Note that the man in ragged pants and his companion wearing wooden shoes are not regular infantrymen but nevertheless take part in the defense of their homeland.

Narrative painters such as Alphonse de Neuville often preferred to show many different perspectives in a significant instant — in this case the confrontation of a military encounter. We are not shown the heroic or tragic action of a single great person: what counts is the individual relation of each soldier to the whole. Some are firing their rifles; others are hurrying into the fray. Two men have been shot; another peeks out from his hiding place to stare at the carnage. As in the paintings of Bruegel, each figure has a life and perspective of his own. There are no heroes: only men fighting for their country and themselves. As in all of his most celebrated works, Alphonse de Neuville excelled at what Emile Zola called "military genre painting."

Click to read about the exclusion of French military artists from the 1878 Universal Exposition, especially the section "Victory in Defeat"

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