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Terre Napoleon

E >> Ernest Scott >> Terre Napoleon




Yet it is on the whole an illustrious company, representative of the best
and brightest in French intellect and character. When the brave old
Spanish navigators of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries discovered
a new port or cape, they commonly gave it the name of the saint on whose
day in the calendar it was found; and the map of Central and South
America is a memorial at once of their piety and their enterprise. But
Baudin's expedition having no such guide--Comte's Positivist Calendar, if
not of later date, would have been useful--their selection of names was
quite an original effort. Unfortunately, the "discoveries" to which the
names were applied were not original.

Two facts are incontrovertible: (1) that Flinders had discovered and
charted the whole of the south coast of Australia from Fowler Bay to
Encounter Bay--except the south of Kangaroo Island, which is represented
by a dotted line on his charts--before he met Le Geographe on April 8,
1802; and (2) that the French officers knew that he had done so. Flinders
explained to Baudin the discoveries which he had made when they met in
Encounter Bay, and afterwards when the Investigator and the French ships
lay together in Port Jackson he showed him one of his finished charts to
illustrate what he had done. "So far from any prior title being set up at
that time to Kangaroo Island and the parts westward," wrote Flinders,
"the officers of the Geographe always spoke of them as belonging to the
Investigator."

The French names would appear to have been applied by Baudin, if
Freycinet is to be believed; for he uses the phrase "les nommes que
Baudin a donnes."* (* Voyage de Decouvertes 2 Preface page 23.) But when
Freycinet wrote those words Baudin was dead, and the publication of the
charts had evoked much indignation on account of the gross wrong done to
Flinders. In one or two cases the names were certainly not Baudin's, as
will be made clear in a later chapter.* (* Take, for instance, Ile
Decres, the name given to Kangaroo Island. Decres did not become Minister
for the Navy till October 3, 1801. Baudin was then at sea, and probably
never knew anything about Decres' accession to office. It is pretty well
certain that the name was not given to the island until after the return
of the expedition, when Baudin was dead.) Certainly Baudin was in no
sense responsible for the publication. Peron and Freycinet were the men
who put their names to the charts and volumes; and they were by no means
exculpated by the suggestion that Baudin devised a nomenclature
calculated to deprive Flinders of the credit that he had won. Both Peron
and Freycinet knew, too, when they issued their volume and atlas, that
Flinders was being held in captivity in Mauritius; and the dead captain
was certainly not guilty of the meanness and mendacity of hurrying
forward the issue of books that pretended to discoveries never made,
while the real discoverer was prevented from asserting his own rightful
claims.

That the publication was hurried forward as soon as Napoleon's government
gave the order to print, is evident from the incompleteness of the atlas
of 1807. It contained a table of charts--"Tableau General des planches
qui composent l'atlas historique"--which were not inserted in the book;
and in one of the four copies of this rare volume which the author has
been able to examine, the previous owner, or the bookseller from whom it
was purchased, collating the contents with the table, had pencilled in
the margin, "All wanting," being under the impression that the copy was
imperfect. But the charts detailed in the table were not issued with the
book. They were not ready, and the table stands as an eloquent indicator
of the hurry in which the publication was performed. The first volume of
the Voyage de Decouvertes contains numerous marginal references to charts
not contained in the atlas issued with it. Readers of the book must have
been puzzled by these references,* (* As the present writer was when he
began to study the subject closely, and as the Quarterly reviewer was in
1810. He said: "The atlas is of quarto size; it contains not a single
chart nor any sketch or plan of a coast, island, bay, or harbour, though
frequent references are made to such in the margin of the printed volume"
(page 60). The reviewer should have said, "except the two cartes
generales" described on a previous page.) when they turned to the atlas
and found no charts corresponding with them. Freycinet's complete folio
volume of charts was not published till 1812, five years after the issue
of the book which they were necessary to explain. Flinders had then been
released; but it is significant that he was held in the clutches of
General Decaen, despite constant demands for his liberation, until the
preparation of the French charts was sufficiently advanced to make it
impossible for his own to be issued until theirs had been placed before
the world.

Flinders, generous in his judgments of other men even when smarting under
great grievances, put forth an excuse for Peron, suggesting that he had
acted under pressure. "How, then, came M. Peron to advance what was so
contrary to truth?" he wrote. "Was he a man destitute of all principle?
My answer is, that I believe his candour to have been equal to his
acknowledged abilities, and that what he wrote was from overruling
authority, and smote him to the heart. He did not live to finish the
second volume."

