CHAPTER XV
A FRENCH COLONIAL EMPIRE
ST. DOMINGO—LOUISIANA—INDIA—AUSTRALIA
"Il n'y a rien dans l'histoire du monde de comparable aux forces navales de l'Angleterre, à l'étendue et à la richesse de son commerce, à la masse de ses dettes, de ses défenses, de ses moyens, et à la fragilité des bases sur lesquelles repose l'édifice immense de sa fortune."—BARON MALOUET, Considérations historiques sur l'Empire de la Mer.
There are abundant reasons for thinking that Napoleon valued the Peace of Amiens as a necessary preliminary to the restoration of the French Colonial Empire. A comparison of the dates at which he set on foot his oceanic schemes will show that they nearly all had their inception in the closing months of 1801 and in the course of the following year. The sole important exceptions were the politico-scientific expedition to Australia, the ostensible purpose of which insured immunity from the attacks of English cruisers even in the year 1800, and the plans for securing French supremacy in Egypt, which had been frustrated in 1801 and were, to all appearance, abandoned by the First Consul according to the provisions of the Treaty of Amiens. The question whether he really relinquished his designs on Egypt is so intimately connected with the rupture of the Peace of Amiens that it will be more fitly considered in the following chapter. It may not, however, be out of place to offer some proofs as to the value which Bonaparte set on the valley of the Nile and the Isthmus of Suez. A letter from a spy at Paris, preserved in the [pg.356] archives of our Foreign Office, and dated July 10th, 1801, contains the following significant statement with reference to Bonaparte: "Egypt, which is considered here as lost to France, is the only object which interests his personal ambition and excites his revenge." Even at the end of his days, he thought longingly of the land of the Pharaohs. In his first interview with the governor of St. Helena, the illustrious exile said emphatically: "Egypt is the most important country in the world." The words reveal a keen perception of all the influences conducive to commercial prosperity and imperial greatness. Egypt, in fact, with the Suez Canal, which his imagination always pictured as a necessary adjunct, was to be the keystone of that arch of empire which was to span the oceans and link the prairies of the far west to the teeming plains of India and the far Austral Isles.
The motives which impelled Napoleon to the enterprises now to be considered were as many-sided as the maritime ventures themselves. Ultimately, doubtless, they arose out of a love of vast undertakings that ministered at once to an expanding ambition and to that need of arduous administrative toils for which his mind ever craved in the heyday of its activity. And, while satiating the grinding powers of his otherwise morbidly restless spirit, these enterprises also fed and soothed those imperious, if unconscious, instincts which prompt every able man of inquiring mind to reclaim all possible domains from the unknown or the chaotic. As Egypt had, for the present at least, been reft from his grasp, he turned naturally to all other lands that could be forced to yield their secrets to the inquirer, or their comforts to the benefactors of mankind. Only a dull cynicism can deny this motive to the man who first unlocked the doors of Egyptian civilization; and it would be equally futile to deny to him the same beneficent aims with regard to the settlement of the plains of the Mississippi, and the coasts of New Holland.
The peculiarities of the condition of France furnished another powerful impulse towards colonization. In the [pg.357] last decade her people had suffered from an excess of mental activity and nervous excitement. From philosophical and political speculation they must be brought back to the practical and prosaic; and what influence could be so healthy as the turning up of new soil and other processes that satisfy the primitive instincts? Some of these, it was true, were being met by the increasing peasant proprietary in France herself. But this internal development, salutary as it was, could not appease the restless spirits of the towns or the ambition of the soldiery. Foreign adventures and oceanic commerce alone could satisfy the Parisians and open up new careers for the Prætorian chiefs, whom the First Consul alone really feared.
Nor were these sentiments felt by him alone. In a paper which Talleyrand read to the Institute of France in July, 1797, that far-seeing statesman had dwelt upon the pacifying influences exerted by foreign commerce and colonial settlements on a too introspective nation. His words bear witness to the keenness of his insight into the maladies of his own people and the sources of social and political strength enjoyed by the United States, where he had recently sojourned. Referring to their speedy recovery from the tumults of their revolution, he said: "The true Lethe after passing through a revolution is to be found in the opening out to men of every avenue of hope.—Revolutions leave behind them a general restlessness of mind, a need of movement." That need was met in America by man's warfare against the forest, the flood, and the prairie. France must therefore possess colonies as intellectual and political safety-valves; and in his graceful, airy style he touched on the advantages offered by Egypt, Louisiana, and West Africa, both for their intrinsic value and as opening the door of work and of hope to a brain-sick generation.
Following up this clue, Bonaparte, at a somewhat later date, remarked the tendency of the French people, now that the revolutionary strifes were past, to settle down contentedly on their own little plots; and he[pg.358] emphasized the need of a colonial policy such as would widen the national life. The remark has been largely justified by events; and doubtless he discerned in the agrarian reforms of the Revolution an influence unfavourable to that racial dispersion which, under wise guidance, builds up an oceanic empire. The grievances of the ancien régime had helped to scatter on the shores of the St. Lawrence the seeds of a possible New France. Primogeniture was ever driving from England her younger sons to found New Englands and expand the commerce of the motherland. Let not France now rest at home, content with her perfect laws and with the conquest of her "natural frontiers." Let her rather strive to regain the first place in colonial activity which the follies of Louis XV. and the secular jealousy of Albion had filched from her. In the effort she would extend the bounds of civilization, lay the ghost of Jacobinism, satisfy military and naval adventures, and unconsciously revert to the ideas and governmental methods of the age of le grand monarque.
