Establishment of the First Empire.
Reluctance of the French Government to publish a record of the expedition.
Report of the Institute.
The official history of the voyage authorised.
Péron's scientific work.
His discovery of Pyrosoma atlanticum.
Other scientific memoirs.
His views on the modification of species.
Geographical results.
Freycinet's charts.

Startling changes in the political complexion of France had occurred during the absence of the expedition. Citizen Bonaparte, who in May 1800 had concurred in the representations of the Institute that discovery in southern regions would redound to the glory of the nation, had since given rein to the conception that the glory of France meant, properly interpreted, his own.* (* It was so from the beginning of his career as Consul, according to M. Paul Brosses' interpretation of his character. "Il est deja et sera de plus en plus convaincu que travailler a sa grandeur, c'est travailler a la grandeur du pays." Consulat et Empire, 1907 page 27.) He meant to found a dynasty, and woe to those whom he regarded as standing in his way. One of the first pieces of news that those who landed from Le Geographe at Lorient on the 25th March would hear, was that just four days before, the Duc d'Enghien, son of the Duc de Bourbon, had been shot after an official examination so formal as to be no better than a mockery, for his grave had actually been dug before the inquiry commenced. When Péron and his companions reached Paris, they would hear and read of debates among the representatives of the Republic, mostly favourable to the establishment of a new hereditary Imperial dignity; and they would be in good time to take an interest in the plebiscite which, by a majority of nearly fourteen hundred to one, approved the new constitution and enacted that "Napoleon Bonaparte, now First Consul of the Republic, is Emperor of the French." They were, in short, back soon enough to witness the process--it may well have suggested to the naturalist a comparison with phenomena very familiar to him--by which the Consular-chrysalis Bonaparte became the Emperor-moth Napoleon.

It was, of course, a very busy year for those responsible to their illustrious master for the administration of departments. With a great naval war on hand, with plots frequently being formed or feared, with the wheels and levers of diplomacy to watch and manipulate, with immense changes in the machinery of Government going forward, and with the obligation of satisfying the exacting demands of a chief who was often in a rage, and always tremendously energetic, the ministers of France were not likely to have much enthusiasm to spare for maps and charts, large collections of dead birds, insects, beasts, fishes, butterflies, and plants, specimens of rocks and quantities of shells.

It is likely enough that absorption in more insistent affairs rather than a hostile feeling explains the reluctance of the French Government to authorise the publication of an official history of the voyage when such a project was first submitted. Freycinet and his colleagues learnt "with astonishment" that the authorities were unfavourable. "It was," he wrote, "as if the miseries that we had endured, and to which a great number of our companions had fallen victims, could be regarded as forming a legitimate ground of reproach against us." It is more reasonable to suppose that pressure of other business prevented Napoleon's ministers from devoting much consideration to the subject. Men who have endured hazards and hardships, and who return home after a long absence expecting to be welcomed with acclaim, are disposed to feel snubbed and sore when they find people not inclined to pay much attention to them. Remembering the banquets and the plaudits that marked the despatch of the expedition, those of its members who expected a demonstration may well have been chilled by the small amount of notice they received. But the public as well as the official mood was conceivably due rather to intense concentration upon national affairs, during a period of amazing transition, than to the prejudice which Freycinet's ruffled pride suggested. "It would be difficult to explain," he wrote, "how, during the voyage, there could have been formed concerning the expedition an opinion so unfavourable, that even before our return the decision was arrived at not to give any publicity to our works. The reception that we met with on arriving in France showed the effects of such an unjust and painful prejudice."* (* Preface to the 1824 edition of the Voyage de Decouvertes.)

When Le Naturaliste arrived at Havre in the previous year, the Moniteur* (* 14th Messidor, Revolutionary Year 10. (July 3, 1803).) gave an account of the very large collection of specimens that she brought, and spoke cordially of the work; and in the following month* (* 27th Thermidor, Revolutionary Year 11. (August 15).) Napoleon's organ published a long sketch of the course of the voyage up to the King Island stage, from particulars contained in despatches and supplied by Hamelin. The earlier arrival of Le Naturaliste had the effect, also, of taking the edge off public interest. This may be counted as one of the causes of the rather frigid reception accorded to Le Geographe.

The only fact that lends any colour to Freycinet's supposition of prejudice, is that the Moniteur article of 27th Thermidor suggested a certain unsatisfactoriness about the charts sent home by Baudin. His communications clearly led the Government to believe that he had made important discoveries on the south coast of Australia, but unfortunately the rough drawings accompanying his descriptions did not enable official experts to form an accurate opinion. He mentioned the two large gulfs, but furnished no chart of them.* (* "Cette decouverte [i.e. of the gulfs] du Capitaine Baudin est tres interessante en ce qu'elle completera la reconnaissance de la cote sud de la Nouvelle Hollande qui est due entierement a la France. On ne peut pas encore juger du degre d'exactitude avec laquelle elle a ete faite, parce que le citoyen Baudin n'a envoye qu'une partie de la carte qu'il en a dressee, et que cette carte meme n'est qu'une premiere esquisse. Il y a jointe une carte qui marque seulement sa route, avec les sondes le long de toute cette cote, et il promet d'envoyer l'autre partie de la cote par la premiere occasion qu'il trouvera." Moniteur, 27th Thermidor, Revolutionary Year 11.) The reason for that was, of course, that at the time when Le Naturaliste left for France Baudin had not penetrated the gulfs, and could have had no representation of them to submit. The article also alluded to another chart of part of the coast in the neighbourhood of Cape Leeuwin, as not conveying much information.* (* It was "figuree assez grossierement et sans details.") These statements are useful as enabling us to understand why Baudin was so shy about showing his charts to Flinders. If they gave little satisfaction to the writer of the Moniteur article, we can imagine what a critic who had been over the ground himself would have thought about them.

