A FRENCH COLONIAL EMPIRE
ST. DOMINGO--LOUISIANA--INDIA--AUSTRALIA
"Il n'y a rien dans l'histoire du monde de comparable aux forces
navales de l'Angleterre, à l'étendue et à la richesse de son
commerce, à la masse de ses dettes, de ses défenses, de ses moyens,
et à la fragilité des bases sur lesquelles repose l'édifice immense
de sa fortune."--BARON MALOUET, _Considérations historiques sur
l'Empire de la Mer_.
There are abundant reasons for thinking that Napoleon valued the Peace
of Amiens as a necessary preliminary to the restoration of the French
Colonial Empire. A comparison of the dates at which he set on foot his
oceanic schemes will show that they nearly all had their inception in
the closing months of 1801 and in the course of the following year.
The sole important exceptions were the politico-scientific expedition
to Australia, the ostensible purpose of which insured immunity from
the attacks of English cruisers even in the year 1800, and the plans
for securing French supremacy in Egypt, which had been frustrated in
1801 and were, to all appearance, abandoned by the First Consul
according to the provisions of the Treaty of Amiens. The question
whether he really relinquished his designs on Egypt is so intimately
connected with the rupture of the Peace of Amiens that it will be more
fitly considered in the following chapter. It may not, however, be out
of place to offer some proofs as to the value which Bonaparte set on
the valley of the Nile and the Isthmus of Suez. A letter from a spy at
Paris, preserved in the archives of our Foreign Office, and dated
July 10th, 1801, contains the following significant statement with
reference to Bonaparte: "Egypt, which is considered here as lost to
France, is the only object which interests his personal ambition and
excites his revenge." Even at the end of his days, he thought
longingly of the land of the Pharaohs. In his first interview with the
governor of St. Helena, the illustrious exile said emphatically:
"Egypt is the most important country in the world." The words reveal a
keen perception of all the influences conducive to commercial
prosperity and imperial greatness. Egypt, in fact, with the Suez
Canal, which his imagination always pictured as a necessary adjunct,
was to be the keystone of that arch of empire which was to span the
oceans and link the prairies of the far west to the teeming plains of
India and the far Austral Isles.
The motives which impelled Napoleon to the enterprises now to be
considered were as many-sided as the maritime ventures themselves.
Ultimately, doubtless, they arose out of a love of vast undertakings
that ministered at once to an expanding ambition and to that need of
arduous administrative toils for which his mind ever craved in the
heyday of its activity. And, while satiating the grinding powers of
his otherwise morbidly restless spirit, these enterprises also fed and
soothed those imperious, if unconscious, instincts which prompt every
able man of inquiring mind to reclaim all possible domains from the
unknown or the chaotic. As Egypt had, for the present at least, been
reft from his grasp, he turned naturally to all other lands that could
be forced to yield their secrets to the inquirer, or their comforts to
the benefactors of mankind. Only a dull cynicism can deny this motive
to the man who first unlocked the doors of Egyptian civilization; and
it would be equally futile to deny to him the same beneficent aims
with regard to the settlement of the plains of the Mississippi, and
the coasts of New Holland.
The peculiarities of the condition of France furnished another
powerful impulse towards colonization. In the last decade her people
had suffered from an excess of mental activity and nervous excitement.
From philosophical and political speculation they must be brought back
to the practical and prosaic; and what influence could be so healthy
as the turning up of new soil and other processes that satisfy the
primitive instincts? Some of these, it was true, were being met by the
increasing peasant proprietary in France herself. But this internal
development, salutary as it was, could not appease the restless
spirits of the towns or the ambition of the soldiery. Foreign
adventures and oceanic commerce alone could satisfy the Parisians and
open up new careers for the Prætorian chiefs, whom the First Consul
alone really feared.