The French possessions beyond the seas had never shrunk to a smaller area than in the closing years of the late war with England. The fact was confessed by the First Consul in his letter of October 7th, 1801, to Decrès, the Minister for the Navy and the Colonies: "Our possessions beyond the sea, which are now in our power, are limited to Saint Domingo, Guadeloupe, the Isle of France (Mauritius), the Isle of Bourbon, Senegal, and Guiana." After rendering this involuntary homage to the prowess of the British navy, Bonaparte proceeded to describe the first measures for the organization of these colonies: for not until March 25th, 1802, when the definitive treaty of peace was signed, could the others be regained by France.
First in importance came the re-establishment of French authority in the large and fertile island of Hayti, or St. Domingo. It needs an effort of the imagination for the modern reader to realize the immense [pg.i359] importance of the West Indian islands at the beginning of the century, whose close found them depressed and half bankrupt. At the earlier date, when the name Australia was unknown, and the half-starved settlement in and around Sydney represented the sole wealth of that isle of continent; when the Cape of Good Hope was looked on only as a port of call; when the United States numbered less than five and a half million souls, and the waters of the Mississippi rolled in unsullied majesty past a few petty Spanish stations—the plantations of the West Indies seemed the unfailing mine of colonial industry and commerce. Under the ancien régime, the trade of the French portion of San Domingo is reported to have represented more than half of her oceanic commerce. But during the Revolution the prosperity of that colony reeled under a terrible blow.
The hasty proclamation of equality between whites and blacks by the French revolutionists, and the refusal of the planters to recognize that decree as binding, led to a terrible servile revolt, which desolated the whole of the colony. Those merciless strifes had, however, somewhat abated under the organizing power of a man, in whom the black race seemed to have vindicated its claims to political capacity. Toussaint l'Ouverture had come to the front by sheer sagacity and force of character. By a deft mixture of force and clemency, he imposed order on the vapouring crowds of negroes: he restored the French part of the island to comparative order and prosperity; and with an army of 20,000 men he occupied the Spanish portion. In this, as in other matters, he appeared to act as the mandatory of France; but he looked to the time when France, beset by European wars, would tacitly acknowledge his independence. In May, 1801, he made a constitution for the island, and declared himself governor for life, with power to appoint his successor. This mimicry of the consular office, and the open vaunt that he was the "Bonaparte of the Antilles," incensed Bonaparte; and the haste with which, on the day after the Preliminaries of London, he [pg.360] prepared to overthrow this contemptible rival, tells its own tale.
Yet Corsican hatred was tempered with Corsican guile. Toussaint had requested that the Haytians should be under the protection of their former mistress. Protection was the last thing that Bonaparte desired; but he deemed it politic to flatter the black chieftain with assurances of his personal esteem and gratitude for the "great services which you have rendered to the French people. If its flag floats over St. Domingo it is due to you and your brave blacks"—a reference to Toussaint's successful resistance to English attempts at landing. There were, it is true, some points in the new Haytian constitution which contravened the sovereign rights of France, but these were pardonable in the difficult circumstances which had pressed on Toussaint: he was now, however, invited to amend them so as to recognize the complete sovereignty of the motherland and the authority of General Leclerc, whom Bonaparte sent out as captain-general of the island. To this officer, the husband of Pauline Bonaparte, the First Consul wrote on the same day that there was reported to be much ferment in the island against Toussaint, that the obstacles to be overcome would therefore be much less formidable than had been feared, provided that activity and firmness were used. In his references to the burning topic of slavery, the First Consul showed a similar reserve. The French Republic having abolished it, he could not, as yet, openly restore an institution flagrantly opposed to the Rights of Man. Ostensibly therefore he figured as the champion of emancipation, assuring the Haytians in his proclamation of November 8th, 1801, that they were all free and all equal in the sight of God and of the French Republic: "If you are told, 'These forces are destined to snatch your liberty from you,' reply, 'The Republic has given us our liberty: it will not allow it to be taken from us.'" Of a similar tenor was his public declaration a fortnight later, that at St. Domingo and Guadeloupe everybody was free and [pg.361] would remain free. Very different were his private instructions. On the last day of October he ordered Talleyrand to write to the British Government, asking for their help in supplying provisions from Jamaica to this expedition destined to "destroy the new Algiers being organized in American waters"; and a fortnight later he charged him to state his resolve to destroy the government of the blacks at St. Domingo; that if he had to postpone the expedition for a year, he would be "obliged to constitute the blacks as French"; and that "the liberty of the blacks, if recognized by the Government, would always be a support for the Republic in the New World." As he was striving to cajole our Government into supporting his expedition, it is clear that in the last enigmatic phrase he was bidding for that support by the hint of a prospective restoration of slavery at St. Domingo. A comparison of his public and private statements must have produced a curious effect on the British Ministers, and many of the difficulties during the negotiations at Amiens doubtless sprang out of their knowledge of his double-dealing in the West Indies.
The means at the First Consul's disposal might have been considered sufficient to dispense with these paltry devices; for when the squadrons of Brest, Lorient, Rochefort, and Toulon had joined their forces, they mustered thirty-two ships of the line and thirty-one frigates, with more than 20,000 troops on board. So great, indeed, was the force as to occasion strong remonstrances from the British Government, and a warning that a proportionately strong fleet would be sent to watch over the safety of our West Indies.[[197]] The size of the French armada and the warnings which Toussaint received from Europe induced that wily dictator to adopt stringent precautionary measures. He persuaded[pg.362] the blacks that the French were about to enslave them once more, and, raising the spectre of bondage, he quelled sedition, ravaged the maritime towns, and awaited the French in the interior, in confident expectation that yellow fever would winnow their ranks and reduce them to a level with his own strength.