These considerations scarcely afford reason for inferring that the Government had formed a prejudice against the work of the expedition before making a complete examination of its records, though it is very probable that dissatisfaction was expressed about the charts. Hamelin, also, would be fairly certain to intimate privately what he knew to be the case, that Flinders had been beforehand with the most important of the discoveries. Indeed, the Moniteur article expressly mentioned that when Baudin met Flinders, the latter had "pursued the coast from Cape Leeuwin to the place of meeting." The information that the English captain had accomplished so much, despite the fact that he had left England months after Baudin sailed from France, was not calculated to give pleasure to Ministers. It was to this feeling that Sir Joseph Banks referred when, in writing to Flinders, he said that he had heard that the French Government were not too well pleased with Baudin's work.* (* Girard, writing in 1857, stated that rumours about Baudin's conduct, circulated before the arrival of Le Geographe, induced the public to believe that the expedition had been abortive, without useful results, and that it was to the interest of the Government to forget all about it. F. Péron, page 46. But Girard cites no authority for the statement, and as he was not born in 1804, he is not himself an authoritative witness. He merely repeated Freycinet's assertions.)

The distinguished men of science who stood at the head of the Institute of France were best qualified to judge of the value of the work done; and they at least spoke decisively in its praise. The collections brought home by Le Naturaliste had included one hundred and eighty cases of minerals and animals, four cases of dried plants, three large casks of specimens of timber, two boxes of seeds, and sixty tubs of living plants.* (* Moniteur, 14th Messidor, Revolutionary Year 11 (July 3, 1803).) On June 9, 1806, a Committee of the Institute, consisting of Cuvier, Laplace, Bougainville, Fleurieu, and Lacepede, furnished a report based upon an examination of the scientific specimens and the manuscript of the first volume of the Voyage de Decouvertes, which, in the meantime, had been written by Péron. They referred in terms of warm eulogy to the industry which had collected more than one hundred thousand specimens; to the new species discovered, estimated by the professors at the Musee at two thousand five hundred; and to the care and skill displayed by Péron in describing and classifying, a piece of work appealing with especial force to the co-ordinating intelligence of Cuvier. They directed attention to the observations made by the naturalist upon the British colony at Port Jackson; and their language on this subject may be deemed generous in view of the fact that England and France were then at war. "M. Péron," reported the savants, "has applied himself particularly to studying the details of that vast system of colonisation which is being developed at once upon a great continent, upon innumerable islands, and upon the wide ocean. His work in that respect should be of the greatest interest for the philosopher and the statesman. Never, perhaps, did a subject more interesting and more curious offer itself to the meditation of either, than the colony of Botany Bay, so long misunderstood in Europe."* (* The colony was not at Botany Bay, though the mistake was common enough even in England. But the champion error on that subject was that of Dumas, who, in Les Trois Mousquetaires, chapter 52--the period, as "every schoolboy knows," of Cardinal Richelieu--represents Milady as reflecting bitterly on her fate, and fearing that D'Artagnan would transport her "to some loathsome Botany Bay," a century and a quarter before Captain Cook discovered it! Dumas, however, was a law unto himself in such matters.) Never, perhaps, was there a more shining example of the powerful influence of laws and institutions upon the character of individuals and peoples. To transform the most redoubtable highwaymen, the most abandoned thieves of England, into honest and peaceable citizens; to make laborious husbandmen of them; to effect the same revolution in the characters of the vilest women; to force them, by infallible methods, to become honest wives and excellent mothers of families; to take the young and preserve them, by the most assiduous care, from the contagion of their reprobate parents, and so to prepare a generation more virtuous than that which it succeeds: such is the touching spectacle that these new English colonies present."

The passage may be compared with Péron's own observations on the same subject, given in Chapter 9. A more erroneous view of the effects of convict colonisation could hardly have been conveyed; but the paragraph may have been written to catch the eye of Napoleon, who was a strong believer in transportation as a remedial punishment for serious crime, and had spoken in favour of it in the Council of State during the discussions on the Civil Code.* (* See Thibaudeau, Memoires sur le Consulat, English edition, translated by G.K. Fortescue, LL.D., London 1908 page 180. Transportation, said Napoleon, "is in accord with public opinion, and is prescribed by humane considerations. The need for it is so obvious that we should provide for it at once in the Civil Code. We have now in our prisons six thousand persons who are doing nothing, who cost a great deal of money, and who are always escaping. There are thirty to forty highwaymen in the south who are ready to surrender to justice on condition that they are transported. Certainly we ought to settle the question now, while we have it in our minds. Transportation is imprisonment, certainly, but in a cell more than thirty feet square." The highwaymen mentioned by Bonaparte must have been remarkable persons. It was so like highwaymen to wish to be arrested! Perhaps there were also birds in the south who were willing to be caught on condition that salt was put on their tails.)

