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Terre Napoleon

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Napoleon was, however, a soldier after all--much else as well, but a
soldier first and foremost; and so was Decaen. When the general returned
to France, his Imperial master had urgent need for stern, stubborn,
fighting men of his type. He submitted to a court-martial* (* "Un conseil
d'enquete." Biographie Universelle 10 248.) in reference to the surrender
of Mauritius, but was exonerated. The discretion that he had exercised in
not obeying the decree for the liberation of Flinders was evidently not
made the ground of serious complaint against him, for in 1813 we find him
commanding the army of Catalonia, participating gallantly in the campaign
of the Pyrenees, and distinguishing himself at Barcelona under Marshal
Suchet. For this service he was made a Comte of the Empire. When Napoleon
was banished to Elba the Comte Decaen donned the white cockade, and took
service under Louis XVIII, but on the return of his old master he, like
Ney and some other of the tough warriors of the First Empire, forswore
his fidelity to the Bourbons. He was one of the generals left to guard
the southern frontiers of France while Napoleon played his last stake for
dominion in the terrific war game that ended with the cataclysm of
Waterloo. That event terminated Decaen's military course. For a while he
was imprisoned, but his life was not taken, as was that of the gallant
Ney; and in a few months he was liberated at the instance of the Duchesse
d'Angouleme. Thenceforth he lived a colourless, quiet, penurious life in
the vicinity of his native Caen, regretting not at all, one fancies, the
ruin of the useful career of the enterprising English navigator. His
poverty was honourable, for he had handled large funds during the
Consulate and Empire; and there is probably as much sincerity as pathos
in what he said to Soult and Gouvion-Saint-Cyr in his declining days,
that nothing remained to him after thirty years of honourable service and
the occupancy of high offices, except the satisfaction of having at all
times done his duty. He died in 1832. His official papers fill no fewer
than one hundred and forty-nine volumes and are preserved in the library
of the ancient Norman city whose name he bore as his own.


CHAPTER 6. THE MOTIVES OF BONAPARTE.

Did Bonaparte desire to establish French colonial dominions in Australia?
The case stated.

We will now turn to quite another aspect of the Terre Napoleon story, and
one which to many readers will be more fruitful in interest. An
investigation of the work of Baudin's expedition on the particular
stretch of coast to which was applied the name of the most potent
personage in modern history has necessarily demanded close application to
geographical details, and a minute scrutiny of claims and occurrences. We
enter into a wider historical realm when we begin to consider the motives
which led Bonaparte to despatch the expedition of 1800 to 1804. Here we
are no longer confined to shores which, at the time when we are concerned
with them, were the abode of desolation and the nursery of a solitude
uninterrupted for untallied ages, save by the screams of innumerable
sea-birds, or, occasionally, here and there, by the corroboree cries of
naked savages, whose kitchen-middens, feet thick with shells, still
betray the places where they feasted.

We wish to know why Bonaparte, who had overturned the Directory by the
audacity of Brumaire and hoisted himself into the dominating position of
First Consul in the year before Le Geographe and Le Naturaliste were sent
to the South Seas, authorised the undertaking of that enterprise. Was it
what it purported to be, an expedition of exploration, or was it a move
in a cunning game of state-craft by a player whose board, as some would
have us believe, was the whole planet? Had Bonaparte, so soon after
ascending to supremacy in the Government of France, already conceived the
dazzling dream of a vast world-empire acknowledging his sway, and was
this a step towards the achievement of it? If not that, was he desirous
by this means of striking a blow at the prestige of Great Britain, whose
hero Nelson had smashed his fleet at the Nile two years before? Or had he
ideals in the direction of establishing French colonial dominions in
southern latitudes, and did he desire to obtain accurate information as
to where the tricolour might most advantageously be planted? It ought to
be possible, out of the copious store of available material relative to
Napoleon's era, to form a sound opinion on this fascinating subject. But
we had better resolve to have the material before we do formulate a
conclusion, and not jump to one regardless of evidence, or the lack of
it.