His hopes were ultimately realized, but not until he himself succumbed to the hardihood of the French attack. Leclerc's army swept across the desolated belt with an ardour that was redoubled by the sight of the mangled remains of white people strewn amidst the negro encampments, and stormed Toussaint's chief stronghold at Crête-à-Pierrot. The dictator and his factious lieutenants thereupon surrendered (May 8th, 1802), on condition of their official rank being respected—a stipulation which both sides must have regarded as unreal and impossible. The French then pressed on to secure the subjection of the whole island before the advent of the unhealthy season, which Toussaint eagerly awaited. It now set in with unusual virulence; and in a few days the conquerors found their force reduced to 12,000 effectives. Suspecting Toussaint's designs, Leclerc seized him. He was empowered to do so by Bonaparte's orders of March 16th, 1802:
"Follow your instructions exactly, and as soon as you have done with Toussaint, Christopher, Dessalines, and the chief brigands, and the masses of the blacks are disarmed, send to the continent all the blacks and the half-castes who have taken part in the civil troubles."
Toussaint was hurried off to France, where he died a year later from the hardships to which he was exposed at the fort of Joux among the Juras.
Long before the cold of a French winter claimed the life of Toussaint, his antagonist fell a victim to the sweltering heats of the tropics. On November 2nd, 1802, Leclerc succumbed to the unhealthy climate and to his ceaseless anxieties. In the Notes dictated at St. Helena, Napoleon submitted Leclerc's memory to [pg.363] some strictures for his indiscretion in regard to the proposed restoration of slavery. The official letters of that officer expose the injustice of the charge. The facts are these. After the seeming submission of St. Domingo, the First Consul caused a decree to be secretly passed at Paris (May 20th, 1802), which prepared to re-establish slavery in the West Indies; but Decrès warned Leclerc that it was not for the present to be applied to St. Domingo unless it seemed to be opportune. Knowing how fatal any such proclamation would be, Leclerc suppressed the decree; but General Richepanse, who was now governor of the island of Guadeloupe, not only issued the decree, but proceeded to enforce it with rigour. It was this which caused the last and most desperate revolts of the blacks, fatal alike to French domination and to Leclerc's life. His successor, Rochambeau, in spite of strong reinforcements of troops from France and a policy of the utmost rigour, succeeded no better. In the island of Guadeloupe the rebels openly defied the authority of France; and, on the renewal of war between England and France, the remains of the expedition were for the most part constrained to surrender to the British flag or to the insurgent blacks. The island recovered its so-called independence; and the sole result of Napoleon's efforts in this sphere was the loss of more than twenty generals and some 30,000 troops.
The assertion has been repeatedly made that the First Consul told off for this service the troops of the Army of the Rhine, with the aim of exposing to the risks of tropical life the most republican part of the French forces. That these furnished a large part of the expeditionary force cannot be denied; but if his design was to rid himself of political foes, it is difficult to see why he should not have selected Moreau, Masséna, or Augereau, rather than Leclerc. The fact that his brother-in-law was accompanied by his wife, Pauline Bonaparte, for whom venomous tongues asserted that Napoleon cherished a more than brotherly affection, [pg.364] will suffice to refute the slander. Finally, it may be remarked that Bonaparte had not hesitated to subject the choicest part of his Army of Italy and his own special friends to similiar risks in Egypt and Syria. He never hesitated to sacrifice thousands of lives when a great object was at stake; and the restoration of the French West Indian Colonies might well seem worth an army, especially as St. Domingo was not only of immense instrinsic value to France in days when beetroot sugar was unknown, but was of strategic importance as a base of operations for the vast colonial empire which the First Consul proposed to rebuild in the basin of the Mississippi.
The history of the French possessions on the North American continent could scarcely be recalled by ardent patriots without pangs of remorse. The name Louisiana, applied to a vast territory stretching up the banks of the Mississippi and the Missouri, recalled the glorious days of Louis XIV., when the French flag was borne by stout voyageurs up the foaming rivers of Canada and the placid reaches of the father of rivers. It had been the ambition of Montcalm to connect the French stations on Lake Erie with the forts of Louisiana; but that warrior-statesman in the West, as his kindred spirit, Dupleix, in the East, had fallen on the evil days of Louis XV., when valour and merit in the French colonies were sacrificed to the pleasures and parasites of Versailles. The natural result followed. Louisiana was yielded up to Spain in 1763, in order to reconcile the Court of Madrid to cessions required by that same Peace of Paris. Twenty years later Spain recovered from England the provinces of eastern and western Florida; and thus, at the dawn of the nineteenth century, the red and yellow flag waved over all the lands between California, New Orleans, and the southern tip of Florida.[[198]] [pg.365]
Many efforts were made by France to regain her old Mississippi province; and in 1795, at the break up of the First Coalition, the victorious Republic pressed Spain to yield up this territory, where the settlers were still French at heart. Doubtless the weak King of Spain would have yielded; but his chief Minister, Godoy, clung tenaciously to Louisiana, and consented to cede only the Spanish part of St. Domingo—a diplomatic success which helped to earn him the title of the Prince of the Peace. So matters remained until Talleyrand, as Foreign Minister, sought to gain Louisiana from Spain before it slipped into the horny fists of the Anglo-Saxons.
That there was every prospect of this last event was the conviction not only of the politicians at Washington, but also of every iron-worker on the Ohio and of every planter on the Tennessee. Those young but growing settlements chafed against the restraints imposed by Spain on the river trade of the lower Mississippi—the sole means available for their exports in times when the Alleghanies were crossed by only two tracks worthy the name of roads. In 1795 they gained free egress to the Gulf of Mexico and the right of bonding their merchandise in a special warehouse at New Orleans. Thereafter the United States calmly awaited the time when racial vigour and the exigencies of commerce should yield to them the possession of the western prairies and the little townships of Arkansas and New Orleans. They reckoned without taking count of the eager longing of the French for their former colony and the determination of Napoleon to give effect to this honourable sentiment.
