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Terre Napoleon

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The elevated tone of De Brosses' book was calculated to make a telling
appeal to the French nation, with their love of eclat and their ready
receptivity. It was made, too, in the age of Voltaire, when the great man
was living at Lausanne; and when, too, another of equally enduring fame,
Edward Gibbon, was, in the same neighbourhood, polishing those balanced
periods in which he has related the degeneracy of the successors of the
Caesars. It was an age of intellectual ferment. Rousseau was writing his
Contrat Social (1760), the Encyclopedie was leavening Gallic thought.
There was a particular proneness to accept fresh ideas; a new sense of
national consciousness was awakening.

The effect of the President's work was almost immediate. De Brosses
published it in 1756; and in 1766 Louis de Bougainville sailed from
France in command of La Boudeuse and L'Etoile on a voyage around the
world.* (* See the Voyage du Monde par la frigate du Roi La Boudeuse et
la flute L'Etoile en 1766, 1767, 1768, 1769, by Louis de Bougainville,
Paris, 1771.) A eulogy pronounced on De Brosses before the Academy of
Inscriptions by Dupuy* (* Memoirs of the Academy of Inscriptions 42 177.)
hardly put the case too strongly when it was said that before he died he
had the satisfaction to see in Europe men animated by his spirit, who had
gone forth, braving the risks of a long voyage, to make discoveries;
though the prophecy that centuries to come would doubtless count to his
glory the achievements of navigators has not been verified. The world is
perhaps too little inclined to accord to him who promulgates an idea the
praise readily bestowed upon those who realise it.

Bougainville discovered the Navigator Islands, re-discovered the Solomon
group, and was only just forestalled by the Englishman, Wallis, in the
discovery of Tahiti. He produced a book of travel which may be read with
scarcely less interest than the wonderful work of his contemporary, Cook.

The voyage of Nicholas Marion-Dufresne (1771) differed from the other
French expeditions of the series in that one of the ships belonged to the
commander, and part of the cost was sustained by him. He was fired by a
passion for exploration, which led him to propose that he should take out
his vessel, Le Mascurin, in company with a ship of the navy, and that a
grant should be made to him from the public funds. The French Government
acquiesced, and gave him Le Marquis de Castries. He did some exploring in
southern Tasmania, but his career was cut short in New Zealand, where, in
the Bay of Islands, he was killed and eaten by Maories in 1772.* (*
Rochon, Nouveau Voyage a la Mar du Sud, Paris 1783.) One of the objects
of the voyage was to take back to Tahiti a native woman, Aontouron, who
had been brought to Paris by Bougainville to be shown at the court of
Louis XV; but she died of smallpox en route.

Again, in 1785, the expedition commanded by the ill-fated La Perouse
sailed from France on a discovery voyage.* (* See the Voyage de la
Perouse, redige par M. L.A. Milet-Mureau, volume 1 Paris 1797.) The
appearance of his two ships, La Boussole and l'Astrolabe, in Port Jackson
only a fortnight after Governor Phillip had landed in Botany Bay to
establish the first British settlement in Australia, was an event not
less surprising to the governor than to La Perouse, who had left France
before colonisation was intended by the English Government, though he
heard of it in the course of the voyage. The French navigator remained in
the harbour from February 23 to March 10 (1788), on excellent terms with
Phillip; and then, sailing away to pursue his discoveries, "vanished
trackless into blue immensity, and only some mournful mysterious shadow
of him hovered long in all heads and hearts." His remark to Captain King,
"Mr. Cook has done so much that he has left me nothing to do but admire
his work," indicated the generous candour of his disposition. His fate
after he sailed from Sydney remained a mystery for forty years, Flinders,
on his voyage inside the Barrier Reef in 1802, kept a lookout for
wreckage that might afford a key to the problem. He wrote: "The French
navigator La Perouse, whose unfortunate situation, if in existence, was
always present to my mind, had been wrecked, as it was thought, somewhere
in the neighbourhood of New Caledonia; and if so the remnants of his
ships were likely to be brought upon this coast by the trade winds, and
might indicate the situation of the reef or island which had proved so
fatal to him. With such an indication, I was led to believe in the
possibility of finding the place; and though the hope of restoring La
Perouse or any of his companions to their country and friends could not,
after so many years, be rationally entertained, yet to gain some
knowledge of their fate would do away with the pain of suspense, and it
might not be too late to retrieve some documents of their discoveries.*
(* Flinders, Voyage 2 48.) The vigilance of Flinders to this end
indicates the fascination which the mysterious fate of the French mariner
had for seamen, until doubts were finally set at rest in 1827, when one
of the East India Company's ships, under Captain Dillon, found at
Manicolo, in the New Hebrides, traces of the wreckage of the vessels of
La Perouse. Native tradition enabled the history of the end of the
expedition to be ascertained. The French ships, on a dark and stormy
night, were both driven on the reef, and soon pounded to match-wood. A
few of the sailors got ashore, but most were drowned; and the bulk of the
remainder were lost in an unsuccessful attempt to make for civilised
regions from the coral isolation of Manicolo. A monument to the memory of
the gallant La Perouse, on the coast a few miles from Sydney, now fronts
the Pacific whose winds wafted him to his doom, and beneath whose waters
he found his grave.

