Se aprovechan (They make use of them), plate 16 from the series Los Desastres de la Guerra (The Disasters of War),

1808/09–12, printed 1863

Following the French invasion of northern Spain in the spring of 1808, the Peninsular War subjected the Spanish people to six years of cruelty, terror, and extreme privation. Grief stricken, Goya undoubtedly began his Disasters of War etchings following the French siege and ultimate capture of his boyhood city of Zaragoza from December 1808 to February 1809—a notoriously brutal battle in which some 50,000 Spaniards died. By 1814, Goya had completed fifty-six of the eighty plates he ultimately created for Los Desastres, but in the repressive political climate that followed the reinstatement of absolutist monarchy under Ferdinand VII, Goya’s series remained unpublished in the artist’s lifetime. Ultimately, the plates were acquired by the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando in 1863, when they were published for the first time.