In addition to these representations, Péron was accorded an interview with the Minister of Marine, Decres, when, supported by Fleurieu and other members of the Institute, he explained what the expedition had done, and exhibited specimens of his collections and of Lesueur's drawings. Champagny, the Minister of the Interior, was also induced to listen to the eloquent pleading of the naturalist. As a result, the Government resolved to publish; and in 1807 appeared the first volume of the text, together with a thin folio atlas containing a number of beautiful drawings and two charts. The books were issued under the superscription, "par ordre de S.M. L'Empereur et Roi." On Sunday, January 12, 1808--"apres la messe"--Péron, who was accompanied by Lesueur, one of the artists, had the honour of being admitted to the presence of the Emperor, and presented him with a copy of the work.* (* Moniteur, January 13, 1808.) The naturalist became somewhat of a favourite with the Empress Josephine, who on several occasions sent a carriage to his lodgings to take him to Malmaison; and she treated him "as a good mother would have treated a dear son."* (* Girard, F. Péron page 50.) He gave to her a pair of black swans from Australia, and the Empress generously discharged debts which he had incurred in acquiring part of his collection.

Péron died of a throat disease on December 14, 1810, just seventeen days after the liberated Flinders reached England. He was buried at Cerilly, where a monument, designed by Lesueur, marks his grave. At the time of his death he had not quite finished writing the second volume of the Voyage de Decouvertes. The conclusion of the work was therefore entrusted to Louis de Freycinet, who had already been commissioned to produce the atlas of charts.

Of Péron's personal character, and of the value of his scientific work, nothing but high praise can be written. He was but a young man when he died. Had he lived, we cannot doubt that he would have filled an important place among French men of science, for his diligence was coupled with insight, and his love of research was as deep as his aptitude for it was keen. A pleasant picture of the man was penned by Kerandren, who had been one of the surgeons on the expedition to Australia. "Péron," he said* (* Moniteur, January 24, 1811. The Moniteur of June 7, 1812, also contained a eulogy on Péron delivered before the Societe Medicale d'emulation de Paris, by A.J.B. Louis.), "carried upon his face the expression of kindliness and sensibility. The fervour of his mind, the vivacity of his character, were tempered by the extreme goodness of his heart. He made himself useful to most of those who were the companions of his voyage. There was joined to his confidence in his own ability, a great modesty. He was so natural--I would even say so candid--that it was impossible to resist the charm of his manners and his conversation."

Apart from his authorship of the first and part of the second volume of the Voyage de Decouvertes, Péron wrote a number of short "memoires sur divers sujets," suggested to his mind by observations made during the voyage. One of the most valuable of these, from a scientific point of view, was an essay upon the causes of phosphorescence in the sea, frequently observed in tropical and subtropical regions, but occasionally in European waters.*

(* Crabbe described it admirably in The Borough (9 103):

"And now your view upon the ocean turn,
And there the splendour of the waves discern;
Cast but a stone, or strike them with an oar,
And you shall flames within the deep explore;
Or scoop the stream phosphoric as you stand,
And the cold flames shall flash along your hand;
When, lost in wonder, you shall walk and gaze
On weeds that sparkle and on waves that blaze.)

Although Péron was not the first naturalist to explain that this aspect of floating fire given to the waves was due to the presence of multitudes of living organisms, he was the first naturalist to describe their structure and functional processes.* (* Phipson on Phosphorescence (1862) page 113, mentions that as early as 1749 and 1750, Vianetti and Grixellini, two Venetians, discovered in the waters of the Adriatic quantities of luminous animalculae; and the true cause of the phenomena must have occurred to many of those who witnessed it, though groundless and absurd theories were current. Of the creature discovered and described by Péron, Phipson says that it is "one of the most curious of animals. It belongs to the tribe of Tunicata. Each individual resembles a minute cylinder of glowing phosphorus. Sometimes they are seen adhering together in such prodigious numbers that the ocean appears as if covered with an enormous mass of shining phosphorus or molten lava." Professor Moseley investigated the Pyrosoma while with the Challenger expedition. He wrote: "A giant Pyrosoma was caught by us in the deep-sea trawl. It was like a great sac, with its walls of jelly about an inch in thickness. It was four feet long and ten inches in diameter. When a Pyrosoma is stimulated by having its surface touched, the phosphorescent light breaks out just at the spot stimulated, and then spreads over the surface of the colony to the surrounding animals. I wrote my name with my finger on the surface of the giant Pyrosoma as it lay on deck, and my name came out in a few seconds in letters of fire." The author owes this last reference to an excellent paper on "Phosphorescence in Plants and Animals," by Miss Freda Bage, M.Sc., printed in the Victorian Naturalist, 21 page 100 November 1904.) His treatise on the Pyrosoma atlanticum is an extremely interesting example of his scientific work. The creature is weighed and measured; its appearance is described; then it is carefully taken to pieces and its structure and internal organisation are minutely detailed; next there is an account of its functions, and an explanation of how the phosphorescent appearance is produced; and finally its mode of life, nutrition, and system of generation are dealt with. Péron collects a number of specimens, places them in a vessel filled with sea-water, and observes how, at rhythmic intervals, the creature alternately contracts and dilates in a fashion analogous to the art of breathing among more highly organised animals; and he notices that the phosphorescence appears and disappears with these movements, being most fully displayed when the creature's body is most contracted, and disappearing during the moments of most complete expansion. Here we have careful examination and observation, study of the organism in its native habitat, anatomical dissection, and experiment--a piece of biological work exceedingly well done. Cuvier would have read the piece with satisfaction in his pupil.

Other Memoires by Péron, on the temperature of the sea on the surface and at measured depths; on the zoology of the Austral regions; on dysentery in hot countries and the medicinal use of the betel-nut; on sea animals, such as seals; and on the art of maintaining live animals in zoological collections, were valuable; and the subjects on which he wrote are mentioned as indicating the range of his scientific interests. One of his pieces of work which, naturally, aroused much interest in Europe, was an extremely curious investigation relative to the physiological peculiarities of females of the Bushman tribes in South Africa, where Péron made an inland journey for the purpose.* (* There is a technical note on this delicate subject in Girard's F. Péron, Naturaliste, Voyageur aux Terres Australes (Paris, 1857); a book which also gives a good summary of Péron's scientific work.)