In this inquiry very little assistance is given to the student by those
classical historians of the period to whose voluminous writings reference
might naturally be made. There is not, for example, the slightest
allusion to Baudin's expedition or the Terre Napoleon incidents in
Thiers' twenty-tomed Histoire du Consulat et de l'Empire; nor can the
reader get much assistance from consulting many British works on the same
epoch. An endeavour has, however, been made to set the facts in their
right perspective, by a brilliant contemporary English historian, Dr.
John Holland Rose, somewhat curtly in his Revolutionary and Napoleonic
Era, but more fully in his Life of Napoleon.* (* Life of Napoleon 1 379
to 383. Still later, in his lecture on "England's Commercial Struggle
with Napoleon," included in the Lectures on the Nineteenth Century,
edited by F.A. Kirkpatrick (1908), Dr. Holland Rose pursues the same
theme.) The present writer, after an independent study of the facts, is
unable to share Dr. Holland Rose's view, as will presently appear, but
the desire being less to urge an opinion than to present the case in its
true relations, it will be convenient to state Dr. Rose's presentment of
it before proceeding to look at it from other aspects.

"The unknown continent of Australia," says the historian, "appealed to
Napoleon's imagination, which pictured its solitudes transformed by
French energy into a second fatherland." Bonaparte had "early turned his
eyes to that land." He took a copy of Cook's voyages with him to Egypt,
and no sooner was he firmly installed as First Consul, than he "planned
with the Institute of France a great French expedition to New Holland."
It is represented that the Terre Napoleon maps show that "under the guise
of being an emissary of civilisation, Commodore Baudin was prepared to
claim half the continent for France."* (* Ibid page 381. The Terre
Napoleon region is far from being half the continent of Australia, if
that be what Dr. Holland Rose's words mean. One observes, by the way, a
tendency on the part of English writers to use very small maps when
speaking of the size of things in Australia.) Indeed, his inquiry "about
the extent of British claims on the Pacific coast was so significant as
to elicit from Governor King the reply that the whole of Van Diemen's
Land and of the coast from Cape Howe on the south of the mainland to Cape
York on the north, was British territory." The facts relative to the
awakening of suspicion in Governor King's mind--to be discussed
hereafter--are likewise stated; together with those affecting the
settlements of Hobart and Port Phillip; and it is concluded that "the
plans of Napoleon for the acquisition of Van Diemen's Land and the middle
of Australia, had an effect like that which the ambition of Montcalm,
Dupleix, Lally, and Peron has exerted on the ultimate destiny of many a
vast and fertile territory."* (* Ibid page 382. One or two errors of fact
may as well be indicated. Murray's discovery of Port Phillip was made in
1802, not in 1801, as stated on page 380 of the Life of Napoleon; the
title of Flinders' book was not "A Voyage of Discovery to the Australian
Isles" (page 381), but A Voyage to Terra Australis; Bass, the discoverer
of the Strait bearing his name, was not a lieutenant (page 380), but a
surgeon on H.M.S. Reliance. The Freycinet Peninsula, the French name of
which is mentioned as being "still retained" (page 381), is not, it
should be understood, on the Terre Napoleon coast at all, but in Eastern
Tasmania. Dr. Rose's error as to the retention of other French names has
been dealt with in Chapter 4.)

These passages submit with definiteness the view that Bonaparte, in 1800,
despatched Baudin's ships from motives of political policy. He had
"plans" for the requisition of territory in Australia; he wished to found
a "second fatherland" for the French; Baudin was "prepared to claim half
the continent for France." Now, the reader who turns to Dr. Holland
Rose's book * (* He who turns to it without reading it through will miss
an opulent source of profit and pleasure.) for references to proofs of
these statements, will be disappointed. The learned author, who is
usually liberal in his citation of authorities, here confines himself to
the Voyage de Decouvertes of Peron and Freycinet, the Voyage of Flinders,
and the collection of documents in the seven volumes of the Historical
Records of New South Wales--all works of first-class importance, but none
of them bearing out the broad general statements as to the First Consul's
plans and intentions. Not a scrap of evidence is adduced from memoirs,
letters, or state papers. To represent Napoleon as obsessed with
magnificent ideas of universal dominion, scanning, like Milton's Satan
from the mountain height, the immensity of many realms, and aspiring to
rule them all--to do this is to present an enthralling picture, inflaming
the imagination of the reader; and, perhaps, of the writer too. But we
must beware of drawing an inference and painting it to look like a fact;
we must regard historical data through the clear white glass of
criticism, not through the coloured window of a gorgeous generalisation.