The next link in the chain was furnished by the expedition commanded by
Bruni Dentrecasteaux, who, while the hurricane of the Revolution was
raging, was despatched (1791) to search for La Perouse. He made important
discoveries on his own account,* (* Voyage de Dentrecasteaux, redige par
M. de Rossel, Paris 1808; Labillardiere, Relation du Voyage a la
Recherche de la Perouse, Paris 1800.) both on the mainland of Australia
and in Tasmania; and though he found no trace of his predecessor, his own
name is honourably remembered among the eminent navigators who did
original work in Australasia. It was Dentrecasteaux's hydrographer,
Beautemps Beaupre, whose charting of part of the southern coast of
Australia was so highly praised by Flinders.

The expeditions thus enumerated were all despatched before the era of
Napoleon, and appreciation of their objects cannot therefore be
complicated by doubts as to his Machiavellian designs. Bougainville's
voyage, and that of Marion-Dufresne, were promoted under Louis XV, that
of La Perouse under Louis XVI, and Dentrecasteaux's under the
Revolutionary Assembly. Each was an expedition of discovery.

Next came the expedition commanded by Nicolas Baudin, with which we are
mainly concerned, and which was despatched under the Consulate. It will
presently be demonstrated that it did not differ in purpose from its
predecessors, and that there is nothing to show that in authorising it
Bonaparte had any other object than that professed. But before pursuing
that subject, let it be made clear that French exploring expeditions to
the South Seas were continued after the final overthrow of the Empire.

In 1817, while Napoleon was mewed up in St. Helena, and a Bourbon once
more occupied the throne of France as Louis XVIII, the ships Uranie and
Physicienne were sent out under the command of Captain Louis de
Freycinet, the cartographer of Baudin's expedition.* (* Voyage autour du
Monde, entrepris par ordre du Roi, par Louis de Freycinet, Paris 1827.)
They visited some of the scenes of former French exploits, and Freycinet
took advantage of his position on the west coast to pull down and
appropriate for the French Academy of Inscriptions the oldest memorial of
European presence in Australia. That is to say, he took the plate put up
by the Dutchman Vlaming in 1697, in place of that erected in 1616 by Dirk
Haticks on the island bearing the name of "Dirk Hartog," to commemorate
his visit in the ship Eendraght of Amsterdam.* (* Ibid 1 449.) Freycinet
had desired to take the plate when he was an officer on Le Naturaliste in
July 1801, but Captain Hamelin, the commander, would not permit it to be
disturbed. On the contrary, he set up a new post with the plate affixed
to it, and expressed the opinion that to remove an interesting memorial
that for over a century had been spared by nature and by man, would be to
commit a kind of sacrilege.* (* "Il eut pense commettre un sacrilege en
gardant a son bord cette plaque respectee pendant pres de deux siecles
par la nature et par les hommes qui pouvoient avant nous l'avoir
observee." Peron, Voyage de Decouvertes 1 195.) Freycinet was not so
scrupulous.

Again, in 1824, the Baron de Bougainville, a son of the older navigator,
and who as a junior officer had sailed with Baudin, took out the ships
Thetis and Esperance on a voyage to the South Seas, for purely
geographical purposes;* (* Journal de la Navigation autour du monde de la
fregate La Thetis et de la corvette L'Esperance, pendant les annees
1824-1826; publie par ordre du Roi. Par M. le Baron de Bougainville.) and
still later, in 1826 to 1828, during the reign of Charles X, Dumont
d'Urville, in the Astrolabe, did valuable exploratory work, especially in
the Western Pacific.* (* Voyage de la corvette L'Astrolabe, execute par
ordre du Roi, pendant les annees 1826-1829, sous le commandement de M. J.
Dumont D'Urville, Paris 1830.)

