Soldiers Cooking

Two women scrub laundry in a stream while a group of red-coated British soldiers rest near the cookfire at a military camp in this 1798 etching. Artist Thomas Rowlandson made this engraving of an unknown British unit during the French Revolutionary Wars. It is a rare depiction of the women who traveled with the army and provided necessary services such as laundry and mending to the soldiers at military encampments.