In July, 1800, when his negotiations with the United[pg.366] States were in good train, the First Consul sent to Madrid instructions empowering the French Minister there to arrange a treaty whereby France should receive Louisiana in return for the cession of Tuscany to the heir of the Duke of Parma. This young man had married the daughter of Charles IV. of Spain; and, for the aggrandizement of his son-in-law, that roi fainéant, was ready, nay eager, to bargain away a quarter of a continent; and he did so by a secret convention signed at St. Ildefonso on October 7th, 1800.
But though Charles rejoiced over this exchange, Godoy, who was gifted with some insight into the future, was determined to frustrate it. Various events occurred which enabled this wily Minister, first to delay, and then almost to prevent, the odious surrender. Chief among these was the certainty that the transfer from weak hands to strong hands would be passionately resented by the United States; and until peace with England was fully assured, and the power of Toussaint broken, it would be folly for the First Consul to risk a conflict with the United States. That they would fight rather than see the western prairies pass into the First Consul's hands was abundantly manifest. It is proved by many patriotic pamphlets. The most important of these—"An Address to the Government of the United States on the Cession of Louisiana to the French," published at Philadelphia in 1802—quoted largely from a French brochure by a French Councillor of State. The French writer had stated that along the Mississippi his countrymen would find boundless fertile prairies, and as for the opposition of the United States—"a nation of pedlars and shopkeepers"—that could be crushed by a French alliance with the Indian tribes. The American writer thereupon passionately called on his fellow-citizens to prevent this transfer: "France is to be dreaded only, or chiefly, on the Mississippi. The Government must take Louisiana before it passes into her hands. The iron is now hot: command us to rise as one man and strike." These and other like protests at last stirred [pg.367] the placid Government at Washington; and it bade the American Minister at Paris to make urgent remonstrances, the sole effect of which was to draw from Talleyrand the bland assurance that the transfer had not been seriously contemplated.[[199]]
By the month of June, 1802, all circumstances seemed to smile on Napoleon's enterprise: England had ratified the Peace of Amiens, Toussaint had delivered himself up to Leclerc: France had her troops strongly posted in Tuscany and Parma, and could, if necessary, forcibly end the remaining scruples felt at Madrid; while the United States, with a feeble army and a rotting navy, were controlled by the most peaceable and Franco-phil of their presidents, Thomas Jefferson. The First Consul accordingly ordered an expedition to be prepared, as if for the reinforcement of Leclerc in St. Domingo, though it was really destined for New Orleans; and he instructed Talleyrand to soothe or coerce the Court of Madrid into the final act of transfer. The offer was therefore made by the latter (June 19th) in the name of the First Consul that in no case would Louisiana ever be alienated to a Third Power. When further delays supervened, Bonaparte, true to his policy of continually raising his demands, required that Eastern and Western Florida should also be ceded to him by Spain, on condition that the young King of Etruria (for so Tuscany was now to be styled) should regain his father's duchy of Parma.[[200]]
A word of explanation must here find place as to this singular proposal. Parma had long been under French control; and, in March, 1801, by the secret Treaty of Madrid, the ruler of that duchy, whose death seemed imminent, was to resign his claims thereto, provided that his son should gain Etruria—as had been already provided for at St. Ildefonso and Lunéville. The duke was, however, allowed to keep his duchy until his death,[pg.368] which occurred on October 9th, 1802; and it is stated by our envoy in Paris to have been hastened by news of that odious bargain.[[201]] His death now furnished Bonaparte with a good occasion for seeking to win an immense area in the New World at the expense of a small Italian duchy, which his troops could at any time easily overrun. This consideration seems to have occurred even to Charles IV.; he refused to barter the Floridas against Parma. The re-establishment of his son-in-law in his paternal domains was doubtless desirable, but not at the cost of so exacting a heriot as East and West Florida.
From out this maze of sordid intrigues two or three facts challenge our attention. Both Bonaparte and Charles IV. regarded the most fertile waste lands then calling for the plough as fairly exchanged against half a million of Tuscans; but the former feared the resentment of the United States, and sought to postpone a rupture until he could coerce them by overwhelming force. It is equally clear that, had he succeeded in this enterprise, France might have gained a great colonial empire in North America protected from St. Domingo as a naval and military base, while that island would have doubly prospered from the vast supplies poured down the Mississippi; but this success he would have bought at the expense of a rapprochement between the United States and their motherland, such as a bitter destiny was to postpone to the end of the century.
The prospect of an Anglo-American alliance might well give pause even to Napoleon. Nevertheless, he resolved to complete this vast enterprise, which, if successful, would have profoundly affected the New World and the relative importance of the French and English peoples. The Spanish officials at New Orleans, in pursuance of orders from Madrid, now closed the lower Mississippi to vessels of the United States (October, 1802). At once a furious outcry arose in the States against an act which not only violated their treaty rights, but[pg.369] foreshadowed the coming grip of the First Consul. For this outburst he was prepared: General Victor was at Dunkirk, with five battalions and sixteen field-pieces, ready to cross the Atlantic, ostensibly for the relief of Leclerc, but really in order to take possession of New Orleans.[[202]] But his plan was foiled by the sure instincts of the American people, by the disasters of the St. Domingo expedition, and by the restlessness of England under his various provocations. Jefferson, despite his predilections for France, was compelled to forbid the occupation of Louisiana: he accordingly sent Monroe to Paris with instructions to effect a compromise, or even to buy outright the French claims on that land. Various circumstances favoured this mission. In the first week of the year 1803 Napoleon received the news of Leclerc's death and the miserable state of the French in St. Domingo; and as the tidings that he now received from Egypt, Syria, Corfu, and the East generally, were of the most alluring kind, he tacitly abandoned his Mississippi enterprise in favour of the oriental schemes which were closer to his heart. In that month of January he seems to have turned his gaze from the western hemisphere towards Turkey, Egypt, and India. True, he still seemed to be doing his utmost for the occupation of Louisiana, but only as a device for sustaining the selling price of the western prairies.
