Eudes le Grand quittant Bordeaux incendiée par les Sarrasins, 732

This illustration by Émile Bayard depicts Odo the Great leaving Bordeaux after it was burned by the Saracens in 732. The composition shows the Duke of Aquitaine on horseback, raising his sword in a dramatic gesture, while in the background the city burns beneath a sky filled with smoke. Around him, warriors and survivors accompany the retreat in a scene that emphasizes catastrophe, desolation, and the violence of invasion. The image gives spectacular visual form to an episode associated with the conflicts between Franks, Aquitanians, and Umayyad forces in the early eighth century. Produced circa 1867 for Henri Martin’s Histoire de France populaire, depuis les temps les plus reculés jusqu’à nos jours, it is not a direct witness to the medieval event but a nineteenth-century historical reconstruction intended to dramatize major episodes of the past.