Is your worship... well, as I say... hey! Careful...

On the left side of the picture is a mutilated man leaning on his crutches, listening attentively to the bravado of an old general. He is dressed in uniform, holding a baton in his left hand and displaying an officer's badge in the palm of his right hand. Behind him, a man who covers his mouth to hide his laughter and another with angular features and a wide-brimmed hat observe the ridiculous soldier.

The Aragonese painter used a single fine-grained aquatint that contrasts with the whites achieved through the varnish reserves in the first prints. This effect gradually faded, as did the application of the burnisher on the figures. In the upper right corner there is a defect which Goya tried to conceal with the drypoint and which will become increasingly visible as the intensity of the aquatint weakens.

The manuscript in the Prado's Museo Nacional del Prado comments on this engraving: "The cockade and the cane make him believe that he is of a superior nature and abuses the command entrusted to him to annoy all those who know him, arrogant, insolent and vain with those who are inferior, dejected and vile with those who can do more than he can". Ayala's manuscript and that of the Biblioteca Nacional coincide in the same explanation: "The swollen soldiers, full of gout and filly, throw brabatas to the crippled, since they did not throw them to their enemies".

It is possible that the figure in the print is the artillery general Tomás de Morla y Pacheco (Jerez de la Frontera, 1748-Madrid, 1812). He was known not so much for his bravery and military merits as for his verbal incontinence. Tomás de Morla enjoyed the sympathy and protection of Manuel Godoy and it was he who surrendered Madrid to Napoleon.