When the news of this change of policy reached the ears of Joseph and Lucien Bonaparte, it aroused their bitterest opposition. Lucien plumed himself on having struck the bargain with Spain which had secured that vast province at the expense of an Austrian archduke's[pg.370] crown; and Joseph knew only too well that Napoleon was freeing himself in the West in order to be free to strike hard in Europe and the East. The imminent rupture of the Peace of Amiens touched him keenly: for that peace was his proudest achievement. If colonial adventures must be sought, let them be sought in the New World, where Spain and the United States could offer only a feeble resistance, rather than in Europe and Asia, where unending war must be the result of an aggressive policy.
At once the brothers sought an interview with Napoleon. He chanced to be in his bath, a warm bath perfumed with scents, where he believed that tired nature most readily found recovery. He ordered them to be admitted, and an interesting family discussion was the result. On his mentioning the proposed sale, Lucien at once retorted that the Legislature would never consent to this sacrifice. He there touched the wrong chord in Napoleon's nature: had he appealed to the memories of le grand monarque and of Montcalm, possibly he might have bent that iron will; but the mention of the consent of the French deputies roused the spleen of the autocrat, who, from amidst the scented water, mockingly bade his brother go into mourning for the affair, which he, and he alone, intended to carry out. This gibe led Joseph to threaten that he would mount the tribune in the Chambers and head the opposition to this unpatriotic surrender. Defiance flashed forth once more from the bath; and the First Consul finally ended their bitter retorts by spasmodically rising as suddenly falling backwards, and drenching Joseph to the skin. His peals of scornful laughter, and the swooning of the valet, who was not yet fully inured to these family scenes, interrupted the argument of the piece; but, when resumed a little later, à sec, Lucien wound up by declaring that, if he were not his brother, he would be his enemy. "My enemy! That is rather strong," exclaimed Napoleon. "You my enemy! I would break you, see, like this box"—and he dashed his snuff-box on the carpet. It did [pg.371] not break: but the portrait of Josephine was detached and broken. Whereupon Lucien picked up the pieces and handed them to his brother, remarking: "It is a pity: meanwhile, until you can break me, it is your wife's portrait that you have broken."[[203]]
To Talleyrand, Napoleon was equally unbending: summoning him on April 11th, he said:
"Irresolution and deliberation are no longer in season. I renounce Louisiana. It is not only New Orleans that I cede: it is the whole colony, without reserve; I know the price of what I abandon. I have proved the importance I attach to this province, since my first diplomatic act with Spain had the object of recovering it. I renounce it with the greatest regret: to attempt obstinately to retain it would be folly. I direct you to negotiate the affair."[[204]]
After some haggling with Monroe, the price agreed on for this territory was 60,000,000 francs, the United States also covenanting to satisfy the claims which many of their citizens had on the French treasury. For this paltry sum the United States gained a peaceful title to the debatable lands west of Lake Erie and to the vast tracts west of the Mississippi. The First Consul carried out his threat of denying to the deputies of France any voice in this barter. The war with England sufficed to distract their attention; and France turned sadly away from the western prairies, which her hardy sons had first opened up, to fix her gaze, first on the Orient, and thereafter on European conquests. No more was heard of Louisiana, and few references were permitted to the disasters in St. Domingo; for Napoleon abhorred any mention of a coup manqué, and strove to banish from the imagination of France those dreams of a trans-Atlantic Empire which had drawn him, as they were destined sixty years later to draw his nephew, to the verge of war with[pg.372] the rising republic of the New World. In one respect, the uncle was more fortunate than the nephew. In signing the treaty with the United States, the First Consul could represent his conduct, not as a dexterous retreat from an impossible situation, but as an act of grace to the Americans and a blow to England. "This accession of territory," he said, "strengthens for ever the power of the United States, and I have just given to England a maritime rival that sooner or later will humble her pride."[[205]]
In the East there seemed to be scarcely the same field for expansion as in the western hemisphere. Yet, as the Orient had ever fired the imagination of Napoleon, he was eager to expand the possessions of France in the Indian Ocean. In October, 1801, these amounted to the Isle of Bourbon and the Isle of France; for the former French possessions in India, namely, Pondicherry, Mahé, Karikal, Chandernagore, along with their factories at Yanaon, Surat, and two smaller places, had been seized by the British, and were not to be given back to France until six months after the definitive treaty of peace was signed. From these scanty relics it seemed impossible to rear a stable fabric: yet the First Consul grappled with the task. After the cessation of hostilities, he ordered Admiral Gantheaume with four ships of war to show the French flag in those seas, and to be ready in due course to take over the French settlements in India. Meanwhile he used his utmost endeavours in the negotiations at Amiens to gain an accession of land for Pondicherry, such as would make it a possible base for military enterprise. Even before those negotiations began he expressed to Lord Cornwallis his desire for such an extension; and when the British plenipotentiary urged the cession of Tobago to Great Britain, he offered to exchange it for an[pg.373] establishment or territory in India.[[206]] Herein the First Consul committed a serious tactical blunder; for his insistence on this topic and his avowed desire to negotiate direct with the Nabob undoubtedly aroused the suspicions of our Government.
