Terre Napoleón; a History of French Explorations and Projects in Australia

by Sir Ernest Scott

To attempt, therefore, to isolate Baudin's expedition from the series to which it rightly belongs, simply because it was undertaken while Bonaparte was at the head of the State, is to convey a false idea of it. If there were any evidence to show that it differed from the others in its aims, it would be quite proper to make it stand alone. But there is not.

Nor must it be supposed that this particular enterprise originated with the First Consul. It was not a scheme generated in his teeming brain, like the strategy of a campaign, or a masterstroke of diplomacy. It was placed before him for approval in the shape of a proposition from the Institute of France, a scientific body, concerned not with political machinations, but with the advancement of knowledge. The Institute considered that there was useful work to be done by a new expedition of discovery, and believed it to be its duty to submit a plan to the Government. We are so informed by Péron, and there is the best of reasons for believing him.* (* "L'honneur national et le progres des sciences parmi nous se reunissoient donc pour reclamer une expedition de decouvertes aux Terres Australes, et l'Institut de France crut devoir la proposer au gouvernement." Péron, Voyage de Decouvertes 1 4.) The history of the voyage was published after Napoleon had become Emperor, under his sanction, at the Imperial Press. If his had been the originating mind, it is quite certain that credit for the idea would not have been claimed for others. On the contrary, we should probably have had an adulatory paragraph from Péron's pen about the beneficence of the Imperial will as exercised in the cause of science.

Quite apart from Péron's statement, however, there are three official declarations to the like effect. First there is the announcement in the Moniteur* (* 23rd Floreal, Revolutionary Year 8; "L'Institut national a demande au premier consul, et a obtenu.) that it was the Institute which requested Bonaparte to sanction the expedition. Secondly, when Vice-Admiral Rosily reported to the Minister of Marine on Freycinet's charts in 1813,* (* Moniteur, January 15, 1813.) he commenced by observing that the expedition "had for its object the completion of the knowledge of the coasts of New Holland which were not hitherto entirely known." Thirdly, Henri de Freycinet, writing in 1808,* (* Ibid July 2, 1808.) said that it was the high interest stimulated by the voyages of La Perouse and Dentrecasteaux that made the Institute eagerly desirous of a new enterprise devoted to the reconnaissance of Australia. The last two statements were, it will be observed, published by Napoleon's official organ when the Empire was at its height.

There is no positive evidence as to what members of the Institute were chiefly instrumental in formulating the proposal for Napoleon's consideration. We do not know whether leading members explained their scheme to him orally, or laid before him a written statement. If there was a plan in manuscript, the text of it has never been published.* (* "Probably it was suppressed or destroyed," says Dr. Holland Rose (Life of Napoleon 1 379). But why should it have been? There is no reason to suppose that it contained anything which it was to anybody's interest to destroy or suppress. Indeed, it is by no means clear that there was such a document. It is quite likely that the scheme of the Institute was explained verbally to the First Consul. Why manufacture mysteries?) There is only one document relating to the expedition in the collected correspondence of Napoleon;* (* Edition of 1861.) and that concerned an incident to which reference will be made in the next chapter. The reason for the absence of letters concerning the matter among Napoleon's papers is presumably that he left the carrying out of the project to the Institute; for he was not wont to restrain his directing hand in affairs in which he was personally concerned.

But there were two leading members of the Institute who had already concerned themselves with Australasian discovery, and who may safely be assumed to have taken the initiative in this matter. They were Bougainville the explorer, who had commanded the expedition of 1766 to 1771, and Charles Pierre Claret de Fleurieu, who had been Minister of Marine in 1790, and had written a book on the Decouvertes des Francais dans le sud-est de la Nouvelle Guinee (Paris, 1790), in which he maintained the prior claims of the French navigators Bougainville and Surville to discoveries to which later English explorers had in ignorance given fresh names. Fleurieu had also intended to write the history of the voyages of La Perouse, but was prevented by pressure of official and other occupations, and handed the work over to Milet-Mureau.* (* Voyage de la Perouse, Preface 1 page 3.) He stood high in the esteem of Napoleon, was a counsellor of State during the Consulate, became intendant-general of the Emperor's household, governor of the palace of Versailles, senator, and comte. Both Fleurieu and Bougainville had abundant opportunities for explaining the utility of a fresh voyage of exploration to Napoleon.

