The Suppression Of Napoleon's Name And The Record
Of His Actions From Peron's Text, Was A Puerile Piece Of Servility.
There is nothing surprising in Bonaparte's cordial approval of the
enterprise.
One has only to study the volumes in which M. Frederic Masson
has collected the papers and memoranda relating to Napoleon's youth and
early manhood to realise how intensely keen was his interest in geography
and travel. In one of those interesting works is a document occupying
eight printed pages, in which Napoleon had summarised a geographical
textbook, with a view to the more perfect mastery of its contents.* (*
See Masson's Napoleon Inconnu; Papiers Inedits; Paris 1895 volume 2 page
44. The text-book was that of Lacroix.) It is curious to note how little
the young scholar was able to ascertain about Australasia from the volume
from which he learnt the elements of that science for which, with his
genius for strategy and tactics, he must have had an instinctive taste.
"La Nouvelle Guinee, la Carpentarie, la Nouvelle Hollande," etc., figure
in his notes as the countries forming the principal part of the southern
hemisphere now grouped under the denomination of Australasia; "la
Carpentarie" thus signalised as a separated land being simply the
northern region of Australia proper, the farthest limit of which is Cape
York.* (* Mallet's Description de l'Univers (Frankfort 1686) mentions
"Carpenterie" as being near the "Terre des Papous," and as discovered by
the Dutch captain, Carpenter.)
It is not a little interesting, that when, in April 1800, twenty
sculptors were commissioned to execute as many busts of great men to
adorn the Galerie des Consuls, the only Englishmen among the honoured
score were Marlborough and Dampier.* (* Aulard, Paris sous le Consulat 1
267.) It is curious to find the adventurous ex-buccaneer in such noble
company as that of Cicero, Cato, Caesar, Demosthenes, Frederick the
Great, and George Washington, but the fact that he was among the selected
heroes may be taken as another evidence of Bonaparte's interest in the
men who helped to find out what the world was like. Perhaps if somebody
had seen him reading Dampier's Voyages, as he read Cook's on the way to
Egypt, that fact would have been instanced as another proof, not of his
fondness for extremely fascinating literature, but of the nourishment of
a secret passion to seize the coasts which Dampier explored.
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. It is an English
writer* (* Merz, History of European Thought in the Nineteenth Century 1
152 to 154.) who says of him that he was, "amongst the great heroes and
statesmen of his age, the first and foremost if not the only one, who
seemed thoroughly to realise the part which science was destined to play
in the immediate future"; and the same author adds that "some of the
glory of Laplace and Cuvier falls upon Napoleon." He took pleasure in the
company and conversation of men of science; and never more so than during
the period of the Consulate. Thibaudeau's memoirs show him dining one
night with Laplace, Monge, and Berthollet; and the English translator of
that delightful book* (* Dr. Fortescue, page 273. Compare also Lord
Rosebery, Napoleon, the Last Phase page 234: "In the first period of his
Consulate he was an almost ideal ruler. He was firm, sagacious,
far-seeing, energetic, just.") emphasises the contrast between the "just
and noble sanity of the First Consul of 1802 and the delirium of the
Emperor of 1812." The failure to keep that difference in mind - to
recognise that the Bonaparte of the early Consulate was capable of
exalted ideals for the general well-being that were foreign to the
Napoleon of ten years later - is fruitful of mistakes in interpreting his
activities. On April 8 he attended a seance of the Institute, and was
there instrumental in reconciling several persons who had become
estranged through events which occurred during the Revolution.* (*
Aulard, Paris sous le Consulat, 1 252.) He was therefore on good terms
with this learned body, and was himself a member of that division of it
which was devoted to the physical and mathematical sciences.* (*
Thibaudeau (English edition) page 112.)
It was quite natural, then, that when the national representatives of
scientific thought in France approached him with a proposition that was
calculated to make his era illustrious by a grand voyage of exploration
which should complete man's knowledge of the great continents, the First
Consul gave a ready consent.
The task of preparing instructions for the voyage was entrusted to a
Committee of the Institute, consisting of Fleurieu, Bougainville,
Laplace, Lacepede, Cuvier, Jussieu, Lelievre, Langles, and Camus; whilst
Degerando wrote a special memorandum upon the methods to be followed in
the observation of savage peoples - the latter probably in consequence of
the First Consul's particular direction on this subject. It was an
admirably chosen body for formulating a programme of scientific research.
A great astronomer, two eminent biologists, a famous botanist, a
practical navigator, a geographer, all men of distinction among European
savants, and two of them, Laplace and Cuvier, among the greatest men of
science of modern times, were scholars who knew what might be expected to
be gained for knowledge, and where and how the most fruitful results
might be obtained.
In their instructions, the committee directed attention to the south
coast of Tasmania - by that time known to be an island, since the
discoveries of Bass and Flinders, and their circumnavigation, had been
the subject of much comment in Europe - as offering a good field for
geographical research.
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