Baudin wrote a letter from King Island to Jussieu which indicated that the experience had been an unhappy one for him.* (* The letter was printed in the Moniteur, 22nd Fructidor, Revolutionary Year 11 (September 9, 1803). Baudin's death was recorded in the Moniteur on 13th Germinal, Revolutionary Year 12 (April 3, 1804).) "I have never made so painful a voyage," he said. "More than once my health has been impaired, but if I can terminate the expedition conformably to the intentions of the Government and to the satisfaction of the French nation, there will remain little to desire, and my sufferings will soon be forgotten." To a very large extent Baudin must be held responsible for the misfortunes and failures attending his command, but it is an act of justice to clear him from aspersions that have been made upon him for things that occurred after his death. He had nothing whatever to do with the imprisonment of Flinders, for which he has been blamed by writers who have not looked into the literature of the subject sufficiently to be aware that he was dead at the time; nor was he in any way connected with the issue of the Terre Napoleon maps, with which his name has also been associated.
General Decaen, Napoleon's newly appointed governor, arrived at the island eight days after Le Geographe, and at once began to administer affairs upon new lines of policy. A little later the French admiral, Linois, with a fleet of frigates, entered port. On the death of Baudin, Linois directed that the Casuarina should be dismantled, and appointed Captain Milius to the command of Le Geographe, with instructions to take her home as soon as her sick crew recovered and she had been revictualled. Péron, as has already been explained, had some conversation with Decaen, imparting to him the conclusion he had formulated relative to the secret intentions of the British for the augmentation of their possessions in the Pacific and Indian Oceans; but there is no record that Decaen saw Baudin, who was probably too ill to attend to affairs in the period between the general's arrival and his own death. It is hardly likely that Baudin, who, from his intimacy with King, knew more about British policy than the naturalist did, would have supported Péron's excited fancies.
Le Geographe sailed from Mauritius on December 15, and reached Europe without the occurrence of any further incidents calling for comment. She entered the port of Lorient on March 24, 1804. Captain Milius decided not to make for Havre, whence the expedition had sailed in 1800, in consequence of what had happened to Le Naturaliste on her return to Europe in the previous year. War was declared by the British Government against France in May, and every captain in King George's navy was alert and eager to get in a blow upon the enemy. The frigate Minerva, Captain Charles Buller, sighted Le Naturaliste in the Channel, stopped her, and insisted, despite her passport, on taking her into Portsmouth. She was detained there from May 27 till June 6, when the Admiralty, being informed of what had occurred, ordered her immediate release. She left Portsmouth and arrived at Havre on the same day, June 6, 1803.
Perhaps nothing can convey more effectually the utter weariness and depression of officers, staff, and crew, than the language in which Freycinet chronicled the return. It might be supposed, he wrote, that the end of the voyage would be heralded with joy. But they were themselves surprised to find that they were but slightly touched with pleasure at seeing again the shores of their own country after so long an absence. "It might be said that the very sight of our ship, recalling too strongly the sufferings of which we had been the victims, poisoned all our affections. It was not until we were far away from the coast that our souls could expand to sentiments of happiness which had been so long strangers to us."
This, surely, was not the language of men who believed that they had accomplished things for which the world would hold them in honour. It was not the language of triumphant discoverers, whose good fortune it had been to reveal unknown coasts, and to finish that complete map of the continents which had been so long a-making. Would it, one wonders, have made Freycinet a little happier had he known that at this very time the English navigator who had made the discoveries for which Baudin's expedition was sent out, was held in the clutch of General Decaen in Mauritius, and that the way was clear to hurry on the publication of forestalling maps and records whilst Flinders was, as it were, battened under hatches?
CHAPTER 11. RESULTS.
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.)