Nor were these sentiments felt by him alone. In a paper which
Talleyrand read to the Institute of France in July, 1797, that
far-seeing statesman had dwelt upon the pacifying influences exerted
by foreign commerce and colonial settlements on a too introspective
nation. His words bear witness to the keenness of his insight into the
maladies of his own people and the sources of social and political
strength enjoyed by the United States, where he had recently
sojourned. Referring to their speedy recovery from the tumults of
their revolution, he said: "The true Lethe after passing through a
revolution is to be found in the opening out to men of every avenue of
hope.--Revolutions leave behind them a general restlessness of mind, a
need of movement." That need was met in America by man's warfare
against the forest, the flood, and the prairie. France must therefore
possess colonies as intellectual and political safety-valves; and in
his graceful, airy style he touched on the advantages offered by
Egypt, Louisiana, and West Africa, both for their intrinsic value and
as opening the door of work and of hope to a brain-sick generation.
Following up this clue, Bonaparte, at a somewhat later date, remarked
the tendency of the French people, now that the revolutionary strifes
were past, to settle down contentedly on their own little plots; and
he emphasized the need of a colonial policy such as would widen the
national life. The remark has been largely justified by events; and
doubtless he discerned in the agrarian reforms of the Revolution an
influence unfavourable to that racial dispersion which, under wise
guidance, builds up an oceanic empire. The grievances of the _ancien
régime_ had helped to scatter on the shores of the St. Lawrence the
seeds of a possible New France. Primogeniture was ever driving from
England her younger sons to found New Englands and expand the commerce
of the motherland. Let not France now rest at home, content with her
perfect laws and with the conquest of her "natural frontiers." Let her
rather strive to regain the first place in colonial activity which the
follies of Louis XV. and the secular jealousy of Albion had filched
from her. In the effort she would extend the bounds of civilization,
lay the ghost of Jacobinism, satisfy military and naval adventures,
and unconsciously revert to the ideas and governmental methods of the
age of _le grand monarque_.
The French possessions beyond the seas had never shrunk to a smaller
area than in the closing years of the late war with England. The fact
was confessed by the First Consul in his letter of October 7th, 1801,
to Decrès, the Minister for the Navy and the Colonies: "Our
possessions beyond the sea, which are now in our power, are limited to
Saint Domingo, Guadeloupe, the Isle of France (Mauritius), the Isle of
Bourbon, Senegal, and Guiana." After rendering this involuntary homage
to the prowess of the British navy, Bonaparte proceeded to describe
the first measures for the organization of these colonies: for not
until March 25th, 1802, when the definitive treaty of peace was
signed, could the others be regained by France.
* * * * *
First in importance came the re-establishment of French authority in
the large and fertile island of Hayti, or St. Domingo. It needs an
effort of the imagination for the modern reader to realize the immense
importance of the West Indian islands at the beginning of the
century, whose close found them depressed and half bankrupt. At the
earlier date, when the name Australia was unknown, and the
half-starved settlement in and around Sydney represented the sole
wealth of that isle of continent; when the Cape of Good Hope was
looked on only as a port of call; when the United States numbered less
than five and a half million souls, and the waters of the Mississippi
rolled in unsullied majesty past a few petty Spanish stations--the
plantations of the West Indies seemed the unfailing mine of colonial
industry and commerce. Under the _ancien régime_, the trade of the
French portion of San Domingo is reported to have represented more
than half of her oceanic commerce. But during the Revolution the
prosperity of that colony reeled under a terrible blow.
The hasty proclamation of equality between whites and blacks by the
French revolutionists, and the refusal of the planters to recognize
that decree as binding, led to a terrible servile revolt, which
desolated the whole of the colony. Those merciless strifes had,
however, somewhat abated under the organizing power of a man, in whom
the black race seemed to have vindicated its claims to political
capacity. Toussaint l'Ouverture had come to the front by sheer
sagacity and force of character. By a deft mixture of force and
clemency, he imposed order on the vapouring crowds of negroes: he
restored the French part of the island to comparative order and
prosperity; and with an army of 20,000 men he occupied the Spanish
portion. In this, as in other matters, he appeared to act as the
mandatory of France; but he looked to the time when France, beset by
European wars, would tacitly acknowledge his independence. In May,
1801, he made a constitution for the island, and declared himself
governor for life, with power to appoint his successor. This mimicry
of the consular office, and the open vaunt that he was the "Bonaparte
of the Antilles," incensed Bonaparte; and the haste with which, on
the day after the Preliminaries of London, he prepared to overthrow
this contemptible rival, tells its own tale.
