saw this Europe map’s interpretation in strange maps, one of my fav blogs

• Prussia, made to look like its walrus-bearded ‘Iron Chancellor’ Otto von Bismarck, is haranguing its neighbours: kneeling on Austria, a sleeping soldier in undress; covering the Netherlands with its right hand.

• France, dressed as a fierce zouave soldier, is aiming a bayonet at the heart of the unwieldy Prussian military monster.

• Belgium, too small to be anthropomorphised, is being squeezed between France and Prussia (which would become its familiar, if uncomfortable lot in the First and Second World Wars).

• England is an old woman, struggling with Ireland, her rebellious lapdog on a leash (although it looks more like a small bear); Scotland is the old lady’s mobcap.

• Spain is a rotund senorita, smoking the day away while lying on her back and thus nearly crushing the small Portuguese soldier under her.

• Corsica and Sardinia are joined to show a leprechaun-like figure gleefully mooning the map-reader.

• Italy, possibly made to look like the great national leader Garibaldi, is holding off pressure from Prussia.

• Denmark is a small, swaggering soldier, no doubt hoping to recover Holstein, the territory it lost to Prussia in a war a few years earlier.

• Norway and Sweden are together turned into a ferocious dog.

• Switzerland is a closed cottage.

• Turkey in Europe is “an Oriental crushed by the superincumbent pressure of the other countries”.

• Turkey in Asia is a girl smoking a hookah pipe.

• Russia is a rag-collector in a patched coat, ‘Crimea’ written on the patch sewn on last.