When he died, Péron had not had time to apply himself adequately to the enormous mass of material that he had collected. His fertile and curious mind, we cannot doubt, would have enriched the scientific literature of France with many other monographs. The deaths at sea of Bernier and Deleuze also deprived the records of the expedition of contributions which they would have made on their special lines of research. Collections of specimens and piles of memoranda, uninformed by the intelligence of those to whom their meaning is most apparent, are a barren result.

Péron's biological work was done in accordance with the spirit and principles of Cuvier, who stood at the head of European savants in his own field. "Trained for four years in Cuvier's school," wrote the naturalist, "I had for guide not only his method and his principles, but manuscript instructions that he had had the goodness to write for me on my departure from Europe." Cuvier insisted on the importance of structure and function; "to name well you must know well." The part played by the creature in its own share of the world, its nervous organisation, its life as involved in its form, were essentials upon which he laid stress in his teaching; and he imparted to those who came under his influence a breadth of view, a feeling for the unity of nature, that is quite modern, and has governed all the greatest of his successors. "Not only is each being an organism, the whole universe is one, but many million times more complicated; and that which the anatomist does for a single animal--for the microcosm--the naturalist is to do for the macrocosm, for the universal animal, for the play of this immense aggregation of partial organisms." Detailed research, coupled with an outlook on the whole realm of nature--that was the essential principle of Cuvier's science; and it is because we can recognise in Péron a man who had profitably sat at the feet of the great master, that his death before he had applied his zeal to the material collected with so much labour is the more deeply to be regretted.

The few paragraphs in which Péron expressed his views regarding the modification of species may be quoted. It has to be remembered that they were written in the early years of the nineteenth century, when ideas on this subject were in a state of uncertainty rather than of transition, and more than half a century before Darwin gave an entirely new direction to thought by publishing his great hypothesis. Cuvier at this time believed in the fixity of species--constancy in the type with modification in the form of individuals; but his opinions underwent some amount of change in the latter part of his career. The point argued with such gravity, and the conclusion which Péron stresses with the impressiveness of italics, are not such as a naturalist nowadays would think it worth while to elaborate, namely, that organisms having a general structural similarity are modified by climate and environment. It would not require a voyage to another hemisphere to convince a schoolboy of that truth nowadays. But the paragraphs have a certain historical value, for they put what was evidently an important idea to an accomplished naturalist a century ago. They present us, in that aspect, with an interesting bit of pre-Darwinian generalisation.

"Before natural history had acquired a strict and appropriate language of its own," wrote Péron,* (* Voyage de Decouvertes, 1824 edition 3 243.) "when its methods were defective and incomplete, travellers and naturalists confused under one name, in imitation of each other, so to speak, animals which were essentially different. There is no class of the animal kingdom which, in the actual state of things, does not include several orbicular species; that is to say, several species which are in some degree common to all parts of the globe, however they may be modified by geographical and climatic conditions. Other species, although confined to certain latitudes, are, however, usually regarded as common to all climates, and to all seas comprised within these latitudes. The existence of these last animals is regarded as being independent of latitude. To confine ourselves to marine species, one sees it constantly repeated in books of the most estimable character, that the great whale (Balaena mysticetus, Linn.) is found equally amidst the frozen waters of Spitzbergen and in the Antarctic seas; that the sharks and seals of various kinds are found in equally innumerable tribes in seas the farthest apart in the two hemispheres; that the turtle and the tortoise inhabit indifferently the Atlantic, the Indian, and the great equinoctial oceans.

"Were one to consult only reason and analogy, such assertions would appear to be doubtful, as a matter of experience they are found to be absolutely false. Let any one glance at the evidence upon which these pretended identities rest; one will then see that they exist only in the names, and that there is not a single WELL-KNOWN animal belonging to the northern hemisphere, which is not specifically different from all other animals EQUALLY WELL KNOWN in the opposite hemisphere. I have taken the trouble to make that difficult comparison in the case of the cetacea, the seals, etc.; I have examined many histories of voyages; I have gathered together all the descriptions of animals; and I have recognised important differences between the most similar of these supposedly identical species.

"Nobody, I dare say, has collected more animals than I have done in the southern hemisphere. I have observed and described them in their own habitat. I have brought several thousands of kinds to Europe; they are deposited in the Natural History Museum at Paris. Let any one compare these numerous animals with those of our hemisphere, and the problem will soon be resolved, not only in regard to the more perfectly organised species, but even as to those which are simpler in structure, and which, in that regard, it would appear, should show less variety in nature...In all that multitude of animals from the southern hemisphere, one will observe that there is not one which can be precisely matched in northern seas; and one will be forced to conclude from such a reflective examination--such an elaborate and prolonged comparison--as I have been forced to do myself, THAT THERE IS NOT A SINGLE SPECIES OF WELL-KNOWN ANIMALS WHICH, TRULY COSMOPOLITE, IS INDISTINGUISHABLY COMMON TO ALL PARTS OF THE GLOBE.

"More than that--and it is in this respect above all that the inexhaustible variety of nature shines forth--however imperfect each of these animals may be, each has received its own distinct features. It is to certain localities that they are fixed; it is there that they are found to be most numerous, largest in size and most beautiful; and to the extent that they are found most distant from the appropriate place, the individuals degenerate and the species becomes gradually extinguished."