Yet Corsican hatred was tempered with Corsican guile. Toussaint had
requested that the Haytians should be under the protection of their
former mistress. Protection was the last thing that Bonaparte desired;
but he deemed it politic to flatter the black chieftain with
assurances of his personal esteem and gratitude for the "great
services which you have rendered to the French people. If its flag
floats over St. Domingo it is due to you and your brave blacks"--a
reference to Toussaint's successful resistance to English attempts at
landing. There were, it is true, some points in the new Haytian
constitution which contravened the sovereign rights of France, but
these were pardonable in the difficult circumstances which had pressed
on Toussaint: he was now, however, invited to amend them so as to
recognize the complete sovereignty of the motherland and the authority
of General Leclerc, whom Bonaparte sent out as captain-general of the
island. To this officer, the husband of Pauline Bonaparte, the First
Consul wrote on the same day that there was reported to be much
ferment in the island against Toussaint, that the obstacles to be
overcome would therefore be much less formidable than had been feared,
provided that activity and firmness were used. In his references to
the burning topic of slavery, the First Consul showed a similar
reserve. The French Republic having abolished it, he could not, as
yet, openly restore an institution flagrantly opposed to the Rights of
Man. Ostensibly therefore he figured as the champion of emancipation,
assuring the Haytians in his proclamation of November 8th, 1801, that
they were all free and all equal in the sight of God and of the
French Republic: "If you are told, 'These forces are destined to
snatch your liberty from you,' reply, 'The Republic has given us our
liberty: it will not allow it to be taken from us.'" Of a similar
tenor was his public declaration a fortnight later, that at St.
Domingo and Guadeloupe everybody was free and would remain free. Very
different were his private instructions. On the last day of October he
ordered Talleyrand to write to the British Government, asking for
their help in supplying provisions from Jamaica to this expedition
destined to "destroy the new Algiers being organized in American
waters"; and a fortnight later he charged him to state his resolve to
destroy the government of the blacks at St. Domingo; that if he had to
postpone the expedition for a year, he would be "obliged to constitute
the blacks as French"; and that "the liberty of the blacks, if
recognized by the Government, would always be a support for the
Republic in the New World." As he was striving to cajole our
Government into supporting his expedition, it is clear that in the
last enigmatic phrase he was bidding for that support by the hint of a
prospective restoration of slavery at St. Domingo. A comparison of his
public and private statements must have produced a curious effect on
the British Ministers, and many of the difficulties during the
negotiations at Amiens doubtless sprang out of their knowledge of his
double-dealing in the West Indies.
The means at the First Consul's disposal might have been considered
sufficient to dispense with these paltry devices; for when the
squadrons of Brest, Lorient, Rochefort, and Toulon had joined their
forces, they mustered thirty-two ships of the line and thirty-one
frigates, with more than 20,000 troops on board. So great, indeed, was
the force as to occasion strong remonstrances from the British
Government, and a warning that a proportionately strong fleet would be
sent to watch over the safety of our West Indies.[197] The size of the
French armada and the warnings which Toussaint received from Europe
induced that wily dictator to adopt stringent precautionary measures.
He persuaded the blacks that the French were about to enslave them
once more, and, raising the spectre of bondage, he quelled sedition,
ravaged the maritime towns, and awaited the French in the interior, in
confident expectation that yellow fever would winnow their ranks and
reduce them to a level with his own strength.