This would be an acceptable way of disposing of the question if we could
reasonably accept the explanation. But can we? Freycinet denied that any
pressure was exerted. Those who knew Peron's character, he wrote,* (*
Voyage de Decouvertes 2 page 21.) were aware that he would have refused
to do anything with which his conscience could reproach him. He was so
able and zealous a man of science, that we should like to believe that of
him. justice demands that we should give full weight to every favourable
factor in the case as affecting him. Flinders was a British naval
officer, and naval men at that period were disposed to see the hand of
Napoleon in every bit of mischief. But the "pressure" theory does not
sustain examination.

The task thrust upon Peron in the writing of the historical narrative of
the voyage was one for which he had not prepared himself, and which did
not properly pertain to him. The death of Baudin, whose work this would
naturally have been, compelled the naturalist to become historian. He had
not kept the log, and it may be reasonably assumed that he had not
concerned himself in a particular degree with those events of which he
would have made careful notes had it been intended from the beginning
that he should be the official recorder. He had applied himself with
passionate energy to the collection and classification of zoological
specimens. This was his special vocation, and he pursued it worthily. It
is probably safe to say that no expedition, French or English, that ever
came down to Australasian waters, added so much that was new to the
world's scientific knowledge, or accumulated so much material, as did
this one whose chief naturalist was Francois Peron. When it is added that
two of the greatest figures in British scientific history, Darwin and
Huxley, were among the workers in this fruitful field, it will be
admitted that the acknowledgment is not made in any niggard spirit. But
we are now concerned with Peron as historian of what related to Terre
Naploeon and the surrounding circumstances. Here his statements have been
shown to be unreliable. It is probable that he wrote largely from memory;
almost certainly from insufficient data. Further, he was weak and ill
when engaged upon the book. The hardships and unhealthy conditions of the
voyage had undermined his constitution. One would conclude from his style
of writing that he was by temperament excitable and easily subject to
depression. A zealous savant, to whom fishes and birds, beetles and
butterflies, were the precious things of the earth, and for whom the
discovery of a new species was as great a source of joy as a glorious
victory was to his imperial master, Peron appeals to us as a pathetic
figure whom one would rather screen from blame than otherwise. He
suffered severely, and did his final work under the difficulty of
breaking health. He died in 1810, before his second volume was ready for
publication.

Freycinet wrote a series of notes by way of preface to volumes 2 and 3,
in attempted justification of the Terre Napoleon maps.* (* The second
volume of the Voyage de Decouvertes was published--out of its due
order--in 1816, the third in 1815.) He was put on the defensive because
"the audacious attempt which was made in the first volume of this work,
to rob Captain Flinders of the well-earned merit of his nautical labours
and discoveries, while he was basely and barbarously kept in prison in a
French colony, was regarded with becoming indignation throughout Europe,
and with shame by the better part of the French nation."* (* Quarterly
Review volume 17 (1817) page 229.) That that is a fair description of the
state of feeling among people concerned with the advancement of
knowledge, is beyond question; and the French above all, with their love
of enterprise, their sentiment of honour, their eager applause of high
achievement, their chivalrous sense of justice, and their quick sympathy
with suffering wrongly inflicted and bravely borne, would have no taste
for laurels plucked in their name from the brow of him who was entitled
to wear them. Thoroughly repugnant to French intellect and feeling was
conduct of this description. National animosities were more bitter at
this period than they have ever been at any other time, but science knows
no nationality. Even when the two governments had ceased to have
relations with each other, we still find English and French men of
science communicating on friendly terms; and Napoleon himself was willing
to grant the requests of an English savant while English arms and English
diplomacy were at furious war with him. Thus Sir Joseph Banks, who was a
corresponding member of the Institute of France, could write in 1805, "I
have obtained the release of five persons from the gracious condescension
of the Emperor, the only five, I believe, that have been regularly
discharged from their parole."

