[2] The images are panoramic views with many small figures, and they feature gradation from light to dark that was typical of Callot's etchings.

In sequence, the images recount the story of soldiers as they enroll in an army, fight in a battle, and rampage through the civilian community, only to then be arrested and executed.

Plates 4–8 show bands of the victorious soldiers successively attacking a farm, convent, and coach, and burning a village.

In William Hogarth's early engraving Emblematical Print on the South Sea Scheme, the hanging tree is replaced by a wheel of fortune.

Francisco Goya probably owned a set of Callot's etchings, and they are believed to have influenced his similar series, Los Desastres de la guerra (The Disasters of War), almost two centuries later.