The remainder of our task, then, shall be devoted to examining the
origins of Baudin's expedition. We will inquire into the instructions
given to the commander; we will follow his vessels with a careful eye to
any incidents that may point to ulterior political purposes; we will have
regard to the suspicions engendered at the time, how far they were
justifiable, and what consequences followed from them; we will search for
motives; and we will look at what the expedition did, in case there
should by any chance thereby be disclosed any hint of an aspiration
towards territorial acquisition. We will try to regard the evidence as a
whole, the object being--as the object of all honest historical inquiry
must be--to ascertain the truth about it, freed from those jealousies and
prejudices which, so freely deposited at the time, tend to consolidate
and petrify until, as with the guano massed hard on islets in
Australasian seas, it is difficult to get at the solid rock beneath for
the accretions upon it, and sometimes not easy to discriminate rock from
accretion.


CHAPTER 7. GENESIS OF BAUDIN'S EXPEDITION.

Baudin's one of a series of French expeditions.
The building up of the map of Australia.
Early map-makers.
Terra Australis.
Dutch navigators.
Emmerie Mollineux's map.
Tasman and Dampier.
The Petites Lettres of Maupertuis.
De Brosses and his Histoire des Navigations aux Terres Australes.
French voyages that originated from it.
Bougainville; Marion-Dufresne; La Perouse; Bruni Dentrecasteaux.
Voyages subsequent to Baudin's.
The object of the voyages scientific and exploratory.
The Institute of France and its proposition.
Received by Bonaparte with interest.
Bonaparte's interest in geography and travel.
His authorisation of the expedition.
The Committee of the Institute and their instructions.
Fitting out of the expedition.
Le Geographe and Le Naturaliste.
The staff.
Francois Peron.
Captain Nicolas Baudin.

French interest in southern exploration did not commence nor did it cease
with the expedition of 1800 to 1804. We fall into a radical error if we
regard that as an isolated endeavour. It was, in truth, a link in a
chain: one of a series of efforts made by the French to solve what was,
during the eighteenth century, a problem with which the scientific
intellect of Europe was much concerned.

The tardy and piecemeal fashion in which definiteness was given to
southern latitudes on the map of the world makes a curious chapter in the
history of geographical research. After the ships of Magellan and Drake
had circumnavigated the globe, and a very large part of America had been
mapped, there still lay, south of the tracks of those adventurers who
rounded the Horn and breasted the Pacific, a region that remained
unknown--a Terra Australis, Great Southern Continent, or Terra Incognita
as it was vaguely and variously termed. Map-makers, having no certain
data concerning this vast uncharted area, commonly sprawled across the
extremity of the southern hemisphere a purely fanciful outline of
imaginary land. Terra Australis was the playground of the cartographers
of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. They seemed to abhor blank
spaces. Some of the most beautiful of the old maps make the oceans busy
with spouting whales, sportive dolphins, and galleons with bellying
sails; but what to do with the great staring expanse of vacancy at the
bottom their authors did not know. So they drew a crooked line across the
map to represent land, and stuck upon it the label Terra Australis, or
one of the other designations just mentioned. The configuration of the
territory on different maps did not agree, and not one of them signified
a coast with anything like the form of the real Great Southern Continent.

To the period of fancy succeeded that of patchwork. Came the Dutch, often
blown out of their true course from the Cape of Good Hope to the Spice
Islands, and stumbling upon the shores of Western Australia. To some such
accident we probably owe the piece of improved cartography shown upon
Emmerie Mollineux's map, which Hakluyt inserted in some copies of the
second edition of his Principal Navigations, and which Shakespeare is
supposed to have had in mind when, in a merry scene in Twelfth Night, he
made Maria say of Malvolio (3 2 85): "He does smile his face into more
lines than is in the new map with the AUGMENTATION OF THE INDIES."* (*
See Mr. Charles Coote's paper in Transactions of New Shakespeare Society,
1877 to 1879. He read the phrase "augmentation of the Indies," as
referring to this and some other additions to the map of the world, now
for the first time shown. In those days, of course, "the Indies" meant
pretty well everything out of Europe, including America. It is curious
that Flinders called the aboriginals whom he saw in Port Phillip
"Indians." Probably all coloured peoples were "Indians" to seamen even so
late as his day. There is a fine copy of the map referred to in volume 1
of the 1903 edition of Hakluyt, edited by Professor Walter Raleigh.) This
map marks an improvement, in the sense that an approach to the truth,
probably founded on actual observation, is an improvement on a large,
comprehensive piece of guess work. Emmerie Mollineux expunged the
imaginary region, and substituted a small tongue of land, shaped like a
thimble. It was doubtless copied from some Dutch chart; and though we
must not look for precision of outline at so early a date, it is
sufficient to show that some navigator had seen, hereabouts, a real piece
of Australia, and had made a note of what it looked like. It is not much,
but, rightly regarded, it is like the first gleam of light on the dark
sky where the dawn is to paint its radiance.