Freycinet, then, had to defend his charts. But there never was a more
complete example of the remark that "qui s'excuse s'accuse." He argued
that when Le Geographe cruised along the coasts discovered by Flinders,
there was no published work in which they were described, therefore the
French were justified in applying their own names. But this plea ignored
the fact that if the coasts were not charted in any work published before
1807, they had been, to the full knowledge of the French officers,
charted by Flinders, whose work would have been published earlier if he
had not been forcibly detained. Again he argued* (* Preface to volume 3.)
that, inasmuch as "jamais Peron ni moi"--where Freycinet assumed part of
the responsibility--knew of the work done by Flinders until his book was
published, the work of the French was truly one of discovery; and as to
the names given by the English navigator, "it is certain that we could
not employ them without knowing them." But it was not true that
Freycinet, Peron, or Baudin was unaware of the discoveries made by
Flinders. Even were there not his specific statement that he explained
his discoveries and showed one of his charts to illustrate them, it would
be incredible that while the French and English ships lay together for
some weeks at Port Jackson, with tents erected on the same piece of
ground, the officers frequently meeting on friendly terms, Freycinet and
Peron should not have learnt what the Investigator had been doing. Both
the French authors are individually mentioned by Flinders as having been
present on one or other of these occasions, and Freycinet does not deny
the statement. Further, Captain Hamelin reported to the French
Government, in 1803, that Flinders had traced the coast from the Leeuwin
to Encounter Bay, and had discovered a large and beautiful island which
he had named "L'Ile des Kangaroux."* (* Moniteur, 27 Thermidor,
Revolutionary Year 11.)

It is true that the French were not acquainted with Flinders' names,
except in the one case of Kangaroo Island. He told Baudin what name he
had given in that case. Nevertheless they ignored it, and called the
island Ile Decres. But even when they did know of the names given to
features of the coast by a previous English navigator, Peron and
Freycinet disregarded them. Grant's Narrative of the Voyage of the Lady
Nelson was published, together with his eye-chart of the coast from Cape
Banks to Wilson's Promontory, in 1803. Flinders states positively that
Grant's "discoveries were known to M. Peron and the French expedition in
1802";* (* Voyage 1 201.) as indeed we might well suppose, for Grant was
not the man to allow any one with whom he came in contact to remain
unaware of his achievements, and he was in Sydney just before the French
arrived there. They would hear of him from many people. Yet Grant's
names, inscribed in plain print on his published chart, were all ignored
on the Terre Napoleon charts--his Cape Nelson becoming Cap Montaigne; his
Cape Otway, Cap Desaix; his Cape Schanck, Cap Richelieu; and so forth.

The contention that the south coast exploration of the French was
"entirely a work of discovery,"* (* Freycinet, 2 page 23.) although they
were forestalled in it by Flinders and Grant, is neither true nor
sensible. If it could be held that the voyage of a vessel sailing without
a chart or a pilot along a coast previously unknown to its officers was
"entirely a work of discovery," then a ship that should sail under such
conditions along any piece of coast--say from Boulogne to La Hague--would
accomplish "a work of discovery." Discovery is a matter of priority, or
the word is meaningless.

Freycinet's notes nowhere meet the gravest feature of the case--the
prolongation of the imprisonment of Flinders until the French could
complete their own charts for publication. The talk about not knowing
what Flinders' names were, the affected ignorance of his prior claims,
were crudely disingenuous. Freycinet knew perfectly where Flinders was,
and why his charts were not issued. The Moniteur contained several
references to his case. Sir Joseph Banks repeatedly pressed leading
members of the Institute to lend their influence to secure his
liberation. But Freycinet, who had shared in the generous hospitality of
the British governor in Sydney--extended at a time when the French crews
were sorely stricken--and should have been moved by gratitude, to say
nothing of justice, to help in undoing an act of wrong to a
fellow-navigator, does not seem to have taken the slightest step in this
direction, nor does he in any of his writings express any regret
concerning the unhappy fate that overtook the English captain.

The claim made in behalf of Baudin's expedition can best be stated in the
language of Peron. Dentrecasteaux, he wrote, not having advanced beyond
the islands of St. Peter and St. Francis, which form the extremity of
Nuyts Land, and the English not having carried their researches farther
than Westernport, "it follows that all the portion between the
last-mentioned port and Nuyts Land was unknown at the time when we
arrived on these shores." Peron's words were not candid. It is true that
part of the shores in question were unknown when Baudin's ships
"arrived." They "arrived" off Cape Leeuwin in May 1801, before Flinders
left England, though not before Grant had discovered his stretch of
coast. (Grant reached Sydney, having roughly traced the coast from Cape
Banks to Cape Schanck, on December 16, 1800.) If, however, Peron meant to
convey that the coasts were unknown when Baudin's ships actually sailed
along them, he stated what was not the case. Let us hear Flinders in
reply. "M. Peron should not have said that the south coast from
Westernport to Nuyts Land was then unknown, but that it was unknown to
them, for Captain Grant, of the Lady Nelson, had discovered the eastern
part from Westernport to the longitude 140 degrees 14 minutes in the year
1800, before the French ships sailed from Europe, and on the west I had
explored the coast and islands from Nuyts Land to Cape Jervis in 138
degrees 10 minutes." In other words, Grant's eye-chart connected up the
coast between the extremity of George Bass's exploration, Westernport,
and Cape Banks to the east, while Flinders had traversed the coast
between Nuyts Land and Encounter Bay to the west, leaving a gap of only
about fifty leagues of sandy shore, upon which there is "neither river,
inlet, or place of shelter," that was actually discovered by Baudin.
Flinders not only admitted that the French had discovered this
particularly barren and uninteresting stretch of land, but marked it upon
his charts* (* Cf. plate 4 in Flinders' Atlas, for example.) as
"discovered by Captain Baudin, 1802." The French on their charts,
however, made not the slightest reference to the discoveries of either
Flinders or Grant.

