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Terre Napoleon

E >> Ernest Scott >> Terre Napoleon




(* "Loud-voiced and reckless as the wild tide-race
That whips our harbour mouth,"

wrote Mr. Rudyard Kipling ("Song of the English") of the people of
Melbourne. It is believed that he meant to be complimentary.)

The south and west of Kangaroo Island were, however, first charted by
Baudin, and his names survive there. Flinders had marked these shores
with a dotted line on his chart, to signify that he had not surveyed
them. He intended to complete this bit of work on his return, but he was
"caught in the clutch of circumstance," and was never permitted to
return. Such names as Cape Borda, Cape Linois, Maupertuis Bay, Cape
Gautheaume, Bougainville Bay, and a few others, preserve the memory of
the French expedition on Kangaroo Island. A rock, known as Frenchman's
Rock, upon which a record of the visit was cut, also survives there.

A few months after the publication of the Terre Napoleon charts in 1807,
the truth about the matter became known. Sir Joseph Banks, who had been
kept well informed by Flinders about the work which he had performed, and
who had done all that was possible to obtain his release from Mauritius,
was influential in scientific circles throughout Europe. Fortunately, he
had ample material at his disposal. Flinders had sent home some finished
charts from Sydney, and during his imprisonment he wrote up a manuscript
journal which he succeeded in getting conveyed to England. It was this
manuscript which the Admiralty permitted to be perused by the writer of
the powerful Quarterly Review article of August 1810. The feeling of
indignation evoked by the treatment which the navigator received was
intensified when the publication of his Voyage and his charts in 1814
showed the measure of his shining merits--his thoroughness, his accuracy,
his diligence, the beauty of his drawings, the vast extent of the
entirely new work which he had done, and the manliness, gentleness,
courage, and fairness of his personal character.

In addition to the discredit, of which he had to bear his full share,
Freycinet was involved in perplexities of another kind. It was a
convenient piece of flattery to name the two great gulfs after Napoleon
and Josephine when they were Emperor and Empress; but the courtier-like
compliment was embarrassing when Josephine was supplanted by Marie
Louise, and it became offensive when Napoleon himself was overthrown and
a Bourbon once more occupied the throne of France. Many of the other
names, too, were those of men no longer in favour. Yet the earlier
volumes of the Voyage de Decouvertes had referred in the text to the
names on the French charts as though they formed a final system of
nomenclature. What was poor Freycinet to do in completing the work? Here,
indeed, was a sailor hoist to his own yard-arm with his own halyard. The
work could not be dropped, since faith had to be kept with purchasers. In
the event, the old names were employed in the text of the completed book,
but a fresh atlas was issued (1817) with the name Terre Napoleon wiped
off the principal chart, most of the names changed to those given by
Flinders and Grant, and a neat note in the corner taking the place of the
former eagle--which was moulting; no longer the screaming fowl it used to
be--announcing that "this map of New Holland is an exact reduction of
that contained in the first edition."* (* "Cette carte de la
Nouvelle-Hollande est une reduction exacte de celle contenue dans la
premiere edition du Voyage aux Terres Australes.") The announcement was
not quite true. It was not "une reduction exacte." The imperial bird had
flown, and the names had undergone systematic revision. The Bonaparte
family were pitilessly evicted. It was a new and smaller map, with a new
allocation of names. Freycinet's name appeared upon it, and he probably
wrote the inscription in the corner.


CHAPTER 5. DID THE FRENCH USE FLINDERS' CHARTS?

Assertions commonly made as to French plagiarism of Flinders' charts.
Lack of evidence to support the charges.
General Decaen and his career.
The facts as to Flinders' charts.
The sealed trunks.
The third log-book and its contents; detention of it by Decaen, and the
reasons for his conduct.
Restoration of Flinders' papers, except the log-book and despatches.
Do Freycinet's charts show evidence of the use of Flinders' material?
How did the French obtain their chart of Port Phillip?
Peron's report to Decaen as to British intentions in the Pacific and
Indian Oceans, and the effect on his mind.
Liberation of Flinders.
Capture of Mauritius by the British.
English naval officers and the governor.
Later career of Decaen.

Flinders, in the decrepit little Cumberland, put into Port Louis,
Mauritius, on December 16, 1803. He was not permitted to sail out again
till July 1810; and then he was a broken man, smitten with diseases, the
painful product of exposure, shipwreck, confinement in a tropical
climate, anxiety, and bitter years of heart-sickness and weary
disappointment; yet a brave man still, with some hope nobly burning in
the true hero's heart of him; but with less vitality than hope, so that
he could do no more than write his big book of travel, and then lie down
to die.

