Great deeds! With dead bodies! (Grande hazaña! Con muertos!)

Great deeds! With dead bodies! is the last image in the series The Disasters of War in which Goya depicts a scene of terrible violence. In the middle of a wasteland, three corpses have been tied to a tree. The figure suspended upside down has had his arms and head cut off. The head has been nailed to a branch, while his missing limbs hang from the tree, tied at the wrists. Next to the body is another that has been tied with a rope at the waist, arms behind his back. On the left is a third corpse whose head rests on the floor while his legs have been tied to the tree trunk.

This print is clearly related to print no. 33, What more can be done? (Qué hai que hacer mas?) in which soldiers dismember a corpse and print no. 37, This is worse (Esto es peor), showing a mutilated body impaled on a tree. These prints highlight the common practice during war of mutilating corpses to strip them of any dignity, a method that was applied particularly in the case of traitors. Accusing someone of treason was extremely serious, and those who pointed the finger at another who they suspected of being a traitor had to be very sure of their grounds for the accusation. A decree dated 3 February 1809 regulating the punishments meted out for disturbances ("Penas sobre bullicios y conmociones") stated that whoever accused a person of being a traitor had to prove it: if they could not, they could be subject to the punishments stipulated by law, which could even include the death penalty.

Goya was likely to have known about many sentences handed down to traitors, some of which would have been featured in the press at the time. One of the most debated cases was that of General Benito de San Juan, who led the Spanish troops during the Battle of Somosierra on 30 November 1808. The general retreated to Talavera where he was killed on 7 December 1808 by various soldiers who accused him of being a traitor. Not content with his death, the soldiers also stripped the body and mutilated it in a public act.

This print portrays a kind of macabre art work in the middle of nature, a curious composition in which the human remains have been distributed over a tree with almost aesthetic criteria. Despite the fact that the landscape that the painter depicts is an extremely tormented one, it also has a certain beauty. The artist depicts the mutilated body's anatomy with care in a marked classical style: the body that hangs upside down is reminiscent of the sketches Goya produced based on the Belvedere Torso in his Italian Sketchbook.

As in the case of other works in the series, the title of this print is critical. Goya exclaims "Great deeds!" but questions the merit of such a brutal gesture.