Peron, From What He Had Seen Of The Growth Of Port
Jackson, And From The Prompt Audacity And Pugnacious Assertiveness Of An
Incident Which Occurred At King Island - To Be Described In The Ninth
Chapter - Had Conceived An Inflated Idea Of The Enormity Of British
Pretensions In The Southern Hemisphere.
He was convinced that, using the
Sydney settlement as a base of operations, the British intended to
dominate the whole Pacific Ocean, even to the degree of menacing the
Spanish colonies of South America.
On 20th Frimaire, Revolutionary Year
12 (December 11, 1803), four days before Le Geographe sailed from the
island, Peron set his views on paper in a report to Decaen, stating that
his interviews with officers, magistrates, clergymen, and other classes
of people in Sydney, had convinced him that his anticipations were well
founded. He pointed out that already the English were extending their
operations to the Sandwich, Friendly, Society, Navigator, and other
islands of the South Pacific; that at Norfolk Island they had a colony of
between fifteen hundred and sixteen hundred people, and found its timber
to be of great value for shipbuilding; and that gradually the British
Government, by extending their military posts and trading stations across
the ocean, would sooner or later establish themselves within striking
distance of Chili and Peru.* (* Peron's report to General Decaen is given
in M. Henri Prentout's valuable treatise, L'Ile de France sous Decaen,
1803 to 1810; essai sur la politique coloniale du premier empire, Paris
1901 page 380. M. Prentout's book is extremely fair, and, based as it is
mainly upon the voluminous papers of General Decaen, preserved in his
native town of Caen, is authoritative.) Peron pointed to the political
insecurity of the Spanish-American colonies, and predicted that the
outbreak of revolution in them, possibly with the connivance of the
English, would further the deep designs of that absorbent and dominating
nation.* (* A French author of later date, Prevost-Paradol (La France
Nouvelle, published in 1868), predicted that some day "a new Monroe
doctrine would forbid old Europe, in the name of the United States of
Australia, to put foot upon an isle of the Pacific.")
Decaen was pondering over Peron's inflammatory memorandum when the lame
little Cumberland staggered into Port Louis. Here, a victim ready to
hand, was one of the instruments of the extension of British dominion,
the foremost explorer in the service of the British Crown. True, Flinders
had a passport from the French Government, but it was made out, not for
the Cumberland but for the Investigator. To take advantage of such a
point, when the Investigator had had to be abandoned as unseaworthy, was
manifestly to seize the flimsiest pretext for imprisoning the man whom
the winds and waves had brought within his power.* (* "C'etait une
chicane," says M. Henri Prentout, page 382.) But Decaen was in the temper
for regarding the English navigator as a spy, and he imprisoned him first
and looked for evidence to justify himself afterwards. He had just read
Peron's report; and "it was not unnatural," says a learned French
historian somewhat naively, "that the Captain-General should attribute to
the English savant the intention of playing at Port Louis the role that
our naturalist had played at Port Jackson."* (* Ibid.) The imputation is
unjust to Peron, who had not "spied" in Port Jackson, because the English
there had manifested no disposition to conceal. Nothing that he reported
was what the Government had wished him not to see; they had helped him to
see all that he desired; and his preposterous political inferences,
though devoid of foundation, hardly amounted to a positive breach of
hospitality. Besides, had Decaen feared that the release of Flinders
would be dangerous because he might report the weak state of the defences
of the island, the same would have applied to the liberation of the
junior officers and men of the Cumberland. They, however, were permitted
to return to England after a brief period of detention.
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. How these nefarious designs
afforded a reason for imprisoning Matthew Flinders is not apparent; but
Decaen was pleading for the despatch of troops to enable him to make an
effective attack upon the English in India,* (* Prentout, page 383.) and
he seemed to suppose that the holding up of the explorer would give
satisfaction in Paris, and further the accomplishment of his plans.
In October 1810, only three months after the liberation of Flinders, the
Isle of France was closely blockaded by a British squadron under
Vice-Admiral Bertie.
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