Still greater must have been their concern when they learnt that General Decaen was commissioned to receive back the French possessions in India; for that general in 1800 had expressed to Bonaparte his hatred of the English, and had begged, even if he had to wait ten years, that he might be sent where he could fight them, especially in India. As was his wont, Bonaparte said little at the time; but after testing Decaen's military capacity, he called him to his side at midsummer, 1802, and suddenly asked him if he still thought about India. On receiving an eager affirmative, he said, "Well, you will go." "In what capacity?" "As captain-general: go to the Minister of Marine and of the Colonies and ask him to communicate to you the documents relating to this expedition." By such means did Bonaparte secure devoted servants. It is scarcely needful to add that the choice of such a man only three months after the signature of the Treaty of Amiens proves that the First Consul only intended to keep that peace as long as his forward colonial policy rendered it desirable.[[207]]
Meanwhile our Governor-General, Marquis Wellesley, was displaying an activity which might seem to be dictated by knowledge of Bonaparte's designs. There was, indeed, every need of vigour. Nowhere had French and British interests been so constantly in collision as in India. In 1798 France had intrigued with Tippoo Sahib at Seringapatam, and arranged a treaty for the purpose of expelling the British nation from India. When in 1799 French hopes were dashed by Arthur Wellesley's capture of that city and the death of Tippoo, there still remained[pg.374] some prospect of overthrowing British supremacy by uniting the restless Mahratta rulers of the north and centre, especially Scindiah and Holkar, in a powerful confederacy. For some years their armies, numbering some 60,000 men, had been drilled and equipped by French adventurers, the ablest and most powerful of whom was M. Perron. Doubtless it was with the hope of gaining their support that the Czar Paul and Bonaparte had in 1800 formed the project of invading India by way of Persia. And after the dissipation of that dream, there still remained the chance of strengthening the Mahratta princes so as to contest British claims with every hope of success. Forewarned by the home Government of Bonaparte's eastern designs, our able and ambitious Governor-General now prepared to isolate the Mahratta chieftains, to cut them off from all contact with France, and, if necessary, to shatter Scindiah's army, the only formidable native force drilled by European methods.
Such was the position of affairs when General Decaen undertook the enterprise of revivifying French influences in India.
The secret instructions which he received from the First Consul, dated January 15th, 1803, were the following:
"To communicate with the peoples or princes who are most impatient under the yoke of the English Company.... To send home a report six months after his arrival in India, concerning all information that he shall have collected, on the strength, the position, and the feeling of the different peoples of India, as well as on the strength and position of the different English establishments; ... his views, and hopes that he might have of finding support, in case of war, so as to be able to maintain himself in the Peninsula.... Finally, as one must reason on the hypothesis that we should not be masters of the sea and could hope for slight succour,"
Decaen is to seek among the French possessions or elsewhere a place serving as a point d'appui, where in the last resort he could capitulate and thus gain the means [pg.375] of being transported to France with arms and baggage. Of this point d'appui he will
"strive to take possession after the first months ... whatever be the nation to which it belongs, Portuguese, Dutch, or English.... If war should break out between England and France before the 1st of Vendémiaire, Year XIII. (September 22nd, 1804), and the captain general is warned of it before receiving the orders of the Government, he has carte blanche to fall back on the Ile de France and the Cape, or to remain in India.... It is now considered impossible that we should have war with England without dragging in Holland. One of the first cares of the captain-general will be to gain control over the Dutch, Portuguese, and Spanish establishments, and of their resources. The captain-general's mission is at first one of observation, on political and military topics, with the small forces that he takes out, and an occupation of comptoirs for our commerce: but the First Consul, if well informed by him, will perhaps be able some day to put him in a position to acquire that great glory which hands down the memory of men beyond the lapse of centuries."[[208]]
Had these instructions been known to English statesmen, they would certainly have ended the peace which was being thus perfidiously used by the First Consul for the destruction of our Indian Empire. But though their suspicions were aroused by the departure of Decaen's expedition and by the activity of French agents in India, yet the truth remained half hidden, until, at a later date, the publication of General Decaen's papers shed a flood of light on Napoleon's policy.
Owing to various causes, the expedition did not set sail from Brest until the beginning of March, 1803. The date should be noticed. It proves that at this time Napoleon judged that a rupture of peace was not imminent; and when he saw his miscalculation, he sought to delay the war with England as long as possible in order to allow time for Decaen's force at least to reach the Cape, then[pg.376] in the hands of the Dutch. The French squadron was too weak to risk a fight with an English fleet; it comprised only four ships of war, two transports, and a few smaller vessels, carrying about 1,800 troops.[[209]] The ships were under the command of Admiral Linois, who was destined to be the terror of our merchantmen in eastern seas. Decaen's first halt was at the Cape, which had been given back by us to the Dutch East India Company on February 21st, 1803. The French general found the Dutch officials in their usual state of lethargy: the fortifications had not been repaired, and many of the inhabitants, and even of the officials themselves, says Decaen, were devoted to the English. After surveying the place, doubtless with a view to its occupation as the point d'appui hinted at in his instructions, he set sail on the 27th of May, and arrived before Pondicherry on the 11th of July.[[210]]
In the meantime important events had transpired which served to wreck not only Decaen's enterprise, but the French influence in India. In Europe the flames of war had burst forth, a fact of which both Decaen and the British officials were ignorant; but the Governor of Fort St. George (Madras), having, before the 15th of June, "received intelligence which appeared to indicate the certainty of an early renewal of hostilities between His Majesty and France," announced that he must postpone the restitution of Pondicherry to the French, until he should have the authority of the Governor-General for such action.[[211]] [pg.377]
The Marquis Wellesley was still less disposed to any such restitution. French intervention in the affairs of Switzerland, which will be described later on, had so embittered Anglo-French relations that on October the 17th, 1802, Lord Hobart, our Minister of War and for the Colonies, despatched a "most secret" despatch, stating that recent events rendered it necessary to postpone this retrocession. At a later period Wellesley received contrary orders, instructing him to restore French and Dutch territories; but he judged that step to be inopportune considering the gravity of events in the north of India. So active was the French propaganda at the Mahratta Courts, and so threatening were their armed preparations, that he redoubled his efforts for the consolidation of British supremacy. He resolved to strike at Scindiah, unless he withdrew his southern army into his own territories; and, on receiving an evasive answer from that prince, who hoped by temporizing to gain armed succours from France, he launched the British forces against him. Now was the opportunity for Arthur Wellesley to display his prowess against the finest forces of the East; and brilliantly did the young warrior display it. The victories of Assaye in September, and of Argaum in November, scattered the southern Mahratta force, but only after desperate conflicts that suggested how easily a couple of Decaen's battalions might have turned the scales of war.
