Though related to Goya’s Disasters of War, this drawing was neither engraved nor published. Its composition is framed in red chalk and the corners are emphasized with touches of the same material. The composition of drawing D03989 is similar to that of D03988. The central group and the soldier in the opening on the right coincide in both images, which differ only in the figures in the middle ground to the left. Following Sánchez Cantón’s suggestion, Gassier considered D3989 a first study for preparatory drawing D03988.

In this series of prints executed between 1810 and 1814 Goya offers a critical and personal vision of the consequences of the Spanish Peninsular War (1808-14) that is remote from the propagandistic images produced by his contemporaries. Through his etchings the artist condemned the irrationality of war and the brutality of both sides, which inevitably resulted in suffering, pain and death. The series’ meaning transcends a visual presentation of a specific conflict and can be considered the first critique of war in general. Disasters of War was the title added by the Real Academia de San Fernando in 1863 for the first edition of these prints, which were not published in Goya’s lifetime.