page_title: Cádiz Memorial
section_title: The Regent's Tremendous Thing
hierarchical_section_title: Cádiz Memorial / History / The Regent's Tremendous Thing
caption_attribution_description: English: Saluting the Regent's Bomb
context_page_description: The Cádiz Memorial, also known as the "Prince Regent's Bomb", is an early 19th-century French mortar mounted on a brass monster, located in Horse Guards Parade in Westminster, London. It was first "exposed to public view" on 12 August 1816 and has been classified as a Grade II listed building since 1 December 1987. The monument was a feature of many satirical verses and cartoons in the early 19th century, mainly because the word "bomb" – pronounced "bum" – gave it an immediate association with the notoriously profligate Prince Regent's sizeable backside.
context_section_description: At the time, the slang term for a cannon or mortar was a "bomb", pronounced "bum". The Cádiz mortar was thus immediately nicknamed the "Regent's Bomb", prompting a flood of scatological puns associating it with the corpulent posterior of the Prince Regent. C.F. Lawler wrote of its report, its wind and "width, breadth and monstrous size" and predicted that the Poet Laureate would "sing the charming odour of the thing". The satirist William Hone celebrated its unveiling with a verse attacking the Prince Regent and his ministers, their names scarcely disguised:
  Oh, what a Bomb! Oh, Heaven defend us!
  
  The thought of Bombs is quite tremendous!
  
  What crowds will come from every shore
  
  To gaze on its amazing bore!
  
  What swarms of Statesmen, warm and loyal,
  
  To worship Bomb so truly royal!
  
  And first approach three 'secret hags,'
  
  Then him the R——t [Regent] calls 'Old Bags;' [the Lord Chancellor, John Scott, 1st Earl of Eldon]
  
  Methinks I see V———t [Vansittart] come,
  
  And humbly kiss the royal Bomb!
  
  While T——y W———y [Tylney Wellesley], (loyal soul)
  
  Will take its measure with a Pole;
  
  And C———h [Castlereagh] will low beseech
  
  To kiss a corner of the breech;
  
  And next will come of G——y R—e, [George Rose]
  
  And in the touch-hole shove his nose!
  The poem was accompanied by a cartoon drawn by George Cruikshank, which showed the Prince Regent as the personification of the mortar with a queue of ministers lining up to kiss his backside. Similarly, S.W. Fores published C. Williams' A Representation of the Regent's Tremendous Thing erected in the Park – "thing" being a slang term for "penis" – with predictable double entendres such as a parson saying "What an erection to be sure," to which his wife replies, "I could look at it for ever". Many other cartoonists followed suit, often depicting the mortar in conjunction with the Prince Regent's then mistress Lady Hertford.
caption: Saluting the Regent's Bomb Unveiled on his Birth-Day, August 12th, 1816, by George Cruikshank
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