Meanwhile, in the north, General Lake stormed Aligarh, and drove Scindiah's troops back to Delhi. Disgusted at the incapacity and perfidy that surrounded him, Perron threw up his command; and another conflict near Delhi yielded that ancient seat of Empire to our trading Company. In three months the results of the toil of Scindiah, the restless ambition of Holkar, [pg.378] the training of European officers, and the secret intrigues of Napoleon, were all swept to the winds.
Wellesley now annexed the land around Delhi and Agra, besides certain coast districts which cut off the Mahrattas from the sea, also stipulating for the complete exclusion of French agents from their States. Perron was allowed to return to France; and the brusque reception accorded him from Bonaparte may serve to measure the height of the First Consul's hopes, the depth of his disappointment, and his resentment against a man who was daunted by a single disaster.[[212]]
Meanwhile it was the lot of Decaen to witness, in inglorious inactivity, the overthrow of all his hopes. Indeed, he barely escaped the capture which Wellesley designed for his whole force, as soon as he should hear of the outbreak of war in Europe; but by secret and skilful measures all the French ships, except one transport, escaped to their appointed rendezvous, the Ile de France. Enraged by these events, Decaen and Linois determined to inflict every possible injury on their foes. The latter soon swept from the eastern seas British merchantmen valued at a million sterling, while the general ceased not to send emissaries into India to encourage the millions of natives to shake off the yoke of "a few thousand English."
These officers effected little, and some of them were handed over to the English authorities by the now obsequious potentates. Decaen also endeavoured to carry out the First Consul's design of occupying strategic points in the Indian Ocean. In the autumn of 1803 he sent a fine cruiser to the Imaum of Muscat, to induce him to cede a station for commercial purposes at that port. But Wellesley, forewarned by our agent at[pg.379] Bagdad, had made a firm alliance with the Imaum, who accordingly refused the request of the French captain. The incident, however, supplies another link in the chain of evidence as to the completeness of Napoleon's oriental policy, and yields another proof of the vigour of our great proconsul at Calcutta, by whose foresight our Indian Empire was preserved and strengthened.[[213]]
Bonaparte's enterprises were by no means limited to well-known lands. The unknown continent of the Southern Seas appealed to his imagination, which pictured its solitudes transformed by French energy into a second fatherland. Australia, or New Holland, as it was then called, had long attracted the notice of French explorers, but the English penal settlements at and near Sydney formed the only European establishment on the great southern island at the dawn of the nineteenth century.
Bonaparte early turned his eyes towards that land. On his voyage to Egypt he took with him the volumes in which Captain Cook described his famous discoveries; 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. The full text of the plan has never been published: probably it was suppressed or destroyed; and the sole public record relating to it is contained in the official account of the expedition published at the French Imperial Press in 1807.[[214]] According to this description, the aim was solely geographical and scientific. The First Consul and the Institute of France desired that the ships should proceed to Van Diemen's Land, explore its rivers, and then complete the survey of the south coast of the continent, so as to[pg.380] see whether behind the islands of the Nuyts Archipelago there might be a channel connecting with the Gulf of Carpentaria, and so cutting New Holland in half. They were then to sail west to "Terre Leeuwin," ascend the Swan River, complete the exploration of Shark's Bay and the north-western coasts, and winter in Timor or Amboyne. Finally, they were to coast along New Guinea and the Gulf of Carpentaria, and return to France in 1803.
In September, 1800, the ships, having on board twenty-three scientific men, set sail from Havre under the command of Commodore Baudin. They received no molestation from English cruisers, it being a rule of honour to give Admiralty permits to all members of genuinely scientific and geographical parties. Nevertheless, even on its scientific side, this splendidly-equipped expedition produced no results comparable with those achieved by Lieutenant Bass or by Captain Flinders. The French ships touched at the Ile de France, and sailed thence for Van Diemen's Land. After spending a long time in the exploration of its coasts and in collecting scientific information, they made for Sydney in order to repair their ships and gain relief for their many invalids. Thence, after incidents which will be noticed presently, they set sail in November, 1802, for Bass Strait and the coast beyond. They seem to have overlooked the entrance to Port Phillip—a discovery effected by Murray in 1801, but not made public till three years later—and failed to notice the outlet of the chief Australian river, which is obscured by a shallow lake.
There they were met by Captain Flinders, who, on H.M.S. "Investigator," had been exploring the coast between Cape Leeuwin and the great gulfs which he named after Lords St. Vincent and Spencer. Flinders was returning towards Sydney, when, in the long desolate curve of the bay which he named from the incident Encounter Bay, he saw the French ships. After brief and guarded intercourse the explorers separated, the French proceeding to survey the gulfs whence the "Investigator" had just sailed; while Flinders, after a[pg.381] short stay at Sydney and the exploration of the northern coast and Torres Strait, set out for Europe.[[215]]
Apart from the compilation of the most accurate map of Australia which had then appeared, and the naming of several features on its coasts—e.g., Capes Berrouilli and Gantheaume, the Bays of Rivoli and of Lacépède, and the Freycinet Peninsula, which are still retained—the French expedition achieved no geographical results of the first importance.