On the geographical side the series of causes described in preceding pages prevented the achievement of that measure of success which the French Government and the Institute had a right to expect. While Baudin dallied, Flinders snatched the crown of accomplishment by his own diligent and intelligent application to the work entrusted to him in the proper field of activity. The French filled in the map of eastern Tasmania, and contributed details to the knowledge of the north-west coast of Australia; but what they did constitutes a poor set-off against what they failed to do. The chief feature of interest, in an estimation of the work done, is the publication of the first map of Australia which represented the whole outline of the continent--saving defects--with any approach to completeness. The Carte Generale of 1807 showed the world for the first time what the form of Australia really was, with its south coasts fairly delimited, and the island of Tasmania set in its proper position in relation to them. But the circumstances in which this result was effected were not such as secured any honour to the expedition, and must, when the facts became known, have been deeply deplored by instructed French people. Flinders was working at his own complete map of Australia in his miserable prison at Mauritius while his splendidly won credit was being filched from him; and it was merely the misfortune that placed him in the power of General Decaen that debarred him from issuing what should have been the first finished outline of the vast island which he had been the earliest to circumnavigate. Historically the Carte Generale is interesting, but no honour attaches to it.

Yet full praise must be given to Louis de Freycinet for the charts issued by him. He drew them largely from material prepared by others, and much of that material, as we have seen, was rough and poor. As a piece of artistic workmanship, the folio of charts issued by Freycinet in 1812 was a fine performance, and fairly earned for him the command of the expedition entrusted to him by the Government of Louis XVIII. Before the volume was published by the order of Napoleon, it was submitted by the Minister of Marine to Vice-Admiral Rosily, Director-General du Depot de la Marine. That officer's report* (* Printed in the Moniteur, January 15, 1813.) gave an account of the work which Freycinet had done not only in the drawing but in regard to the actual engraving of the charts. "M. Freycinet," said the Vice-Admiral, "who has done the principal part of this work, was more capable than any one else known to us of accomplishing such a result. It is to him that we owe the preparation of this fine atlas. He has neglected no means of giving to it the last degree of perfection. He has himself made the drawings of the charts and plans, and then he has reproduced them upon the copper-plates, and has engraved the scales of latitude and longitude by a new method perfected by himself, and which assures the exactitude of his work. The beauty of the engravings, and the execution of the work in general, leave nothing to be desired, and testify to the care that he has devoted to make the collection of charts one of the most useful of works in promoting the progress of hydrography."

The praise thus officially bestowed upon Freycinet's work will be felt to be deserved by any one who studies the atlas of 1812; but admiration of the workmanship will not commit the careful student to an equally cordial opinion concerning the completeness and accuracy of the charts as representations of the coasts traversed by the expedition. The south coast--the most important part, since here the field was entirely fresh--was very faulty in outline, and in other parts where Baudin's vessels had opportunities for doing complete work, important features were missed. And at the back of it all there looms the shadow of Matthew Flinders, the merit of whose own work shines out all the brighter for the contrast.* (* A remarkable example of the way to avoid difficult questions by ignoring them is afforded by Girard's book on Péron, which, throughout its 278 pages, contains no reference whatever to Flinders. It devotes forty pages to the voyage, but absolutely suppresses all reference to the Encounter Bay incident, the imprisonment of Flinders, and other questions concerning him. Yet Girard's book was "couronne par la Societe d'emulation de d'Allier." There should have been some "rosemary, that's for remembrance," in the crown.)

Further consideration of Napoleon's purposes.
What Australia owes to British sea power.
Influence of the Napoleonic wars.
Fresh points relative to Napoleon's designs.
Absence of evidence.
Consequences of suspicions of French intentions.
Promotion of settlement in Tasmania.
Tardy occupation of Port Phillip.
The Swan River Settlement.
The Westernport scheme.
Lord John Russell's claim of "the Whole" of Australia for the British.
The designs of Napoleon III.
Australia the nursling of sea power.

The question of paramount interest connected with the events considered in the foregoing pages is whether or not the expedition of 1800 to 1804 had a political purpose. It is hoped that the examination to which the facts have been subjected has been sufficient to show that it had not. It was promoted by an academic organisation of learned men for scientific objects; it was not an isolated effort, but one of a series made by the French, which had their counterpart in several expeditions despatched by the British, for the collection of data and the solution of problems of importance to science; its equipment and personnel showed it to be what it professed to be; and the work it did, open to serious criticism as it is in several aspects, indicated that purposes within the scope of the Institute of France, and not those with which diplomacy and politics were concerned, were kept in view throughout. So much, it is claimed, has been demonstrated. But the whole case is not exhausted in what has been written; and in this final chapter will be briefly set forth a sequence of reasons which go to show that Bonaparte in 1800 had no thought of founding a new fatherland for the French in Australasia, or of establishing upon the great southern continent a rival settlement to that of the British at Port Jackson.

It may legitimately be suggested that though all the French expeditions enumerated in a previous chapter, including Baudin's, were promoted for purposes of discovery, the rulers of France were not without hope that profit would spring from them in the shape of rich territories or fields for French exploitation. It is, indeed, extremely likely that such was the case. Governments, being political organisations, are swayed chiefly by political considerations, or at any rate are largely affected by them. When Prince Henry the Navigator fitted out the caravels that crept timidly down the west coast of Africa, penetrating farther and farther into the unknown, until a new ocean and new realms at length opened upon the view he was inspired by the ideal of spreading the Christian religion and of gaining knowledge about the shape of the world for its own sake; but he was none the less desirous of securing augmented wealth and dominion for Portugal.* (* See Beazley, Henry the Navigator pages 139 to 141; and E.J. Payne, in Cambridge Modern History 1 10 to 15.) It was not solely for faith and science that he:

   "Heaven inspired,
To love of useful glory roused mankind
And in unbounded commerce mixed the world."

