Louis XV and a scene after the battle in Horace Vernet’s “Battle of Fontenoy”

I adore this detail from The Battle of Fontenoy by Horace Vernet, painter, diplomat and popularizer of battle painting. It is generally held that the scene shows a father kissing his son after the battle. Though perhaps it is not a father at all. The young man, incidentally, holds in his hands the Order of Saint Louis on its red ribbon, a royal decoration. Louis XV himself is also captured on the canvas, a little nearer the centre, on horseback, accompanied by the Dauphin, a marshal and the Duke of Richelieu, bareheaded. Fontenoy is the very battle after which Louis XV is said to have told the Dauphin Louis Ferdinand: this is what triumph costs, the blood of enemies is still the blood of men, and only their salvation is true glory.