His hopes were ultimately realized, but not until he himself succumbed
to the hardihood of the French attack. Leclerc's army swept across the
desolated belt with an ardour that was redoubled by the sight of the
mangled remains of white people strewn amidst the negro encampments,
and stormed Toussaint's chief stronghold at Crête-à-Pierrot. The
dictator and his factious lieutenants thereupon surrendered (May 8th,
1802), on condition of their official rank being respected--a
stipulation which both sides must have regarded as unreal and
impossible. The French then pressed on to secure the subjection of the
whole island before the advent of the unhealthy season, which
Toussaint eagerly awaited. It now set in with unusual virulence; and
in a few days the conquerors found their force reduced to 12,000
effectives. Suspecting Toussaint's designs, Leclerc seized him. He was
empowered to do so by Bonaparte's orders of March 16th, 1802:
"Follow your instructions exactly, and as soon as you have done
with Toussaint, Christopher, Dessalines, and the chief brigands,
and the masses of the blacks are disarmed, send to the continent
all the blacks and the half-castes who have taken part in the civil
troubles."
Toussaint was hurried off to France, where he died a year later from
the hardships to which he was exposed at the fort of Joux among the
Juras.
Long before the cold of a French winter claimed the life of Toussaint,
his antagonist fell a victim to the sweltering heats of the tropics.
On November 2nd, 1802, Leclerc succumbed to the unhealthy climate and
to his ceaseless anxieties. In the Notes dictated at St. Helena,
Napoleon submitted Leclerc's memory to some strictures for his
indiscretion in regard to the proposed restoration of slavery. The
official letters of that officer expose the injustice of the charge.
The facts are these. After the seeming submission of St. Domingo, the
First Consul caused a decree to be secretly passed at Paris (May 20th,
1802), which prepared to re-establish slavery in the West Indies; but
Decrès warned Leclerc that it was not for the present to be applied to
St. Domingo unless it seemed to be opportune. Knowing how fatal any
such proclamation would be, Leclerc suppressed the decree; but General
Richepanse, who was now governor of the island of Guadeloupe, not only
issued the decree, but proceeded to enforce it with rigour. It was
this which caused the last and most desperate revolts of the blacks,
fatal alike to French domination and to Leclerc's life. His successor,
Rochambeau, in spite of strong reinforcements of troops from France
and a policy of the utmost rigour, succeeded no better. In the island
of Guadeloupe the rebels openly defied the authority of France; and,
on the renewal of war between England and France, the remains of the
expedition were for the most part constrained to surrender to the
British flag or to the insurgent blacks. The island recovered its
so-called independence; and the sole result of Napoleon's efforts in
this sphere was the loss of more than twenty generals and some 30,000
troops.
The assertion has been repeatedly made that the First Consul told off
for this service the troops of the Army of the Rhine, with the aim of
exposing to the risks of tropical life the most republican part of the
French forces. That these furnished a large part of the expeditionary
force cannot be denied; but if his design was to rid himself of
political foes, it is difficult to see why he should not have selected
Moreau, Masséna, or Augereau, rather than Leclerc. The fact that his
brother-in-law was accompanied by his wife, Pauline Bonaparte, for
whom venomous tongues asserted that Napoleon cherished a more than
brotherly affection, will suffice to refute the slander. Finally, it
may be remarked that Bonaparte had not hesitated to subject the
choicest part of his Army of Italy and his own special friends to
similiar risks in Egypt and Syria. He never hesitated to sacrifice
thousands of lives when a great object was at stake; and the
restoration of the French West Indian Colonies might well seem worth
an army, especially as St. Domingo was not only of immense instrinsic
value to France in days when beetroot sugar was unknown, but was of
strategic importance as a base of operations for the vast colonial
empire which the First Consul proposed to rebuild in the basin of the
Mississippi.
