Decaen Also Alleged That Flinders Was Personally Rude To Him In
Presenting Himself Before Him "Le Chapeau Sur La Tete.
" Flinders was
undoubtedly smarting under a sense of wrong at the time, but discourtesy
was by no means a feature
Of his character; and to imprison a man for six
and a half years for not taking his hat off would have been queer conduct
from a son of the Revolution!
But Decaen's reasons for his treatment of his captive were not consistent
with themselves. He gave quite another set in a report to his Government,
alleging that the detention of Flinders was justified as a measure of
reprisals on account of the action of the English at Pondicherry and the
Cape; and, entirely in the manner of a man looking for a shred of
justification for doing the unjustifiable, he alleged that vigorous
aggressive action on his part was necessary, because it was evident to
him that the English meant to absorb the whole commerce of the Indian
Ocean, the Pacific, and the China Sea, basing his statements on the
report of Peron, of which he sent a copy to Paris. Not only did he
represent that the British intended to annihilate French power in India,
and supplant Spanish authority in South America, but he regarded their
repeated visits to Timor, their action in regard to Java in 1798, and
their establishment at Penang, off the Malay Peninsula, as clear evidence
that the "greedy and devouring jaws" of the English lion were ready to
swallow the Dutch East Indies likewise.
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