Isabella of Castile did not finance Columbus purely for the glory of discovery. Luis de Santangel and Alonso de Quintanilla, who prevailed upon her to befriend the daring Genoese, not only used the argument that the voyage would present an opportunity of "spreading her holy religion," but also that it would "replenish her treasury chests."* (* Justin Winsor, Christopher Columbus page 178.) It is as natural for the statesman to hope for political advantage as for the man of science to look for scientific rewards, the geographer for geographical results, the merchant for extended scope for commerce, from any enterprise of the kind in which the State concerns itself. It would have been a perfectly proper aspiration on the part of French statesmen to seek for opportunities of development in a region as yet scarcely touched by European energy. But there is no more reason for attributing this motive to Bonaparte in 1800, than to the Ministers of Louis XV and Louis XVI, or to the Government of France during the Revolution: and that is the point.

It is to misinterpret the character of the Napoleon Bonaparte who ruled the Republic in the early period of the Consulate, to suppose him incapable of wishing to promote research for its own sake. He desired the glory of his era to depend upon other achievements than those of war. "My intention certainly is," he said to Thibaudeau, "to multiply the works of peace. It may be that in the future I shall be better known by them than by my victories." The Memoires of the shrewd observer to whom the words were uttered, give us perhaps a more intimate acquaintance with the Consular Bonaparte than does any other single book; and it is impossible to study them without deriving the impression that he was at this time far more than a great soldier. He was, faults notwithstanding, a very noble and high-minded man. It was easy for the savants of the Institute to show him what a fine field for enterprise there was in the South Seas; and though there is not a shred of evidence to indicate that, in acquiescing in the proposition, he yielded to any other impulse than that of securing for France the glory of discovery, there may yet have been at the back of his mind, so to speak, the idea that if good fortune attended the effort, the French nation might profit otherwise than in repute. To say so much, however, is not to admit that there is any justification for thinking that the acquisition of dominion furnished a direct motive for the expedition. If Bonaparte entertained such a notion he kept it to himself. There is not a trace of it in his correspondence, or in the memoirs of those who were intimate with him at this period. One cannot say what thoughts took shape at the back of a mind like Napoleon's, nor how far he was looking ahead in anything that he did. One can only judge from the evidence available. On some of Flinders' charts there are dotted lines to indicate coasts which he had not been able to explore fully. He would not set down as a statement of fact what he had not verified. History, too, has its dotted lines, where supposition fills up gaps for which we have no certain information. There is no harm in them; there is some advantage. But we had better take care that they remain dotted lines until we can ink them over with certainty, and not mistake a possibly wrong guess for a fact.

It is also necessary to distinguish between the exalted motives of which we may think the First Consul capable in 1800, and for a year or two after, and the use he would have made five, eight, or ten years later of any opportunities of damaging the possessions and the prestige of Great Britain. In the full tide of his passionate hatred against the nation that mocked and blocked and defied him at every turn of his foreign policy, he would unquestionably have been delighted to seize any opportunity of striking a blow at British power anywhere. He kept Decaen at Mauritius in the hope that events might favour an attempt on India. He would have used discoveries made in Australasia, as he would have used Fulton's steamboat in 1807, to injure his enemy, could he have done so effectually. But to do that involved the possession of great naval strength, and the services of an admiral fit to meet upon the high seas that slim, one-armed, one-eyed man whose energy and genius were equal to a fleet of frigates to the dogged nation whose hero he was; and in both these requirements the Emperor was deficient.

Indeed, we can scarcely realise how much Australia owes to Britain's overwhelming strength upon the blue water at the beginning of the nineteenth century. But for that, not only France but other European powers would surely have claimed the right to establish themselves upon the continent. The proportion of it which the English occupied at the time was proportionately no more than a fly-speck upon a window pane. She could not colonise the whole of it, and the small portion that she was using was a mere convict settlement. Almost any other place would have done equally well for such a purpose. It needed some tremendous exertion of strength to enable her to maintain exclusive possession of a whole continent, such as Spain had vainly professed regarding America in the sixteenth century. From the point of view of Australian "unity, peace, and concord," the Napoleonic wars were an immense blessing, however great an infliction they may have been to old Europe. In an age of European tranquillity, it is pretty certain that foreign colonisation in Australia would not have been resisted. Great Britain would not have risked a war with a friendly power concerning a very distant land, the value and potentialities of which were far from being immediately obvious. The Englishman, however, is tremendously assertive when threatened. He will fight to the last gasp to keep what he really does not want very much, if only he supposes that his enemy wishes to take a bit of it. It was in that spirit of pugnacity that he stretched a large muscular hand over the whole map of Australia, and defied his foes to touch it. Before the great struggle it would have been quite possible to think of colonising schemes in the southern hemisphere without seriously contemplating the danger of collision with the British. But the end of the Napoleonic wars left the power and prestige of Great Britain upon the sea unchallengeable, and her possessions out of Europe were placed beyond assail. This position was fairly established before Napoleon could have made any serious attempt to annoy or injure the English settlement in Australia. Traced back to decisive causes, the ownership of Australia was determined on October 21, 1805, when the planks of the Victory were reddened with the life-blood of Nelson.

