Sir Ernest Scott

“ Napoleon had been a good and a diligent student. The fascinating but hateful characteristics of his later career, when he was the Emperor with a heart petrified and corroded by ambition, the conqueror ever greedy of fresh conquest, the scourge of nations and the tyrant of kings, too often make one overlook the liberal instincts of his earlier years. His passion for knowledge was profound, and he was the pronounced friend of every genuine man of science, of every movement having for its object the acquisition and diffusion of fresh enlightenment. ”

“ If we had only the Baudin-King correspondence, we should think him not unworthy to be the successor of La Perouse and Bougainville. If we had only the Voyage de Decouvertes, we should think him barely fit to command a canal barge. It may not have been the happiness of many navigators to enjoy the affection of those under them to such an eminent degree as did Cook and Flinders; but there are fortunately latitudes of difference between love and hate. Respect is often felt to be due when deeper sentiments are not stimulated. ”

“ But it was not carefully investigated at all, and thus Baudin totally missed Bathurst Island and Melville Island, which together stretch for over one hundred miles across the entrance to Van Diemen's Gulf. Instead of definiteness of outline, the French charts presented the world with a bristling array of names affixed to contours which were cloudy and ill-defined, incomplete and inaccurate.
The most serious omission of all was the superb natural harbour of Port Darwin, the finest anchorage in northern Australia. The French missed it altogether. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The contention that the south coast exploration of the French was "entirely a work of discovery,"* (* Freycinet, 2 page 23.) although they were forestalled in it by Flinders and Grant, is neither true nor sensible. If it could be held that the voyage of a vessel sailing without a chart or a pilot along a coast previously unknown to its officers was "entirely a work of discovery," then a ship that should sail under such conditions along any piece of coast--say from Boulogne to La Hague--would accomplish "a work of discovery." Discovery is a matter of priority, or the word is meaningless. ”

“ Yet there was no part of Australia as to which the French could have made out stronger claims on moral grounds; for though the voyage of the first French navigator who landed in Tasmania was one hundred and thirty years later than Abel Tasman's discovery, still it was a solid fact that both Marion-Dufresne and Dentrecasteaux had contributed more than any other Europeans had done to a knowledge of what Tasmania was, until Flinders and Bass in their dancing little 25 ton sloop put an end to mystery and misconception, and placed the charming island fairly for what it was on the map of the world. ”

“ A zealous savant, to whom fishes and birds, beetles and butterflies, were the precious things of the earth, and for whom the discovery of a new species was as great a source of joy as a glorious victory was to his imperial master, Péron appeals to us as a pathetic figure whom one would rather screen from blame than otherwise. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Napoleon, in 1803, selected him for Indian service, and stationed him at the Isle of France (Mauritius) , in the hope that if all went well a heavy blow might some day be struck at British power in India. Decaen was not a courtier, nor a scholar, nor a man of sentiment, but a plain, coarse, downright soldier; a true Norman, and a thorough son of the Revolution. He was not the kind of man to be interested in navigation, discovery, or the expansion of human knowledge; and appeals made to him on these grounds on behalf of Flinders were futile. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A map of the globe, coloured crimson as to those countries where blood has flowed in armed conflicts between men, would present a circling splash of red; but the vast island which is balanced on the Tropic of Capricorn, and spreads her bulk from the tenth parallel of south latitude to "the roaring forties," would show up white in the spacious diagram of carnage. No foreign foe has menaced her thrifty progress since the British planted themselves at Port Jackson in 1788 ”

“ 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. ”

“ A picture more harrowing never presented itself to the imagination. The general consternation added to the horror of it. We had nearly reached the point of being unable to control the movements of the ship amidst the fury of the waves; parts of the rigging were broken with every manoeuvre; and despite all our efforts we could scarcely shift our sails. For a long time our commandant had had no rest. It was absolutely necessary to get out of these stormy seas at the extremity of the southern continent, and hasten on our course for Port Jackson. ”

“ Yet, while avarice and enterprise schemed and fought for the west and the east, this treasury of the south remained unsolicited. It is not for us to regret that Australia was left for a race that knew how to woo her with affection and to conquer her with their science and their will, yet we can but wonder that fortune should have been so tardy and so reticent in disclosing a fifth division of the globe. ”

“ 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 was only so recently as January 26, 1788, that Captain Arthur Phillip had entered the commodious and beautiful harbour which is not eclipsed by any on the planet. Yet the French found there plentiful evidences of prosperity and comfort, and of that adaptable energy which lies at the root of all British success in colonisation. Master Thorne, in the sixteenth century, expressed the resolute spirit of that energy in a phrase: "There is no land uninhabitable, nor sea innavigable" ”

“ Here we are no longer confined to shores which, at the time when we are concerned with them, were the abode of desolation and the nursery of a solitude uninterrupted for untallied ages, save by the screams of innumerable sea-birds, or, occasionally, here and there, by the corroboree cries of naked savages, whose kitchen-middens, feet thick with shells, still betray the places where they feasted. ”

“ It is true that Nature has done much for them in the beauty and security of the harbour upon which their principal establishment is erected; but the nature of the soil in the vicinity has compelled them to penetrate the interior of the country to find land suitable for the various crops which abundantly furnish them with the means of subsistence, and enable them to supply the wants of the European vessels which the fisheries and commerce attract to this port."
The French visitors were far more genial in their view of the affairs of the colony than many British writers have been. ”

“ 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. ”

“ New South Wales was marked as occupying the whole of the east. The styling of the freshly discovered south Terre Napoleon was a mere piece of courtiership. If Napoleon had ever been strong enough to strike a blow at the British in Australia, the probabilities are that he would have endeavoured to oust them from New South Wales, and would not have troubled himself very much about the coasts that were named after him. It was his way to strike at the heart of his enemy, and the heart of British settlement in Australia was located at Port Jackson. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Compelled by the leaky condition of the crazy little craft, and the inefficiency of the pumps, to put into Mauritius, then a French possession, he was detained as a prisoner by the French governor, General Decaen, for six and a half years.
There is no need, for our immediate purpose, to linger over these occurrences, inviting as they are, with a glint of Stevensonian romance in the bare facts, and all the pathos that attaches to the case of a brave and blameless man thwarted and ruined by perversity and malignity. ”

“ When Le Geographe stood outside Sydney Harbour, a boat's crew of Flinders' bluejackets from the Investigator, themselves fresh from their own long voyage, had to be sent out to work her into port. So enfeebled were the French sailors that they could not even muster sufficient energy to bring their vessel to the place where succour awaited them. ”

“ 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. ”