The whole of these expeditions, with the partial exception of that of
Marion-Dufresne, were conducted in ships of the French navy, commanded by
French officers, supported by French funds, and their official records
were published at the expense of the French Government. A certain unity
of purpose characterised them; and that purpose was as purely and truly
directed to extend man's knowledge of the habitable earth as was that of
any expedition that ever sailed under any flag.

To attempt, therefore, to isolate Baudin's expedition from the series to
which it rightly belongs, simply because it was undertaken while
Bonaparte was at the head of the State, is to convey a false idea of it.
If there were any evidence to show that it differed from the others in
its aims, it would be quite proper to make it stand alone. But there is
not.

Nor must it be supposed that this particular enterprise originated with
the First Consul. It was not a scheme generated in his teeming brain,
like the strategy of a campaign, or a masterstroke of diplomacy. It was
placed before him for approval in the shape of a proposition from the
Institute of France, a scientific body, concerned not with political
machinations, but with the advancement of knowledge. The Institute
considered that there was useful work to be done by a new expedition of
discovery, and believed it to be its duty to submit a plan to the
Government. We are so informed by Peron, and there is the best of reasons
for believing him.* (* "L'honneur national et le progres des sciences
parmi nous se reunissoient donc pour reclamer une expedition de
decouvertes aux Terres Australes, et l'Institut de France crut devoir la
proposer au gouvernement." Peron, Voyage de Decouvertes 1 4.) The history
of the voyage was published after Napoleon had become Emperor, under his
sanction, at the Imperial Press. If his had been the originating mind, it
is quite certain that credit for the idea would not have been claimed for
others. On the contrary, we should probably have had an adulatory
paragraph from Peron's pen about the beneficence of the Imperial will as
exercised in the cause of science.

Quite apart from Peron's statement, however, there are three official
declarations to the like effect. First there is the announcement in the
Moniteur* (* 23rd Floreal, Revolutionary Year 8; "L'Institut national a
demande au premier consul, et a obtenu.) that it was the Institute which
requested Bonaparte to sanction the expedition. Secondly, when
Vice-Admiral Rosily reported to the Minister of Marine on Freycinet's
charts in 1813,* (* Moniteur, January 15, 1813.) he commenced by
observing that the expedition "had for its object the completion of the
knowledge of the coasts of New Holland which were not hitherto entirely
known." Thirdly, Henri de Freycinet, writing in 1808,* (* Ibid July 2,
1808.) said that it was the high interest stimulated by the voyages of La
Perouse and Dentrecasteaux that made the Institute eagerly desirous of a
new enterprise devoted to the reconnaissance of Australia. The last two
statements were, it will be observed, published by Napoleon's official
organ when the Empire was at its height.

There is no positive evidence as to what members of the Institute were
chiefly instrumental in formulating the proposal for Napoleon's
consideration. We do not know whether leading members explained their
scheme to him orally, or laid before him a written statement. If there
was a plan in manuscript, the text of it has never been published.* (*
"Probably it was suppressed or destroyed," says Dr. Holland Rose (Life of
Napoleon 1 379). But why should it have been? There is no reason to
suppose that it contained anything which it was to anybody's interest to
destroy or suppress. Indeed, it is by no means clear that there was such
a document. It is quite likely that the scheme of the Institute was
explained verbally to the First Consul. Why manufacture mysteries?) There
is only one document relating to the expedition in the collected
correspondence of Napoleon;* (* Edition of 1861.) and that concerned an
incident to which reference will be made in the next chapter. The reason
for the absence of letters concerning the matter among Napoleon's papers
is presumably that he left the carrying out of the project to the
Institute; for he was not wont to restrain his directing hand in affairs
in which he was personally concerned.

But there were two leading members of the Institute who had already
concerned themselves with Australasian discovery, and who may safely be
assumed to have taken the initiative in this matter. They were
Bougainville the explorer, who had commanded the expedition of 1766 to
1771, and Charles Pierre Claret de Fleurieu, who had been Minister of
Marine in 1790, and had written a book on the Decouvertes des Francais
dans le sud-est de la Nouvelle Guinee (Paris, 1790), in which he
maintained the prior claims of the French navigators Bougainville and
Surville to discoveries to which later English explorers had in ignorance
given fresh names. Fleurieu had also intended to write the history of the
voyages of La Perouse, but was prevented by pressure of official and
other occupations, and handed the work over to Milet-Mureau.* (* Voyage
de la Perouse, Preface 1 page 3.) He stood high in the esteem of
Napoleon, was a counsellor of State during the Consulate, became
intendant-general of the Emperor's household, governor of the palace of
Versailles, senator, and comte. Both Fleurieu and Bougainville had
abundant opportunities for explaining the utility of a fresh voyage of
exploration to Napoleon.