English Dampier (1686 to 1688, and 1699 to 1701) and Dutch Tasman (1642
to 1644) made the most substantial contributions to the world's knowledge
of the true form of Australia to be credited to any individual navigators
before the coming of Cook, the greatest of all.

It is very strange that so long a period as a century and a half should
have been allowed to lapse between Tasman's very remarkable voyage and
Flinders' completion of the outline of Australia, and that three-quarters
of a century should have separated the explorations of Dampier and Cook.
Here, crooned over by her great gum forests, baring her broad breast of
plains to the sun and moon, lay a land holding within her immense
solitudes unimaginable wealth; genial in climate, rich in soil, abounding
in mineral treasures, fit to be a home for happy, industrious millions.
Yet, while avarice and enterprise schemed and fought for the west and the
east, this treasury of the south remained unsolicited. It is not for us
to regret that Australia was left for a race that knew how to woo her
with affection and to conquer her with their science and their will, yet
we can but wonder that fortune should have been so tardy and so reticent
in disclosing a fifth division of the globe.

While this piecing together of the outline of the continent was
proceeding, speculation was naturally rife among men of science as to
what countries southern latitudes contained, and what their capabilities
were. It was essentially a scientific problem awaiting solution; and it
is not surprising that the French, quick-brained, inquisitive, eager in
pursuit of ideas, should have been active in this field.

Their intellectual concern with South Sea discovery may be said to date
from the publication of the Petites Lettres of Pierre Louis Moreau de
Maupertuis. He was, like some of whom Browning has written, a "person of
some importance in his day," and his writings on physics are still
mentioned with respect in works devoted to the history of science. But he
is perhaps chiefly remembered as the savant whom Frederick the Great
attracted to his court during a period of aloofness from the
scintillating Voltaire, and who consequently became a writhing target for
the jealous ridicule of that waspish wit. Poor Maupertuis, unhappy in his
exit from life, would appear to have been restless after it, for his
ghost is averred to have stalked in the hall of the Academy of Berlin,
and to have been seen by a brother professor there, the remarkable
phenomenon being solemnly recorded in the Transactions of that learned
body.* (* See Sir Walter Scott's Demonology and Witchcraft, Letter 1.)
But of far more practical importance than the appearance of his perturbed
shade, was the effect of his Petites Lettres, which suggested twelve
projects for the advancement of knowledge, one of which was the promotion
of discovery in the southern hemisphere.

Shortly after its publication, Maupertuis' proposition was discussed by a
society of accomplished students meeting at Dijon, the ancient capital of
Burgundy. A member of the Society to whom much deference was paid, was
Charles de Brosses, lawyer, scholar, and President of the Parlement of
the Province.* (* The local parliaments were abolished in the reign of
Louis XV, reinstated by Louis XVI, and finally swept away in the stormy
demolition of ancient institutions to make ground for the constitution of
1791.) De Brosses was an industrious student and writer, the translator
of Sallust into French, and author of several valuable historical and
philological works, including a number of learned papers which may be
read--or not--in the stout calf-bound quartos enshrining the records of
the Academy of Inscriptions.* (* His papers in that regiment of tomes
range over a period of fifty years, from 1746 to 1796. They deal chiefly
with Roman history, and especially with points suggested by the author's
profound study of Sallust. Gibbon pays De Brosses the compliment of
quoting two of his works, and commends his "SINGULAR diligence," with
emphasis on the adjective. (See Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman
Empire, Bury's edition 4 37 and 7 168.) He was also Voltaire's landlord
at Tournay, and had a quarrel with him about a matter of firewood; but De
Brosses was a lawyer, whilst Voltaire was only a philosopher and a poet,
so that of course the result was "qu'il enrage d'avoir enfin a payer."*
(* Lanson's Voltaire page 139.)