The true Terre Napoleon, therefore, if the name were to survive at all,
would be from a point north-west of Cape Banks in the state of South
Australia, to the mouth of the river Murray in Encounter Bay. The names
marked on a modern map indicate the sort of country that it is in the
main. Chinaman's Wells, M'Grath's Flat, Salt Creek, Martin's Washpool,
Jim Crow's Flat, and Tilley's Swamp are examples. They are not
noble-sounding designations to inscribe at the back of coasts once
dignified by the name of the greatest figure in modern history. It is
rather to be regretted that the name Terre Napoleon has slipped off
modern maps. It is historically interesting. When Eric the Red, as the
Saga tells us, discovered Greenland, he so called it because "men would
be the more readily persuaded thither if the land had a good name." Most
will agree that Terre Napoleon sounds a bit better than Pipe Clay Plain
or Willow Swamp, which are other choice flowers in the same garden.* (*
These "virginal chaste names" are taken from the map of South Australia,
by the Surveyor-General of that State, 1892.)

There is no evidence to warrant the belief that Napoleon had anything
whatever to do with affixing his name to the territory to which it was
applied, or with the nomenclature of the features of the coast. Nor would
there be anything remarkable in the use of the name Terre Napoleon, if
the French had really discovered the region so described. In every part
of the world there are lands named after the rulers of the nations to
which the discoverers or founders belonged. Raleigh named Virginia "from
the maiden Queen"; the two Carolinas preserve the name of the amorous
monarch who granted the original charter of colonisation "out of a Pious
and good intention for ye propogacion of ye Christian faith amongst ye
Barbarous and Ignorant Indians, ye Inlargement of his Empire and
Dominions, and Inriching of his Subjects"; and two states of Australia
commemorate by their names the great Queen who occupied the British
throne when they were founded. There would have been nothing unusual or
improper in the action of the French in styling the country from Wilson's
Promontory to Cape Adieu "Terre Napoleon," except that they did not
discover it. What they did excites a feeling akin to derision, because it
bore the character of "jumping a claim," to use an Australian mining
phrase.

Nor is it to be inferred that affixing the name was intended to assert
possession. An examination of the large chart of Australia shows that the
whole of the coast-line, except this particular stretch, was previously
named. There was Terre de Nuyts on the south-west; Terre de Leeuwin,
Terre d'Endrels, Terre d'Endracht were on the west; Terre de Witt on the
north-west; Terre d'Arnheim and Terre de Carpentarie on the north. New
South Wales was marked as occupying the whole of the east. The styling of
the freshly discovered south Terre Napoleon was a mere piece of
courtiership. If Napoleon had ever been strong enough to strike a blow at
the British in Australia, the probabilities are that he would have
endeavoured to oust them from New South Wales, and would not have
troubled himself very much about the coasts that were named after him. It
was his way to strike at the heart of his enemy, and the heart of British
settlement in Australia was located at Port Jackson.