* * * * *
The history of the French possessions on the North American continent
could scarcely be recalled by ardent patriots without pangs of
remorse. The name Louisiana, applied to a vast territory stretching up
the banks of the Mississippi and the Missouri, recalled the glorious
days of Louis XIV., when the French flag was borne by stout
_voyageurs_ up the foaming rivers of Canada and the placid reaches of
the father of rivers. It had been the ambition of Montcalm to connect
the French stations on Lake Erie with the forts of Louisiana; but that
warrior-statesman in the West, as his kindred spirit, Dupleix, in the
East, had fallen on the evil days of Louis XV., when valour and merit
in the French colonies were sacrificed to the pleasures and parasites
of Versailles. The natural result followed. Louisiana was yielded up
to Spain in 1763, in order to reconcile the Court of Madrid to
cessions required by that same Peace of Paris. Twenty years later
Spain recovered from England the provinces of eastern and western
Florida; and thus, at the dawn of the nineteenth century, the red and
yellow flag waved over all the lands between California, New Orleans,
and the southern tip of Florida.[198]
Many efforts were made by France to regain her old Mississippi
province; and in 1795, at the break up of the First Coalition, the
victorious Republic pressed Spain to yield up this territory, where
the settlers were still French at heart. Doubtless the weak King of
Spain would have yielded; but his chief Minister, Godoy, clung
tenaciously to Louisiana, and consented to cede only the Spanish part
of St. Domingo--a diplomatic success which helped to earn him the
title of the Prince of the Peace. So matters remained until
Talleyrand, as Foreign Minister, sought to gain Louisiana from Spain
before it slipped into the horny fists of the Anglo-Saxons.
That there was every prospect of this last event was the conviction
not only of the politicians at Washington, but also of every
iron-worker on the Ohio and of every planter on the Tennessee. Those
young but growing settlements chafed against the restraints imposed by
Spain on the river trade of the lower Mississippi--the sole means
available for their exports in times when the Alleghanies were crossed
by only two tracks worthy the name of roads. In 1795 they gained free
egress to the Gulf of Mexico and the right of bonding their
merchandise in a special warehouse at New Orleans. Thereafter the
United States calmly awaited the time when racial vigour and the
exigencies of commerce should yield to them the possession of the
western prairies and the little townships of Arkansas and New Orleans.
They reckoned without taking count of the eager longing of the French
for their former colony and the determination of Napoleon to give
effect to this honourable sentiment.
In July, 1800, when his negotiations with the United
States were in good train, the First Consul sent to Madrid
instructions empowering the French Minister there to arrange a treaty
whereby France should receive Louisiana in return for the cession of
Tuscany to the heir of the Duke of Parma. This young man had married
the daughter of Charles IV. of Spain; and, for the aggrandizement of
his son-in-law, that _roi fainéant_, was ready, nay eager, to bargain
away a quarter of a continent; and he did so by a secret convention
signed at St. Ildefonso on October 7th, 1800.
But though Charles rejoiced over this exchange, Godoy, who was gifted
with some insight into the future, was determined to frustrate it.
Various events occurred which enabled this wily Minister, first to
delay, and then almost to prevent, the odious surrender. Chief among
these was the certainty that the transfer from weak hands to strong
hands would be passionately resented by the United States; and until
peace with England was fully assured, and the power of Toussaint
broken, it would be folly for the First Consul to risk a conflict with
the United States. That they would fight rather than see the western
prairies pass into the First Consul's hands was abundantly manifest.
It is proved by many patriotic pamphlets. The most important of
these--"An Address to the Government of the United States on the
Cession of Louisiana to the French," published at Philadelphia in
1802--quoted largely from a French _brochure_ by a French Councillor
of State. The French writer had stated that along the Mississippi his
countrymen would find boundless fertile prairies, and as for the
opposition of the United States--"a nation of pedlars and
shopkeepers"--that could be crushed by a French alliance with the
Indian tribes. The American writer thereupon passionately called on
his fellow-citizens to prevent this transfer: "France is to be dreaded
only, or chiefly, on the Mississippi. The Government must take
Louisiana before it passes into her hands. The iron is now hot:
command us to rise as one man and strike." These and other like
protests at last stirred the placid Government at Washington; and it
bade the American Minister at Paris to make urgent remonstrances, the
sole effect of which was to draw from Talleyrand the bland assurance
that the transfer had not been seriously contemplated.[199]
By the month of June, 1802, all circumstances seemed to smile on
Napoleon's enterprise: England had ratified the Peace of Amiens,
Toussaint had delivered himself up to Leclerc: France had her troops
strongly posted in Tuscany and Parma, and could, if necessary,
forcibly end the remaining scruples felt at Madrid; while the United
States, with a feeble army and a rotting navy, were controlled by the
most peaceable and Franco-phil of their presidents, Thomas Jefferson.
