In 1795, the French government, led by Napoleon Bonaparte, offered a prize of 12,000 francs to anyone who could develop a reliable method of preserving food for the army and navy. The challenge of supplying troops in the field had long been a logistical nightmare, with salted and dried foods leading to malnutrition and disease. This prize was the catalyst for the invention of canning by Nicolas Appert, a French confectioner, who would receive the award in 1810, fundamentally changing the way food was preserved and transported around the world.

Napoleon's prize and the resulting invention of canning are part of the larger story of how military necessity drives technological innovation, a theme that appears in the war poetry and literature of the 19th century. While not a subject for poetry itself, the canning process made possible the mass provisioning of armies, and thus the very wars and campaigns that would be the subject of countless poems. The ability to transport food reliably was a silent partner in the epic narratives of the Napoleonic era and beyond.