Many loose statements have been written about the use which the French
made of Flinders' charts while he was held in captivity. It has been too
often taken for granted that the evidence of plagiarism is beyond
dispute. Not only popular writers, but historians with claims to be
considered scientific, are substantially in agreement on this point. Two
examples will indicate what is meant. Messrs. Becke and Jeffery, in their
Naval Pioneers of Australia (page 216), assert that "among other
indignities he suffered, he found that the charts taken from him by
Decaen had been appropriated to Baudin's exploring expedition." Again, to
take a work appealing to a different section of readers, the Cambridge
Modern History also charges the French with "the use of his papers to
appropriate for their ships the credit of his discoveries."* (* Volume 9
page 739 (Professor Egerton). Two more examples may be cited. Thus,
Laurie, Story of Australasia (1896) page 86. "He found that his journals
and charts had been stolen by the French governor of the Mauritius and
transferred to Paris, where the fullest advantage was taken of them by M.
Peron." Again, Jose, Australasia (1901) page 21: "His maps were taken to
France to be published there with French names as the work of French
explorers.")

The charge is, it will be observed, that not only did the French governor
of Mauritius imprison the English navigator despite his passport,
detaining him years after the other members of the Cumberland's company
had been liberated, but that Flinders' charts and papers were improperly
used in the preparation of the history of Baudin's expedition. Indeed,
the accusation is equivalent to one of garrotting: that General Decaen
seized and bound his victim, robbed him, and enabled Freycinet and Peron
to use his work as their own.

So widely has this view been diffused, that probably few will be prepared
for the assurance that there is no evidence to support it. On the
contrary, as will be shown, neither Peron nor Freycinet ever saw any
chart or journal taken from Flinders. Use was made, it is believed, of
one British chart which may possibly have been his--that embodying a
drawing of Port Phillip--but reasons will be given for the opinion that
this, whether it was Flinders' chart or Murray's, was seen by the French
before Baudin's ships left Sydney, and was certainly not copied at
Mauritius.

Before proving these statements, it will be convenient to make the reader
acquainted with the Captain-General or Military-Governor of Mauritius,
Charles Decaen. He was a rough, dogged, somewhat brutal type of soldier,
who had attained to eminence during the revolutionary wars. Born at Caen
in Normandy in 1769, he served during his youth for three years in the
artillery, and then entered a lawyer's office in his native town; but
during the wars of the Revolution, when France was pressed by enemies on
all sides, he threw aside quills and parchments, and, in his twenty-third
year, entered upon his strenuous fighting career. Thenceforth, until
after the signing of the Treaty of Luneville in 1801, he was almost
constantly engaged in military operations. He had risen from the ranks,
and won commendation for stubborn valour from such commanders as Desaix,
Kleber, Hoche, Westermann, and Moreau. He participated in the cruel war
of La Vendee, won fresh laurels during the campaign of the Rhine (1796),
and fought with a furious lust for battle under the noble Moreau at
Hohenlinden. By that time (1800) he had become a general of division, and
on the eve of the battle, when he brought up his force and made his
appearance at a council of war, Moreau greeted him with the flattering
remark, "Ah! here is Decaen; the battle will be ours to-morrow." He was
recognised as a strong-willed general, not brilliant, but very
determined, and as also a thoroughly capable and honest administrator.
Napoleon, in 1803, selected him for Indian service, and stationed him at
the Isle of France (Mauritius), in the hope that if all went well a heavy
blow might some day be struck at British power in India. Decaen was not a
courtier, nor a scholar, nor a man of sentiment, but a plain, coarse,
downright soldier; a true Norman, and a thorough son of the Revolution.
He was not the kind of man to be interested in navigation, discovery, or
the expansion of human knowledge; and appeals made to him on these
grounds on behalf of Flinders were futile. Yet we must do justice to the
admirable side of Decaen's character, by observing that he bore a
reputation for generosity among his fellow-soldiers; and he was a very
efficient and economical governor, maintaining a reputation for probity
that did not distinguish too many of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic
generals. Flinders, just in his opinion even of an enemy, wrote to Sir
Joseph Banks that Decaen bore among the people of the island "the
character of having a good heart, though too hasty and violent." It is
pleasant to find him writing thus of the man who had wronged him, at a
time when he had good reason for feeling bitter; and we certainly need
not think worse of Decaen than did the man who suffered most from the
general's callous insensibility.

