We
Enter Into A Wider Historical Realm When We Begin To Consider The Motives
Which Led Bonaparte To Despatch The Expedition Of 1800 To 1804.
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.
We wish to know why Bonaparte, who had overturned the Directory by the
audacity of Brumaire and hoisted himself into the dominating position of
First Consul in the year before Le Geographe and Le Naturaliste were sent
to the South Seas, authorised the undertaking of that enterprise. Was it
what it purported to be, an expedition of exploration, or was it a move
in a cunning game of state-craft by a player whose board, as some would
have us believe, was the whole planet? Had Bonaparte, so soon after
ascending to supremacy in the Government of France, already conceived the
dazzling dream of a vast world-empire acknowledging his sway, and was
this a step towards the achievement of it? If not that, was he desirous
by this means of striking a blow at the prestige of Great Britain, whose
hero Nelson had smashed his fleet at the Nile two years before? Or had he
ideals in the direction of establishing French colonial dominions in
southern latitudes, and did he desire to obtain accurate information as
to where the tricolour might most advantageously be planted?
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