It has been represented in one of the best books in English on the
Napoleonic period,* (* Dr. Holland Rose's Life of Napoleon 1 381.) that
"the names given by Flinders on the coasts of Western and South
Australia, have been retained owing to the priority of his investigation,
but the French names have been kept up on the coast between the mouth of
the Murray and Bass Straits for the same reason." That statement,
however, is very much too wide. Capes Patton, Otway, Nelson, Bridgewater,
Northumberland and Banks, Portland Bay and Julia Percy Island, all lie
between the points mentioned, and all of them were named by Grant, who
first discovered them and marked them on his chart. None of the French
names is properly in present employment east of Cape Buffon; for their
Cap Boufflers, which is marked on a few maps, is really the Cape Banks of
Grant. The only names freshly applied by Baudin to natural features of
the mainland on the Terre Napoleon charts, and which are in current use,
are Cape Buffon, Cape Lannes, Rivoli Bay, Cape Jaffa, Cape Rabelais, Cape
Dombey, Guichen Bay, Cape Bernoulli, Lacepede Bay, and Cape Morard de
Galles. Some or other of these names may be found, in some order, on some
modern map, but the sequence is variable, and they are not all to be
found on any single map with which the author is acquainted; because
there are more names than there are natural capes and bays to which they
can apply. The remainder of the French names between Lacepede Bay and
Cape Jervis, and most of those in the more easterly section, are not
marked on any current map, because in some instances they do not
represent features of the coast which are sufficiently pronounced to
require names, whilst in other cases they are applied to islands, capes,
and bays that do not exist.* (* The difficulty of identifying the
features marked on the Terre Napoleon charts is made clear by comparing
them with a few good modern maps. Thus, taking them from south-east to
north-west, they appear on the French charts in the following order: 1,
Cap Buffon; 2, Cap Lannes; 3, Baie de Rivoli; 4, Cap de Jaffa; 5, Cap
Rabelais; 6, Cap Dombey; 7, Baie de Guichen; 8, Cap Bernoulli; 9, Baie
Lacepede; 10, Cap Morard de Galles; 11, Cap Fermat; 12, Cap Monge 13, Cap
Caffarelli; 14, Cap Villars; 15, Baie Mollien; 16, Cap Mollien 17, Baie
Cretet; 18, Cap Cretet; 19, Iles Decaen; 20, Cap Decaen; 21, Cap
Montelivet. On the large Continental map constructed by the Department of
Lands and Survey, State of Victoria, 1879, the order of the names
included is as follows: 1, Buffon; 2, Rivoli; 3, Lannes; 4, Guichen; 5,
Jaffa; 6, Lacepede. Rabelais, Dombey, Bernoulli, and the rest are
omitted, the draftsman evidently being unable to find features to which
to apply them. On the large map compiled in the office of the
Surveyor-General, State of South Australia, 1892, the order of the names
is: 1, Buffon; 2, Rivoli; 3, Rabelais; 4, Lannes; 5, Dombey; 6, Guichen;
7, Jaffa; 8, Lacepede. On the excellent map in M'Lean's New Atlas of
Australia, 1886, we find: 1, Buffon; 2, Rivoli; 3, Lannes; 4, Guichen; 5,
Jaffa; 6, Lacepede. Flinders, on his separate chart of this part of the
coast, found features for the names of Buffon, Lannes, Rivoli, and
Bernoulli, but left out Rabelais, Dombey, Guichen, and Lacepede. In no
case is the cape or bay on the Terre Napoleon chart of this part of the
coast a tolerably good representation of an actuality.) Where are Cap
Monge, Cap Caffarelli, Cap Mollien, Cap du Mont St. Bernard, Ile
Latrelle, or Baie Descartes? They are not to be found. Freycinet* (*
Preface to the 1824 edition of the Voyage de Decouvertes page 13, note.)
complained that Flinders, on his charts, had erroneously applied the
French names between Cap Monge and Cap Lannes. It was a singular
complaint to make, seeing that Flinders gave the French full credit for
their discoveries, whilst they omitted all reference to his work on their
charts. But Flinders' difficulty was that of all later map-makers: he
could not find all the places to which Baudin had given names. He did his
best; but it is evidently easier to sprinkle a coast-line with the
contents of a biographical dictionary, than to fit all the names in.

The French cartography of the portions of the coast eastward of the two
gulfs was so badly done, in fact, that many of the features indicated on
the charts are mere geographical Mrs. Harrises--there "ain't no sich"
places. The coast was not surveyed at all, but was sketched roughly,
inaccurately, and out of scale; so that even the sandy stretch now known
as the Coorong, which is about as featureless as a railway embankment,
was fitted with names and drawn with corrugations as though it were as
jagged as a gigantic saw. Our respect for such names as Montesquieu and
Descartes causes us to regret that they should have been wasted on a cape
and a bay that geography knows not; and our abiding interest in the
sinister genius of Talleyrand fosters the wish that his patronymic had
been reserved for some other feature than the curve of the coast which
holds "the Rip" of Port Phillip, though in one sense he who was so wont
to "fish in troubled waters" is not inaptly associated with that boil of
sea."*

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