The remaining points to be considered are the following.

The Treaty of Amiens was negotiated and signed in 1801 and 1802, while Baudin's expedition was at sea. Had Napoleon desired to secure a slice of Australia for the French, here was his opportunity to proclaim what he wanted. Had he done so, we can have no reasonable doubt that he would have found the British Government compliant. His Majesty's Ministers were in a concessionary mood. By that treaty Great Britain surrendered all her maritime conquests of recent wars, except Trinidad and Ceylon. She gave up the Cape, Demerara, Berbice, Essequibo, Surinam, Martinique, Guadeloupe, Minorca, and Malta.* (* Cambridge Modern History 9 75 et seq; Brodrick and Fotheringham, Political History of England 11 9 et seq.) She was eagerly desirous for peace. Bread was dear, and England seethed with discontent. Napoleon was fully aware that he was in a position to force concessions. King George's advisers were limp. "England," wrote Thibaudeau, who knew his master's mind, "was driven by sheer necessity to make peace; not so Bonaparte, whose reasons were founded on the desire of the French nation for peace, the fact that the terms of the treaty were glorious for France, and the recognition by his bitterest enemy of the position which the nation had bestowed upon him."* (* Fortescue's English edition page 18.) The value of Australia at this time was scarcely perceived by Great Britain at all. Sydney was just a tip for human refuse, and a cause of expense, not of profit or advantage. The only influential man in England who believed in a future for the country was Sir Joseph Banks; and he, in 1799, had written to Governor Hunter: "The situation of Europe is at present so critical, and His Majesty's Ministers so fully employed in business of the highest importance, that it is scarce possible to gain a moment's audience on any subject but those which stand foremost in their minds, and colonies of all kinds, you may be assured, are now put in the background...Your colony is a most valuable appendage to Great Britain, and I flatter myself we shall, before it is long, see her Ministers made sensible of its real value."* (* Banks to Hunter, February 1, 1799. Historical Records of New South Wales 3 532.) If that was the feeling in 1799, we can imagine how a claim to the right to found a French settlement in Australia during the nerveless regime of Addington would have been received. It would not have delayed the signing of the Treaty of Amiens by one hour. England at that time would not have risked a frigate or spent an ounce of powder on resisting such a demand. But the subject does not appear to have been even mentioned during the negotiations.

Nor was it mentioned by Napoleon during the years of his captivity at St. Helena. He talked about his projects, his failures, his successes, with O'Meara, Montholon, Las Cases, Admiral Malcolm, Antommarchi, Gourgaud, and others. Australia and the Baudin expedition were never discussed, though Surgeon O'Meara knew all about Flinders' imprisonment, and mentioned it incidentally in a footnote to illustrate the hardships brought upon innocent non-belligerents during the Napoleonic wars. Indeed, an interesting passage in O'Meara's Napoleon at Saint Helena* (* Edition of 1888, 2 129.) causes a doubt as to whether Napoleon had a clear recollection of the Flinders case at all. It is true that General Decaen's aide-de-camp had mentioned it to him in 1804, and that Banks had written to him on the subject; but he had many larger matters to occupy him, and possibly gave no more than passing thought to it. O'Meara records that among Napoleon's visitors at the rock was an Englishman, Mr. Manning, who was travelling in France for the benefit of his health in 1805. He had been arrested, but on writing to Napoleon stating his case, was released. He mentioned the incident in the course of the conversation, and expressed his gratitude. "What protection had you?" asked Napoleon. "Had you a letter from Sir Joseph Banks to me?" Manning replied that he had no letter from any one, but that Napoleon had ordered his release without the intervention of any influential person. The occurrence of Banks's name to Napoleon's memory in connection with an application for the release of a traveller may indicate that a reminiscence of the Flinders case lingered in the mind of the illustrious exile. So much cannot, however, be stated positively, because Flinders was not the only prisoner in behalf of whom the President of the Royal Society had interested himself, though his was the only case which attracted a very large amount of public attention. But what is chiefly significant is the absence of any reference to Australia and Baudin's expedition in the St. Helena conversations, in which the whole field of Napoleonic policy was traversed with amplitude.

Had the selection of a site for settlement, rather than research, been intended, it seems most likely that Napoleon, with his trained eye for strategic advantages, would have directed particular if not exclusive attention to be paid to the north coast of Australia. If he had taken the map in hand and studied it with a view to obtaining a favourable position, he would probably have put his finger upon the part of the coast where Port Darwin is situated, and would have said, "Search carefully just there: see if a harbour can be discovered which may be used as a base." The coast was entirely unoccupied; the French might have established themselves securely before the British knew what they had done; and had they found and fortified Port Darwin, they would have captured the third point of a triangle--the other two being Mauritius and Pondicherry--which might have made them very powerful in the Indian Ocean. And that is precisely what the East India Company's directors feared that Napoleon intended. One of them, the Hon. C.F. Greville, wrote to Brown, the naturalist of the Investigator, "I hope the French ships of discovery will not station themselves on the north coast of New Holland";* (* January 4, 1802. Historical Records of New South Wales 4 677.) and the Company, recognising their own interest in the matter, voted six hundred pounds as a present to the captain, staff, and crew of the Investigator before she sailed from England. But instead of what was feared, the French ships devoted principal attention to the south, where there was original geographical work to do--a natural course, their object being discovery, but not what might have been expected had their real design been acquisition. Péron censured Baudin because he examined part of the west coast before proceeding to the unknown south; and when at length Le Geographe did sail north, the work done there was very perfunctory. Baudin himself was no fighting man; nor was there with the expedition a military engineer or any officer capable of reporting upon strategic situations, or competent to advise as to the establishment of a fort or a colony. Captain Hamelin and Lieutenant Henri de Freycinet afterwards saw active service with the Navy, but the staff knew more about flowers, beetles, butterflies, and rocks than about fortifications and colonisation.