Now, the clear facts with regard to the taking from Flinders of his
charts, papers, log-books, and journals are these. On December 17, the
day after his arrival at the island, it was signified to him that the
governor intended to detain him. All his charts and journals relating to
the voyage, and the letters and official packets which he was carrying to
England from Sydney, were put in a trunk, which was sealed by Flinders at
the desire of the French officers who were sent by Decaen to arrest him.
He signed a paper certifying that all the "charts, journals, and papers
of the voyage" had been thus placed in the trunk.* (* Flinders, Voyage 2
361.) On the following day (Sunday, December 18) he was informed that the
governor wished to have extracts made from his journals, showing the
causes which had compelled him to quit the Investigator, for which ship
and for no other, according to Decaen's contention, the passport had been
granted. He also wished to elicit from the journals evidence of the
reasons which had induced Flinders to stop at Mauritius, instead of
sailing for the Cape of Good Hope. The officers explained that General
Decaen considered it to be necessary to have these extracts for
transmission to the French Government, "to justify himself for granting
that assistance to the Cumberland which had been ordered for the
Investigator." So far he had not, as a fact, granted any assistance to
the Cumberland; for the imprisonment of her commander and crew can hardly
be called "assistance." But as Flinders was convinced that an examination
of his latest log-book would manifest his bona fides, and assure both the
governor and the French Government that he was no spy, as Decaen accused
him of being, he broke the seal of the trunk, and took out "the third
volume of my rough log-book, which contained the whole of what they
desired to know, and pointing out the parts in question to the secretary,
told him to make such extracts as should be thought requisite."* (*
Flinders, Voyage 2 364.) All the other papers and books were at once
returned to the trunk, and sealed as before.

The third log-book was the only document pertaining to Flinders'
discoveries which Decaen ever had in his possession. It was never
returned. The rightful owner never saw it again. It has never since been
produced. Flinders applied for it repeatedly. On the very day before he
was liberated, he made a final demand for it. Mr. Hope, the British
commissary for the exchange of prisoners, made a formal official
application for it in 1810, but met with "a positive refusal both of the
book and of permission to take a copy of it."* (* Hope's report to the
Admiralty, October 25, 1810 (Historical Records of New South Wales 7
435).) In 1811, after Flinders reached England, the Admiralty, at his
instance, requested the French Government to insist upon its restoration.
At the end of his book, published 1814, Flinders earnestly protested
against Decaen's continued detention of it. But it was not restored.

This book contained Flinders' "Journal of transactions and observations
on board the Investigator, the Porpoise, the Hope cutter, and Cumberland
schooner," for the preceding six months.* (* Flinders, Voyage 2 378 and
463.) There was therefore nothing in it which could have been of any use
in relation to the so-called Terre Napoleon. The log-book embodying
Flinders' observations on those coasts pertained to a period before the
six months just mentioned, and was never seen by Decaen, nor did he see
any of Flinders' charts whatever.

Towards the end of December the whole of the remaining books and papers
of Flinders, even including his family letters, were, in his presence,
collected from the ship by M. Bonnefoy, an interpreter, and Colonel
Monistrol, Decaen's secretary--who "acted throughout with much
politeness, apologising for what they were obliged by their orders to
execute"--and sealed up in another trunk.* (* Ibid 2 367.) Later in the
same month (December 26), Flinders, wishing to occupy his time in
confinement by proceeding with his work, wrote to the governor,
requesting that he might have his printed volumes, and two or three
charts and manuscript books, for the purpose of finishing his chart of
the Gulf of Carpentaria, adding in explanation that some of his papers
were lost in the wreck of the Porpoise, and he wished to finish the work
from memory, with the aid of the remaining materials, before the details
faded from his recollection. Decaen acceded to his request, and Flinders
took out two log-books, such charts as were necessary, all his private
letters, and his journals of bearings and astronomical observations. He
also took out his naval signal-book, which he destroyed, lest it should
be seen by any French officer. He gave a receipt for the documents, and
the remainder were once more locked up in the trunk, which was again
sealed by Flinders.* (* Voyage 2 378.) The papers so obtained were the
"greatest part"* (* Flinders, letter to Governor King, August 1804, and
letter to Banks, July 12. Historical Records of New South Wales 4 411 and
396.) of his books and charts, and the possession of them, enabling
Flinders to devote his energies to the work he loved, relieved the
depression which imprisonment and illness cast upon his active brain and
body.