The discussion at Dijon was more fruitful in results than such colloquies
usually are. De Brosses was especially struck with the utility of
exploration in southern seas, and considered that the French nation
should take the lead in such an endeavour. He spoke for a full hour in
support of this particular suggestion of Maupertuis, and when he had
finished his fellow-members assured him that what he had advanced was so
novel and interesting that he would do well to expand his ideas into an
essay, to be read at the next meeting. De Brosses did more: for he wrote
two solid quarto volumes, published at Paris in 1756--"avec approbation
et privilege du Roy," as the title page says--in which he related all
that he could learn about previous voyages to the south, and pointed out,
with generous amplitude, in limpid, fluent French, the desirableness of
pursuing further discoveries there. Incidentally he coined a useful word:
to Monsieur le President Charles de Brosses we owe the name
"Australasia."* (* De Brosses, Histoire des Navigations aux Terres
Australes 1 426 and 2 367. Max Muller, in his Lectures on the Origin of
Religion page 59, stated that De Brosses coined three valuable words,
"fetishism," "Polynesia," and "Australia." He certainly did not originate
the word Australia, which does not occur anywhere in his book. Quiros, in
1606, named one of the islands of the New Hebrides group Austrialia del
Espiritu Santo, though he seems to have done so in compliment to Philip
III, who ruled Austria as well as Spain. See Markham, Voyages of Quiros
volume 1 page 30 Hakluyt Society. "Australasia" was De Brosses' new name
for a broad division of the globe. He derived it from the Latin australis
= southern + Asia.)

A work written over one hundred and fifty years ago, recommending a
project long since completed, can hardly be expected to be full of living
interest. Yet this book of De Brosses, apart from the research which it
evinced, was infused with a large, humane spirit that lifted it high
above the level of a prospectus. The author had a sense of patriotism
that looked beyond the aggrandisement that might accrue from extensive
acquisitions, to the ideal of spreading French civilisation as a
beneficent force. He wished his country to share in a great work of
discovery that would redound to its glory as well as to its influence.
Glory, he wrote, in a fine piece of French prose, is the dominant passion
of kings; but their common and inveterate error is to search for it in
war--that is to say, in the reciprocal misfortunes of their subjects and
their neighbours. But there never is any true glory for them unless the
happiness of nations is the object of their enterprises. In the task
which he recommended, the grandeur of the object was joined to utility.
To augment the lands known to civilised mankind by a new world, and to
enrich the old world with the natural products of the new--this would be
the effect of the fresh discoveries that he anticipated. What comparison
could there be between such a project and the conquest--it might be the
unjust conquest--of some ravaged piece of territory, of two or three
fortresses battered by cannon and acquired by the massacre, the ruin, the
desolation, and the regrets of the vanquished people; bought, too, at a
price a hundred times greater than would suffice for the entire voyage of
discovery proposed. He pointed out that the task could only be taken in
hand by a government; it was too large for individuals. But the result
was certain. In truth, to succeed in the complete discovery of the Terres
Australes, it was not necessary to have any other end in view than
success: it was simply necessary to employ proper means and sufficient
forces.

De Brosses discussed the probably most advantageous situation for
settlement in the South Seas, though in doing so he was hampered by
insufficient knowledge. Relying upon the reports of Tasman, he considered
New Zealand and "la terre de Diemen"--that is, Tasmania--too distant and
too little known for an experiment; whilst the narratives of Dampier did
not make those parts of New Holland that he had visited--the west and
north of Australia--appear attractive. On the whole, he favoured the
island to the east of Papua-New Guinea--known as New Britain (now New
Pomerania), and the Austrialia del Espiritu Santo of the Spanish
navigator Quiros as very suitable. It is interesting to note that the
present French settlements in the New Hebrides embrace the latter island,
whilst their possessions in the New Caledonia group are quite close; so
that ultimately they have planted themselves on the very spot which a
century and a half ago the savant of Dijon considered best fitted for
them. De Brosses admitted that the establishment of such settlements as
he recommended would not be the work of a day. Great enterprises require
great efforts. It is for individuals to measure years, he loftily said;
nations calculate by centuries. Powerful peoples must take extended views
of things; and kings, as their chiefs, animated by the desire of glory
and the love of country and of humanity, ought to consider themselves as
personalities persisting always, and working for eternity.* (* The
passages summarised are to be found in De Brosses, 1: 4, 8, 11, 19; and
2: 368, 380, 383.)

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