In recent years research has concentrated powerful rays of light on the intricacies of Napoleonic policy. Archives have been thrown open, ransacked, catalogued and codified. Memoirs by the score, letters by the hundred, have been published. Documents by the thousand have been studied. A battalion of eager students have handled this vast mass of material. The piercing minds of eminent scholars have drilled into it to elucidate problems incidental to Napoleon's era. But nothing has been brought to light which indicates that Australia was within the radius of his designs.

The idea that the publication of the Terre Napoleon maps, with their unfounded pretensions to discoveries, was a move on Napoleon's part towards asserting a claim upon territory in Australia, is surely untenable by any one with any appreciation of the irony of circumstances.

No man in history had a deeper realisation of the dynamics of empire than Napoleon had. A nation, as he well knew, holds its possessions by the power behind its grasp. If he had wanted a slice of Australia, and had been able to take and hold it, of what political use to him would have been a few maps, even with an eagle's picture on one of them? When his unconquerable legions brought Italy under his sway, absorbed the Low Countries, and established his dominion on the Rhine, the Elbe, and the Danube, he based no claims on maps and documents. He took because he could. An empire is not like a piece of suburban property, based on title-deeds drawn by a family solicitor. Its validity is founded on forces--the forces of ships, armies, manhood, treaties, funds, national goodwill, sound government, commercial enterprise, all the forces that make for solidity, resistance, permanence. Freycinet's maps would have been of no more use to Napoleon in getting a footing in Australia than a postage stamp would be in shifting one of the pyramids. He was capable of many mean things, but we gravely undervalue his capacity for seeing to the heart of a problem if we suppose him both mean and silly enough to conspire to cheat Matthew Flinders out of his well and hardly won honours, on the supposition that the maps would help him to assert a claim upon Australia. He could have made good no such claim in the teeth of British opposition without sea power; and that he had not.

The consequences of the suspicion that Napoleon intended to seize a site in Australia, were, however, quite as important as if he had formally announced his intention of doing so. What men believe to be true, not what is true, determines their action; and there was quite enough in the circumstances that occurred to make Governor King and his superiors in England resolve upon decisive action. King having communicated his beliefs to Ministers, Lord Hobart, Secretary of State for War and the Colonies, in June 1803, wrote a despatch in which he authorised the colonisation of Van Diemen's Land by the removal of part of the establishment at Norfolk Island to Port Dalrymple--"the advantageous position of which, upon the southern coast of Van Diemen's Land, and near the entrance of Bass Straits, renders it, in a political view, particularly necessary that a settlement should be formed there."* (* See Backhouse Walker, Early Tasmania page 22.) It will be observed that the Secretary of State's geographical knowledge of the countries under his regime was quite remarkable. A man who should describe Glasgow as being on the southern coast of England, near the eastern entrance of the Channel, would be just about as near the truth as Lord Hobart managed to get.* (* Froude's amusing story of Lord Palmerston, when, on forming a Ministry, he thought he would have to take the Secretaryship of State for the Colonies himself, comes to mind. He said to Sir Arthur Helps, "Come upstairs with me, Helps; we will look at the maps, and you shall show me where these places are." Froude's Oceana page 12.)

King moved immediately. He despatched the Lady Nelson and the Albion on August 31 to establish a settlement on the river Derwent, with Lieutenant John Bowen in charge; and in September 1803 the first British colony in Tasmania was planted. It had a variety of adverse experiences before at length the beautiful site of the city of Hobart, at the foot of Mount Wellington, was determined upon; but here, at all events, was a beginning, and the tale from that time forward has been one of steady progress.

As soon as the imagined threat of French invasion lost its impulsion, the colonising energy of the governing authorities subsided. The Tasmanian settlement remained and grew, but Trafalgar removed all fear of foreign interference. Hence it was that nearly forty years elapsed before any real effort was made to settle the lands within Port Phillip. Then the first energies that were devoted towards creating the great state of Victoria were not directed by the Government, which no longer had any political motive for forcing matters, but were made by enterprising stock-owners searching for pastures. It was not till 1835 that John Batman pushed up the river Yarra, found the site of the present city of Melbourne, and said, "This will be the place for a village!" Trafalgar and the security which it gave to British possessions oversea made all the difference between the early occupation of Tasmania for fear the French should take it, and the leisurely and non-official settlement of the Port Phillip district, when it was quite certain that no foreign power could set a foot upon it without British permission.

There was one other occasion when the recurrence of French exploring ships in Australian waters revived the idea that foreign settlement on some portion of the continent was contemplated. Just as the appearance of Baudin's expedition at the commencement of the century expedited the colonisation of Tasmania, and prompted a tentative occupation of Port Phillip, so the renewed activity of the French in the South Seas during the years 1820 to 1826, was the immediate cause of the foundation of the Swan River Settlement (1829), the nucleus of the present state of Western Australia. Steps were also taken to form an establishment at Westernport, where, on the arrival of H.M.S. Fly with two brigs conveying troops, evidences were found showing that the French navigators had already paid a call, without, however, making any movement in the direction of "effective occupation." The Swan River Settlement grew, but the Westernport expedition packed up its kit and returned to Sydney when the alarm subsided.