The First Consul accordingly ordered an expedition to be prepared, as
if for the reinforcement of Leclerc in St. Domingo, though it was
really destined for New Orleans; and he instructed Talleyrand to
soothe or coerce the Court of Madrid into the final act of transfer.
The offer was therefore made by the latter (June 19th) in the name of
the First Consul that _in no case would Louisiana ever be alienated to
a Third Power_. When further delays supervened, Bonaparte, true to his
policy of continually raising his demands, required that Eastern and
Western Florida should also be ceded to him by Spain, on condition
that the young King of Etruria (for so Tuscany was now to be styled)
should regain his father's duchy of Parma.[200]
A word of explanation must here find place as to this singular
proposal. Parma had long been under French control; and, in March,
1801, by the secret Treaty of Madrid, the ruler of that duchy, whose
death seemed imminent, was to resign his claims thereto, provided that
his son should gain Etruria--as had been already provided for at St.
Ildefonso and Lunéville. The duke was, however, allowed to keep his
duchy until his death, which occurred on October 9th, 1802; and it is
stated by our envoy in Paris to have been hastened by news of that
odious bargain.[201] His death now furnished Bonaparte with a good
occasion for seeking to win an immense area in the New World at the
expense of a small Italian duchy, which his troops could at any time
easily overrun. This consideration seems to have occurred even to
Charles IV.; he refused to barter the Floridas against Parma. The
re-establishment of his son-in-law in his paternal domains was
doubtless desirable, but not at the cost of so exacting a heriot as
East and West Florida.
From out this maze of sordid intrigues two or three facts challenge
our attention. Both Bonaparte and Charles IV. regarded the most
fertile waste lands then calling for the plough as fairly exchanged
against half a million of Tuscans; but the former feared the
resentment of the United States, and sought to postpone a rupture
until he could coerce them by overwhelming force. It is equally clear
that, had he succeeded in this enterprise, France might have gained a
great colonial empire in North America protected from St. Domingo as a
naval and military base, while that island would have doubly prospered
from the vast supplies poured down the Mississippi; but this success
he would have bought at the expense of a _rapprochement_ between the
United States and their motherland, such as a bitter destiny was to
postpone to the end of the century.
The prospect of an Anglo-American alliance might well give pause even
to Napoleon. Nevertheless, he resolved to complete this vast
enterprise, which, if successful, would have profoundly affected the
New World and the relative importance of the French and English
peoples. The Spanish officials at New Orleans, in pursuance of orders
from Madrid, now closed the lower Mississippi to vessels of the United
States (October, 1802). At once a furious outcry arose in the States
against an act which not only violated their treaty rights, but
foreshadowed the coming grip of the First Consul. For this outburst he
was prepared: General Victor was at Dunkirk, with five battalions and
sixteen field-pieces, ready to cross the Atlantic, ostensibly for the
relief of Leclerc, but really in order to take possession of New
Orleans.[202] But his plan was foiled by the sure instincts of the
American people, by the disasters of the St. Domingo expedition, and
by the restlessness of England under his various provocations.
Jefferson, despite his predilections for France, was compelled to
forbid the occupation of Louisiana: he accordingly sent Monroe to
Paris with instructions to effect a compromise, or even to buy
outright the French claims on that land. Various circumstances
favoured this mission. In the first week of the year 1803 Napoleon
received the news of Leclerc's death and the miserable state of the
French in St. Domingo; and as the tidings that he now received from
Egypt, Syria, Corfu, and the East generally, were of the most alluring
kind, he tacitly abandoned his Mississippi enterprise in favour of the
oriental schemes which were closer to his heart. In that month of
January he seems to have turned his gaze from the western hemisphere
towards Turkey, Egypt, and India. True, he still seemed to be doing
his utmost for the occupation of Louisiana, but only as a device for
sustaining the selling price of the western prairies.