It was, too, quite natural that these men should desire to promote a new
French voyage of discovery. None knew better what might be hoped to be
achieved. We are fairly safe in assuming that they moved the Institute to
submit a proposition to the First Consul; and it is not improbable that
they personally interviewed him on the subject.

Bonaparte, at any rate, received the proposal "with interest," and we
learn from Peron* (* Voyage de Decouvertes 1 4.) that he definitely
authorised the expedition at the very time when his army of reserve was
about to move from Geneva to cross the Alps in that astonishing campaign
which conduced, by swift, toilsome, and surprising manoeuvres, to the
crushing victory of Marengo. The plan of the Institute was therefore
ratified in May 1800. The Austrians at that time were holding French arms
severely in check in Savoy and northern Italy. Suchet, Massena, Oudinot,
and Soult were, with fluctuating fortunes but always with stubborn
valour, clinging desperately to their positions or yielding ground to
superior strength, awaiting with confidence the hour when the supreme
master would strike the shattering blow that, while relieving the
pressure on them, would completely change the aspect of the war. It was
while pondering his masterstroke, and deliberating on the choice of the
path across the Alps that was to lead to it, that Bonaparte gave his
approval; while elaborating a scheme to overwhelm the armies of Austria
in an abyss of carnage, that he expressed the wish that, as the
expedition would come in contact with ignorant savages, care should be
taken to make it appear that the French met them as "friends and
benefactors."

It may here be parenthetically remarked that it does not make us think
more favourably of Freycinet that when, in 1824, he issued a new edition
of the Voyage de Decouvertes, he omitted all Peron's references to
Napoleon's interest in the expedition, and his direction that when
savages were met the French should appear among them "comme des amis et
des bienfaiteurs."* (* Peron, 1 10.) While Peron tells us that this
laudable wish was personally expressed by the First Consul, Freycinet* (*
1 74, in the 1824 edition.) altered the phrase to "le gouvernement
voulut," etc. He had absolutely no justification for doing so. The reader
of the second edition of the book had a right to expect that he was in
possession of the original text, save for the correction of incidental
errors. But in 1824 Napoleon was dead, a Bourbon reigned in France, and
Freycinet was the servant of the monarchy to which he owed the command of
the expedition of 1817. The suppression of Napoleon's name and the record
of his actions from Peron's text, was a puerile piece of servility.

There is nothing surprising in Bonaparte's cordial approval of the
enterprise. One has only to study the volumes in which M. Frederic Masson
has collected the papers and memoranda relating to Napoleon's youth and
early manhood to realise how intensely keen was his interest in geography
and travel. In one of those interesting works is a document occupying
eight printed pages, in which Napoleon had summarised a geographical
textbook, with a view to the more perfect mastery of its contents.* (*
See Masson's Napoleon Inconnu; Papiers Inedits; Paris 1895 volume 2 page
44. The text-book was that of Lacroix.) It is curious to note how little
the young scholar was able to ascertain about Australasia from the volume
from which he learnt the elements of that science for which, with his
genius for strategy and tactics, he must have had an instinctive taste.
"La Nouvelle Guinee, la Carpentarie, la Nouvelle Hollande," etc., figure
in his notes as the countries forming the principal part of the southern
hemisphere now grouped under the denomination of Australasia; "la
Carpentarie" thus signalised as a separated land being simply the
northern region of Australia proper, the farthest limit of which is Cape
York.* (* Mallet's Description de l'Univers (Frankfort 1686) mentions
"Carpenterie" as being near the "Terre des Papous," and as discovered by
the Dutch captain, Carpenter.)

It is not a little interesting, that when, in April 1800, twenty
sculptors were commissioned to execute as many busts of great men to
adorn the Galerie des Consuls, the only Englishmen among the honoured
score were Marlborough and Dampier.* (* Aulard, Paris sous le Consulat 1
267.) It is curious to find the adventurous ex-buccaneer in such noble
company as that of Cicero, Cato, Caesar, Demosthenes, Frederick the
Great, and George Washington, but the fact that he was among the selected
heroes may be taken as another evidence of Bonaparte's interest in the
men who helped to find out what the world was like. Perhaps if somebody
had seen him reading Dampier's Voyages, as he read Cook's on the way to
Egypt, that fact would have been instanced as another proof, not of his
fondness for extremely fascinating literature, but of the nourishment of
a secret passion to seize the coasts which Dampier explored.

