Soldaten op patrouille, kind bij een waterpijp en een ooievaar 1834

Frédéric Bouchot made this print of soldiers, a child with a hookah and a stork using pen in the early 19th century. The image is divided into three scenes. On the left, a troop of soldiers strides past a sentry box, apparently on patrol. In the middle, a man and a child are smoking a hookah. And on the right, a stork stands in a marshy landscape. Given Bouchot's lifetime, and the style of the soldiers' uniforms, we can assume this scene is set in France during or shortly after the Napoleonic era. While hookah smoking may seem exotic to us now, tobacco had become a popular commodity in Europe, and the habit of smoking in public was on the rise. What is interesting is the combination of military and leisure. To understand this print better, one might investigate the normal occupations of soldiers during peacetime, and the place of the army in the French imagination at this time.