In February of the following year Flinders made another application for
more books and papers, consisting of the greater part of his "original
fair charts,"* (* Voyage 2 384.) for the purpose of making an abridgment
of his discoveries upon a single sheet. The governor was by this time
very angry with his captive; the more so, probably, as he was conscious
of the inadequacy of the reasons for detaining him. But the demeanour of
the English captain did not please him either. Flinders, maintaining the
dignity of his uniform, had not assumed a humble mien, and had even
refused an invitation to dine with the general unless he could attend,
not as a prisoner, but as an officer free and unsuspect. If Decaen really
believed him to be a spy, why did he invite him? The governor, however,
was not now in a mood to oblige his prisoner, and in response to his
application for more papers, curtly replied that he would attend to the
request when freed from more pressing business. Flinders in March urged
Colonel Monistrol to intercede; complained in May that the manuscripts
were still withheld; and, being unable to make any impression on the
obdurate Decaen, completed his map with the aid of another journal kept
by Mr. Akin, the master of the Investigator, who was a fellow-prisoner
until May 1805.

These remaining documents were not restored till August 1807, when
Flinders was invited to go to Port Louis from the house in the country
where part of his imprisonment was spent, and take possession of the
trunk. He found that rats had eaten their way into it, and had made great
havoc among his papers, totally destroying some. But the seals were
unbroken, and Flinders gave a receipt for the contents, acknowledging
that the most important documents had happily escaped the rats.* (*
Voyage 2 462.) He was an observant man, and if he had had any suspicion
that the charts had been tampered with, would have promptly said so.
There is not, however, the faintest reason for believing that the trunk
had been opened between December 1803, when Flinders was permitted to
take out the "greatest part" of his important papers, and August 1807,
when the remainder were restored to him. The only missing documents were
the few which the rats had eaten, the third log-book, which Decaen
refused to give up, and two packets of official despatches which the
Cumberland was carrying from Sydney to England, and which Colonel
Monistrol informed him had been "long ago disposed of." The Colonel
"supposed that something in them had contributed to my imprisonment."
They had been "disposed of" by being sent to Paris for the perusal of
Napoleon's Government.

Why, however, did Decaen refuse permission to Flinders to have the last
of his papers till the year 1807? Why had he willingly permitted him to
take some of them in December 1803, but declined to let him have any more
till nearly four years later? A comparison of dates is instructive on
this point. As has already been said, the first volume of Peron's Voyage
de Decouvertes aux Terres Australes, and the first edition of the atlas
containing two of Freycinet's charts, were published in 1807. Making all
allowances for the obstinate character of Decaen, it is most significant
that the remainder of Flinders' charts and papers were kept from him
until the very time when Freycinet was ready to publish the first and
hurried edition of his atlas. It is impossible to resist the conclusion
that the governor was acting under influences exerted from Paris, private
if not official, in refusing the navigator access to the material which
it was believed was essential to the completion of the charts that would
demonstrate his discoveries, until the French officer could hurry out a
makeshift atlas and fictitious claims could be based upon it.

This conduct was reprehensible enough, but, it must be insisted, there is
no ground whatever for the too frequently made assertion that Flinders'
charts were surreptitiously copied or actually stolen--for the loose
manner in which the affair has been related in some books renders
doubtful which of the two accusations the authors desired to make.* (*
Blair, Cyclopaedia of Australasia page 131, actually says that Baudin,
"having taken copies of Flinders' charts, sailed for France, where he
published a book and received great applause from the French nation, who
called him the greatest discoverer of the present century."
Spirit-writing one has heard of, but not even the Psychical Research
Society has recorded the case of a dead man copying hydrographical
charts. A similar disregard of the fact that Baudin died before the
return of his ships occurs in J.E. Tenison Woods' History of Exploration
in Australia (1865) volume 1 page 174, where we are informed that
Flinders was detained in Mauritius, because "at that time the Emperor
Napoleon was obliging Admiral Baudin [sic] to usurp the glory of his
discoveries"; a case of post-mortem promotion.) Not only is there no
evidence to support any such charge, but Flinders himself never accused
Decaen of making an improper use of the papers in the trunk, nor did he
ever allege that the two charts contained in the French atlas of 1807, or
those in Freycinet's folio atlas of 1812--which he probably saw before
his death in July 1814--were founded upon or owed anything to his
drawings. He simply set forth the facts with his habitual exactness and
fairness; and where Flinders was just, there is surely no warrant for
others to perpetuate an accusation which originated in a period of
intense national hatred and jealousy, and bears its birth-mark upon it.