When the news of this change of policy reached the ears of Joseph and
Lucien Bonaparte, it aroused their bitterest opposition. Lucien plumed
himself on having struck the bargain with Spain which had secured that
vast province at the expense of an Austrian archduke's crown; and
Joseph knew only too well that Napoleon was freeing himself in the
West in order to be free to strike hard in Europe and the East. The
imminent rupture of the Peace of Amiens touched him keenly: for that
peace was his proudest achievement. If colonial adventures must be
sought, let them be sought in the New World, where Spain and the
United States could offer only a feeble resistance, rather than in
Europe and Asia, where unending war must be the result of an
aggressive policy.
At once the brothers sought an interview with Napoleon. He chanced to
be in his bath, a warm bath perfumed with scents, where he believed
that tired nature most readily found recovery. He ordered them to be
admitted, and an interesting family discussion was the result. On his
mentioning the proposed sale, Lucien at once retorted that the
Legislature would never consent to this sacrifice. He there touched
the wrong chord in Napoleon's nature: had he appealed to the memories
of _le grand monarque_ and of Montcalm, possibly he might have bent
that iron will; but the mention of the consent of the French deputies
roused the spleen of the autocrat, who, from amidst the scented water,
mockingly bade his brother go into mourning for the affair, which he,
and he alone, intended to carry out. This gibe led Joseph to threaten
that he would mount the tribune in the Chambers and head the
opposition to this unpatriotic surrender. Defiance flashed forth once
more from the bath; and the First Consul finally ended their bitter
retorts by spasmodically rising as suddenly falling backwards, and
drenching Joseph to the skin. His peals of scornful laughter, and the
swooning of the valet, who was not yet fully inured to these family
scenes, interrupted the argument of the piece; but, when resumed a
little later, _à sec_, Lucien wound up by declaring that, if he were
not his brother, he would be his enemy. "My enemy! That is rather
strong," exclaimed Napoleon. "You my enemy! I would break you, see,
like this box"--and he dashed his snuff-box on the carpet. It did not
break: but the portrait of Josephine was detached and broken.
Whereupon Lucien picked up the pieces and handed them to his brother,
remarking: "It is a pity: meanwhile, until you can break me, it is
your wife's portrait that you have broken."[203]
To Talleyrand, Napoleon was equally unbending: summoning him on April
11th, he said:
"Irresolution and deliberation are no longer in season. I renounce
Louisiana. It is not only New Orleans that I cede: it is the whole
colony, without reserve; I know the price of what I abandon. I have
proved the importance I attach to this province, since my first
diplomatic act with Spain had the object of recovering it. I
renounce it with the greatest regret: to attempt obstinately to
retain it would be folly. I direct you to negotiate the
affair."[204]
After some haggling with Monroe, the price agreed on for this
territory was 60,000,000 francs, the United States also covenanting to
satisfy the claims which many of their citizens had on the French
treasury. For this paltry sum the United States gained a peaceful
title to the debatable lands west of Lake Erie and to the vast tracts
west of the Mississippi. The First Consul carried out his threat of
denying to the deputies of France any voice in this barter. The war
with England sufficed to distract their attention; and France turned
sadly away from the western prairies, which her hardy sons had first
opened up, to fix her gaze, first on the Orient, and thereafter on
European conquests. No more was heard of Louisiana, and few references
were permitted to the disasters in St. Domingo; for Napoleon abhorred
any mention of a _coup manqué_, and strove to banish from the
imagination of France those dreams of a trans-Atlantic Empire which
had drawn him, as they were destined sixty years later to draw his
nephew, to the verge of war with the rising republic of the New World.