Napoleon had been a good and a diligent student. The fascinating but
hateful characteristics of his later career, when he was the Emperor with
a heart petrified and corroded by ambition, the conqueror ever greedy of
fresh conquest, the scourge of nations and the tyrant of kings, too often
make one overlook the liberal instincts of his earlier years. His passion
for knowledge was profound, and he was the pronounced friend of every
genuine man of science, of every movement having for its object the
acquisition and diffusion of fresh enlightenment. It is an English
writer* (* Merz, History of European Thought in the Nineteenth Century 1
152 to 154.) who says of him that he was, "amongst the great heroes and
statesmen of his age, the first and foremost if not the only one, who
seemed thoroughly to realise the part which science was destined to play
in the immediate future"; and the same author adds that "some of the
glory of Laplace and Cuvier falls upon Napoleon." He took pleasure in the
company and conversation of men of science; and never more so than during
the period of the Consulate. Thibaudeau's memoirs show him dining one
night with Laplace, Monge, and Berthollet; and the English translator of
that delightful book* (* Dr. Fortescue, page 273. Compare also Lord
Rosebery, Napoleon, the Last Phase page 234: "In the first period of his
Consulate he was an almost ideal ruler. He was firm, sagacious,
far-seeing, energetic, just.") emphasises the contrast between the "just
and noble sanity of the First Consul of 1802 and the delirium of the
Emperor of 1812." The failure to keep that difference in mind--to
recognise that the Bonaparte of the early Consulate was capable of
exalted ideals for the general well-being that were foreign to the
Napoleon of ten years later--is fruitful of mistakes in interpreting his
activities. On April 8 he attended a seance of the Institute, and was
there instrumental in reconciling several persons who had become
estranged through events which occurred during the Revolution.* (*
Aulard, Paris sous le Consulat, 1 252.) He was therefore on good terms
with this learned body, and was himself a member of that division of it
which was devoted to the physical and mathematical sciences.* (*
Thibaudeau (English edition) page 112.)

It was quite natural, then, that when the national representatives of
scientific thought in France approached him with a proposition that was
calculated to make his era illustrious by a grand voyage of exploration
which should complete man's knowledge of the great continents, the First
Consul gave a ready consent.

The task of preparing instructions for the voyage was entrusted to a
Committee of the Institute, consisting of Fleurieu, Bougainville,
Laplace, Lacepede, Cuvier, Jussieu, Lelievre, Langles, and Camus; whilst
Degerando wrote a special memorandum upon the methods to be followed in
the observation of savage peoples--the latter probably in consequence of
the First Consul's particular direction on this subject. It was an
admirably chosen body for formulating a programme of scientific research.
A great astronomer, two eminent biologists, a famous botanist, a
practical navigator, a geographer, all men of distinction among European
savants, and two of them, Laplace and Cuvier, among the greatest men of
science of modern times, were scholars who knew what might be expected to
be gained for knowledge, and where and how the most fruitful results
might be obtained.

In their instructions, the committee directed attention to the south
coast of Tasmania--by that time known to be an island, since the
discoveries of Bass and Flinders, and their circumnavigation, had been
the subject of much comment in Europe--as offering a good field for
geographical research. They indicated the advisableness of exploring the
eastern coast of the island, of traversing Bass Strait with a view to a
more complete examination than appeared to the Institute to have been
made up to that time, and of pursuing the southern coasts of Australia as
far as the western point of Dentrecasteaux's investigations, especially
with the object of searching that part of the land "where there is
supposed to be a strait communicating with the Gulf of Carpentaria, and
which, consequently, would divide New Holland into two large and almost
equal islands." So much accomplished, the expedition was to pay
particular attention to the coasts westward of the Swan River, since the
old navigators who had determined their contour had necessarily had to
work with imperfect instruments. The vessels were then to make a fuller
exploration of the western and northern shores than had hitherto been
achieved, to attack the south-west of Papua (New Guinea), and to
investigate the Gulf of Carpentaria. No instructions seem to have been
given relative to a further examination of the eastern coasts of the
continent. Cook's work there was evidently thought to be sufficient,
though Flinders found several
fresh and important harbours. The programme, as Peron pointed out,
involved the exploration in detail of several thousands of miles of
coasts hitherto quite unknown or imperfectly known, and its proper
performance was calculated to accomplish highly important work in
perfecting a knowledge of the geography of the southern hemisphere.

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