A critical examination of Freycinet's charts is alone sufficient to
shatter the opinion that he utilised the drawings of the English
navigator. Had he even seen them, his own work would have been more
accurate than it was, and his large chart of New Holland would have been
more complete. It has already been shown that the French chart of the
so-called Terre Napoleon coasts was in large measure defective, many
capes, islands, and bays being represented that have no existence in
fact, and a large portion of the outline being crudely and erroneously
drawn. Not only so, but if Freycinet had had copies of Flinders' charts
before him, use would certainly have been made of them to give greater
completeness to the eastern and north-western shores. Flinders, in his
last voyage in the Investigator, had made important discoveries on the
Queensland coast and in the Gulf of Carpentaria. He had discovered, for
instance, Port Bowen and Port Curtis, which had been missed by Cook, had
given greater definiteness to the islands near the southern end of the
Great Barrier Reef, and had made a dangerous acquaintance with the Reef
itself, discovering one narrow alley through it which is marked on modern
maps as Flinders' Passage. In the Gulf of Carpentaria he had also done
some entirely original work. He had shown, for example, that Cape Van
Diemen, represented as a projection from the mainland on all previous
maps, was really part of an island, which he named Mornington Isle.
Freycinet's charts reveal not the faintest trace of the fresh discoveries
which Flinders had achieved around east and north-east Australia, nor do
they in any particular indicate that their manifold serious imperfections
had been corrected by reference to Flinders' superb charts. In short, the
French work, though beautifully engraved and printed, was, in a
geographical sense, for the most part too poor to justify the suspicion
that Freycinet received aid from the drawings of the persevering captain
of the Investigator.

The circumstances attending the imprisonment of Flinders, and the
precipitate haste with which Freycinet's work was pushed forward,
undoubtedly furnished prima facie justification for the suspicion,
indignantly voiced by contemporary English writers, and which has been
hardened into a direct accusation since, that an act of plagiarism was
committed, dishonest in itself, and doubly guilty from the circumstances
in which it was performed. The Quarterly reviewer of 1817* pointed out
that the few charts in Freycinet's atlas "ARE VERY LIKE THOSE OF CAPTAIN
FLINDERS, ONLY MUCH INFERIOR IN POINT OF EXECUTION." (* Volume 17 pages
229 to 230; the italics are the reviewer's. The plagiarism legend--for
such it is--originated with this Quarterly article. The earliest
biographer of Flinders, in the Naval Chronicle 32 page 177, wrote very
strongly of General Decaen, considering that he was "worthy of his
Corsican master," and that his name "will be consigned to infamy as long
as mankind shall consider it honourable to promote science and civilised
to practise hospitality," but alleged no improper use of the charts. C.A.
Walckenaer, who wrote the excellent life of Flinders in the Biographie
Universelle, published in 1856, said that the French Government was
"inexcusable d'avoir retenu Flinders en captivite," but denied that his
charts were improperly used, and promised that when he came to write the
life of Peron in a succeeding volume, he would by an analysis of the
evidence refute the story. But Walckenaer died in 1852, before his
Flinders article was published, and the author of the article on Peron
did not carry out his predecessor's undertaking. It is to be presumed
that Walckenaer would have exhibited the facts set out above. Alfred de
Lacaze, in his article on Flinders in the Nouvelle Biographie Generale 17
932, wrote that the excuses given for the imprisonment of Flinders formed
"pauvres pretextes"; but declared that the seals put on Flinders' papers
in Mauritius were "loyalement respecte pendant les six ans que dura la
captivite du navigateur anglais." That was true. It is a pleasure to
acknowledge that all the references to Flinders which the author has seen
in French works unanimously and strongly condemn the treatment of him,
and do ample justice to his splendid qualities.) They are very like in
one respect, namely, in the representation of Spencer's and St. Vincent's
Gulfs and Kangaroo Island. In other particulars, at all events as far as
relates to the Terre Napoleon coasts, the French charts are quite unlike
those of Flinders. But contemporaries--knowing that Flinders' charts had
been taken from him by Decaen, and that he had been held in captivity
until the French could finish their work, and then, comparing his charts
with Freycinet's, finding that parts of the coasts discovered by the
English captain were well represented on the French charts, while other
parts of the outline of Terra Australis were badly done or
inadequate--not unnaturally drew the inference that the well-drawn
sections were based upon drawings improperly acquired. If the chain of
evidence was not complete, the violent racial animosities then prevalent
moulded the missing links in the fervent heat of imagination.

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