If it defends itself well

In the centre of this picture, a white horse is throwing a blow. All around him are mastiffs, identifiable by the iron-tipped collars they wear to defend themselves against the wolves, who watch the horse's violent reaction undaunted. In the background of the picture, a pack of wolves is preparing to attack the horse.

Each of these three animals has its own symbolic meaning. The dogs could refer to revolutionary ideals, while the wolves have often been associated with the Inquisition; indeed Ruiz Padrón imagined the inquisitors as a pack of hungry wolves. The horse, however, could be an allusion to liberal Spain. In this way Goya might be thought to have captured the efforts that the constitutional monarchy was making to defend itself, on the one hand from the values of the Ancien Régime, and on the other from revolutionary impulses.

In any case, it should be pointed out that this engraving, like many others in the Emphatic Caprices, , is quite complex and can be interpreted in other ways. Eleanor Sayre, for example, draws a comparison between the horse in Goya's print and the one in Guernica (1937, National Museum and Art Centre Reina Sofía) by Pablo Picasso (Malaga, 1881-Mouguins, 1973), and believes that both artists use it to allude to the Spanish people who, in the present case, are being attacked by the followers of Ferdinand VII.

Juliet Wilson-Bareau also relates this print to the poem by Giambattista Casti (Viterbo or Acquapendente, 1724-Paris, 1803) Gli animali parlanti (1801) in which the horse is a symbol of monarchy fighting against the wolves, the king's corrupt ministers, although without the help of the dogs, who represent the anti-monarchist forces of the revolution.

This is an engraving in which Goya has captured the centrifugal force of the horse stretching out to throw its legs into the air. The intense energy of this animal could be related to engraving no. 8, Always Happens from The Disasters of War, a series in which the horse is involved in a scene of enormous intensity.