Its political aims now claim attention. A glance at the accompanying map will show that, under the guise of being an emissary of civilization, Commodore Baudin was prepared to claim half the continent for France. Indeed, his final inquiry at Sydney about the extent of the 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. King also notified the suspicious action of the French Commander to the Home Government;[pg.382] and when the French sailed away to explore the coast of southern and central Australia he sent a ship to watch their proceedings. When, therefore, Commodore Baudin effected a landing on King Island, the Union Jack was speedily hoisted and saluted by the blue-jackets of the British vessel; for it was rumoured that French officers had said that King Island would afford a good station for the command of Bass Strait and the seizure of British ships. This was probably mere gossip. Baudin in his interviews with Governor King at Sydney disclaimed any intention of seizing Van Diemen's Land; but he afterwards stated that he did not know what were the plans of the French Government with regard to that island.[[216]]
Long before this dark saying could be known at Westminster, the suspicions of our Government had been aroused; and, on February 13th, 1803, Lord Hobart penned a despatch to Governor King bidding him to take every precaution against French annexations, and to form settlements in Van Diemen's Land and at Port Phillip. The station of Risden was accordingly planted on the estuary of the Derwent, a little above the present town of Hobart; while on the shores of Port Phillip another expedition sent out from the mother country sought, but for the present in vain, to find a suitable site. The French cruise therefore exerted on the fortunes of the English and French peoples an influence such as has frequently accrued from their colonial rivalry: it spurred on the island Power to more vigorous efforts than she would otherwise have put forth, and led to the discomfiture of her continental rival. 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 Perron has exerted on the ultimate destiny of many a vast and fertile territory. [pg.383]
Still, in spite of the destruction of his fleet at Trafalgar, Napoleon held to his Australian plans. No fact, perhaps, is more suggestive of the dogged tenacity of his will than his order to Péron and Freycinet to publish through the Imperial Press at Paris an exhaustive account of their Australian voyage, accompanied by maps which claimed half of that continent for the tricolour flag. It appeared in 1807, the year of Tilsit and of the plans for the partition of Portugal and her colonies between France and Spain. The hour seemed at last to have struck for the assertion of French supremacy in other continents, now that the Franco-Russian alliance had durably consolidated it in Europe. And who shall say that, but for the Spanish Rising and the genius of Wellington, a vast colonial empire might not have been won for France, had Napoleon been free to divert his energies away from this "old Europe" of which he professed to be utterly weary?
His whole attitude towards European and colonial politics revealed a statesmanlike appreciation of the forces that were to mould the fortunes of nations in the nineteenth century. He saw that no rearrangement of the European peoples could be permanent. They were too stubborn, too solidly nationalized, to bear the yoke of the new Charlemagne. "I am come too late," he once exclaimed to Marmont; "men are too enlightened, there is nothing great left to be done." These words reveal his sense of the artificiality of his European conquests. His imperial instincts could find complete satisfaction only among the docile fate-ridden peoples of Asia, where he might unite the functions of an Alexander and a Mahomet: or, failing that, he would carve out an empire from the vast southern lands, organizing them by his unresting powers and ruling them as œkist and as despot. This task would possess a permanence such as man's conquests over Nature may always enjoy, and his triumphs over his fellows seldom or never. The political reconstruction of Europe was at best one of an infinite number of such changes, always progressing and [pg.384] never completed; while the peopling of new lands and the founding of States belonged to that highest plane of political achievement wherein schemes of social beneficence and the dictates of a boundless ambition could maintain an eager and unending rivalry. While a strictly European policy could effect little more than a raking over of long-cultivated parterres, the foundation of a new colonial empire would be the turning up of the virgin soil of the limitless prairie.
If we inquire by the light of history why these grand designs failed, the answer must be that they were too vast fitly to consort with an ambitious European policy. His ablest adviser noted this fundamental defect as rapidly developing after the Peace of Amiens, when "he began to sow the seeds of new wars which, after overwhelming Europe and France, were to lead him to his ruin." This criticism of Talleyrand on a man far greater than himself, but who lacked that saving grace of moderation in which the diplomatist excelled, is consonant with all the teachings of history. The fortunes of the colonial empires of Athens and Carthage in the ancient world, of the Italian maritime republics, of Portugal and Spain, and, above all, the failure of the projects of Louis XIV. and Louis XV. serve to prove that only as the motherland enjoys a sufficiency of peace at home and on her borders can she send forth in ceaseless flow those supplies of men and treasure which are the very life-blood of a new organism. That beneficent stream might have poured into Napoleon's Colonial Empire, had not other claims diverted it into the barren channels of European warfare. The same result followed as at the time of the Seven Years' War, when the double effort to wage great campaigns in Germany and across the oceans sapped the strength of France, and the additions won by Dupleix and Montcalm fell away from her flaccid frame.
Did Napoleon foresee a similar result? His conduct in regard to Louisiana and in reference to Decaen's expedition proves that he did, but only when it was too late. As soon as he saw that his policy was about to provoke [pg.385] another war with Britain long before he was ready for it, he decided to forego his oceanic schemes and to concentrate his forces on his European frontiers. The decision was dictated by a true sense of imperial strategy. But what shall we say of his sense of imperial diplomacy? The foregoing narrative and the events to be described in the next chapters prove that his mistake lay in that overweening belief in his own powers and in the pliability of his enemies which was the cause of his grandest triumphs and of his unexampled overthrow. [pg.386]