Part 10 (2/2)
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. Peron, 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 Peron'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 pa.s.sport, 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 sh.o.r.es of their own country after so long an absence.
”It might be said that the very sight of our s.h.i.+p, 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 Inst.i.tute.
The official history of the voyage authorised.
Peron's scientific work.
His discovery of Pyrosoma atlantic.u.m.
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 Inst.i.tute 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 Peron 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 const.i.tution 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 ill.u.s.trious 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, b.u.t.terflies, and plants, specimens of rocks and quant.i.ties of sh.e.l.ls.
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 hards.h.i.+ps, 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'exact.i.tude 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 a.s.sez 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. Peron, 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 a.s.sertions.)
The distinguished men of science who stood at the head of the Inst.i.tute 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 Inst.i.tute, consisting of Cuvier, Laplace, Bougainville, Fleurieu, and Lacepede, furnished a report based upon an examination of the scientific specimens and the ma.n.u.script of the first volume of the Voyage de Decouvertes, which, in the meantime, had been written by Peron. 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 Peron in describing and cla.s.sifying, 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. Peron,” 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 s.h.i.+ning example of the powerful influence of laws and inst.i.tutions 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 a.s.siduous 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 pa.s.sage may be compared with Peron'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.)
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