quadrille Nautically Described (1856), but what it lacks in clever figures it makes up for in real-world meaning.
Some quick background on the war: it lasted from late April until early July of 1859 and featured a French-Sardinian alliance led by Napoleon III (Louis Napoleon) and Victor Emmanuel II fighting against Austria under Franz Josef I and the Hungarian general Ferencz Gyulai. The Austrians were defeated, and major steps were taken toward the eventual unification of Italy and its establishment as an independent kingdom a couple of years later.
I'm no expert on this particular bit of history, but my understanding from secondary sources is that the English government was officially neutral, but quietly favored Austria, and that there was some popular sympathy for Italy. The quadrille-based description here favors neither side, but the accompanying cartoon appears to me to be anti-Italian, at least: a British coin spinning toward an obvious racist caricature (short, ugly, swarthy, hairy) of an Italian organ-grinder. I'm undecided as to whether the face is actually meant to represent anyone; Victor Emmanuel would be most logical, but it looks to me more like Louis Napoleon (especially in this picture). The wider implication is presumably that the Franco-Italian side was interested in financial support from Britain.
Now, let's look at the actual text of the "quadrille".
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The Italian Quadrille
As Danced Between the French and Austrian Armies
Our Own Correspondent informs us that the following have been the movements of the two armies for the last ten days. As they are now perfect in their steps, it is supposed they will shortly begin to take a few fresh ones:--
The Austrians advance.
The French retire.
The French advance.
The Austrians retire.
They change sides, and repeat the same figure several times.
They fire down the middle.
They join arms, cross bayonets, seize each other in the best way they can, and chassez-croisée for some considerable time.
Both balancez to take breath.
Opposite sides advance, meet half way, salute one another, and then retire to their original places.
Cavalier seul by Louis Napoleon.
Cavalier seul by Victor Emmanuel
Cavalier seul by General Gyulai.
General Ronde d'hilarité.
Grand Galop round the country.
As soon as this Quadrille is over, they begin again.
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After I finished laughing, I looked up the course of the war and realized that the whole thing is a bit unfair. I'm sure the armies were in constant motion, yes, as they maneuvered to confront each other, but the ten days preceding the June 4th publication date featured French or Italian (or combined) forces defeating the Austrians three times in rapid succession (on the 26th, 27th, and 30th of May). The entire war, as summarized on this timeline, seems to have been a string of defeats for the Austrians. I don't know whether it looked more confusing in real-time from Britain's perspective, or perhaps whether Punch had a strong enough pro-Austrian editorial bias that it wasn't interested in presenting it as the chronically losing side. Whatever the actual case was, the joke here is of war as a chronic stalemate, armies advancing and retiring, changing sides, pausing, galloping around the countryside, and starting all over again. Without the cartoon, I'd construe as generally anti-war.
Of the detailed figures, I was particularly entertained by the image of the chassez-croisée "for some considerable time". But I note that "down the middle" (as in "fire down the middle") is misplaced; that's a country dance figure, not a quadrille figure, though I suppose if the quadrille were danced in columns instead of squares at least it wouldn't be (figuratively) fatal to anyone. Or perhaps if the dancers shifted into two lines, as in the Lancers? There's another Lancers connection as well; the advance-salute-retire sequence is just like the opening of the third figure.
The cavalier seul figures assigned to three of the major leaders of the war are wildly out of date by the 1850s; those are opportunities for early-nineteenth century dancers to show off their steps in solos. That sort of thing was long out of fashion in England by the 1850s; they were just gliding through quadrilles without any fancy footwork at all, let alone solos. It makes me wonder whether the author was old enough to remember the older style of dancing quadrilles, or whether a younger author had enough secondhand knowledge to throw those solos in.
Quadrilles often ended with some sort of grand rond or rond general figure, or with a galop around the set. So the final "General Ronde d'hilarité" followed by the Grand Galop is a perfectly appropriate ending.
The piece may be seen in its original context in the collected 1859 issues of Punch here.
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