It was, too, quite natural that these men should desire to promote a new French voyage of discovery. None knew better what might be hoped to be achieved. We are fairly safe in assuming that they moved the Institute to submit a proposition to the First Consul; and it is not improbable that they personally interviewed him on the subject.

Bonaparte, at any rate, received the proposal "with interest," and we learn from Péron* (* Voyage de Decouvertes 1 4.) that he definitely authorised the expedition at the very time when his army of reserve was about to move from Geneva to cross the Alps in that astonishing campaign which conduced, by swift, toilsome, and surprising manoeuvres, to the crushing victory of Marengo. The plan of the Institute was therefore ratified in May 1800. The Austrians at that time were holding French arms severely in check in Savoy and northern Italy. Suchet, Massena, Oudinot, and Soult were, with fluctuating fortunes but always with stubborn valour, clinging desperately to their positions or yielding ground to superior strength, awaiting with confidence the hour when the supreme master would strike the shattering blow that, while relieving the pressure on them, would completely change the aspect of the war. It was while pondering his masterstroke, and deliberating on the choice of the path across the Alps that was to lead to it, that Bonaparte gave his approval; while elaborating a scheme to overwhelm the armies of Austria in an abyss of carnage, that he expressed the wish that, as the expedition would come in contact with ignorant savages, care should be taken to make it appear that the French met them as "friends and benefactors."

It may here be parenthetically remarked that it does not make us think more favourably of Freycinet that when, in 1824, he issued a new edition of the Voyage de Decouvertes, he omitted all Péron's references to Napoleon's interest in the expedition, and his direction that when savages were met the French should appear among them "comme des amis et des bienfaiteurs."* (* Péron, 1 10.) While Péron tells us that this laudable wish was personally expressed by the First Consul, Freycinet* (* 1 74, in the 1824 edition.) altered the phrase to "le gouvernement voulut," etc. He had absolutely no justification for doing so. The reader of the second edition of the book had a right to expect that he was in possession of the original text, save for the correction of incidental errors. But in 1824 Napoleon was dead, a Bourbon reigned in France, and Freycinet was the servant of the monarchy to which he owed the command of the expedition of 1817. The suppression of Napoleon's name and the record of his actions from Péron's text, was a puerile piece of servility.

There is nothing surprising in Bonaparte's cordial approval of the enterprise. One has only to study the volumes in which M. Frederic Masson has collected the papers and memoranda relating to Napoleon's youth and early manhood to realise how intensely keen was his interest in geography and travel. In one of those interesting works is a document occupying eight printed pages, in which Napoleon had summarised a geographical textbook, with a view to the more perfect mastery of its contents.* (* See Masson's Napoleon Inconnu; Papiers Inedits; Paris 1895 volume 2 page 44. The text-book was that of Lacroix.) It is curious to note how little the young scholar was able to ascertain about Australasia from the volume from which he learnt the elements of that science for which, with his genius for strategy and tactics, he must have had an instinctive taste. "La Nouvelle Guinee, la Carpentarie, la Nouvelle Hollande," etc., figure in his notes as the countries forming the principal part of the southern hemisphere now grouped under the denomination of Australasia; "la Carpentarie" thus signalised as a separated land being simply the northern region of Australia proper, the farthest limit of which is Cape York.* (* Mallet's Description de l'Univers (Frankfort 1686) mentions "Carpenterie" as being near the "Terre des Papous," and as discovered by the Dutch captain, Carpenter.)

It is not a little interesting, that when, in April 1800, twenty sculptors were commissioned to execute as many busts of great men to adorn the Galerie des Consuls, the only Englishmen among the honoured score were Marlborough and Dampier.* (* Aulard, Paris sous le Consulat 1 267.) It is curious to find the adventurous ex-buccaneer in such noble company as that of Cicero, Cato, Caesar, Demosthenes, Frederick the Great, and George Washington, but the fact that he was among the selected heroes may be taken as another evidence of Bonaparte's interest in the men who helped to find out what the world was like. Perhaps if somebody had seen him reading Dampier's Voyages, as he read Cook's on the way to Egypt, that fact would have been instanced as another proof, not of his fondness for extremely fascinating literature, but of the nourishment of a secret passion to seize the coasts which Dampier explored.