In one respect, the uncle was more fortunate than the nephew. In
signing the treaty with the United States, the First Consul could
represent his conduct, not as a dexterous retreat from an impossible
situation, but as an act of grace to the Americans and a blow to
England. "This accession of territory," he said, "strengthens for ever
the power of the United States, and I have just given to England a
maritime rival that sooner or later will humble her pride."[205]
* * * * *
In the East there seemed to be scarcely the same field for expansion
as in the western hemisphere. Yet, as the Orient had ever fired the
imagination of Napoleon, he was eager to expand the possessions of
France in the Indian Ocean. In October, 1801, these amounted to the
Isle of Bourbon and the Isle of France; for the former French
possessions in India, namely, Pondicherry, Mahé, Karikal,
Chandernagore, along with their factories at Yanaon, Surat, and two
smaller places, had been seized by the British, and were not to be
given back to France until six months after the definitive treaty of
peace was signed. From these scanty relics it seemed impossible to
rear a stable fabric: yet the First Consul grappled with the task.
After the cessation of hostilities, he ordered Admiral Gantheaume with
four ships of war to show the French flag in those seas, and to be
ready in due course to take over the French settlements in India.
Meanwhile he used his utmost endeavours in the negotiations at Amiens
to gain an accession of land for Pondicherry, such as would make it a
possible base for military enterprise. Even before those negotiations
began he expressed to Lord Cornwallis his desire for such an
extension; and when the British plenipotentiary urged the cession of
Tobago to Great Britain, he offered to exchange it for an
establishment or territory in India.[206] Herein the First Consul
committed a serious tactical blunder; for his insistence on this topic
and his avowed desire to negotiate direct with the Nabob undoubtedly
aroused the suspicions of our Government.
Still greater must have been their concern when they learnt that
General Decaen was commissioned to receive back the French possessions
in India; for that general in 1800 had expressed to Bonaparte his
hatred of the English, and had begged, even if he had to wait ten
years, that he might be sent where he could fight them, especially in
India. As was his wont, Bonaparte said little at the time; but after
testing Decaen's military capacity, he called him to his side at
midsummer, 1802, and suddenly asked him if he still thought about
India. On receiving an eager affirmative, he said, "Well, you will
go." "In what capacity?" "As captain-general: go to the Minister of
Marine and of the Colonies and ask him to communicate to you the
documents relating to this expedition." By such means did Bonaparte
secure devoted servants. It is scarcely needful to add that the choice
of such a man only three months after the signature of the Treaty of
Amiens proves that the First Consul only intended to keep that peace
as long as his forward colonial policy rendered it desirable.[207]
Meanwhile our Governor-General, Marquis Wellesley, was displaying an
activity which might seem to be dictated by knowledge of Bonaparte's
designs. There was, indeed, every need of vigour. Nowhere had French
and British interests been so constantly in collision as in India. In
1798 France had intrigued with Tippoo Sahib at Seringapatam, and
arranged a treaty for the purpose of expelling the British nation from
India. When in 1799 French hopes were dashed by Arthur Wellesley's
capture of that city and the death of Tippoo, there still remained
some prospect of overthrowing British supremacy by uniting the
restless Mahratta rulers of the north and centre, especially Scindiah
and Holkar, in a powerful confederacy. For some years their armies,
numbering some 60,000 men, had been drilled and equipped by French
adventurers, the ablest and most powerful of whom was M. Perron.
Doubtless it was with the hope of gaining their support that the Czar
Paul and Bonaparte had in 1800 formed the project of invading India by
way of Persia. And after the dissipation of that dream, there still
remained the chance of strengthening the Mahratta princes so as to
contest British claims with every hope of success. Forewarned by the
home Government of Bonaparte's eastern designs, our able and ambitious
Governor-General now prepared to isolate the Mahratta chieftains, to
cut them off from all contact with France, and, if necessary, to
shatter Scindiah's army, the only formidable native force drilled by
European methods.
Such was the position of affairs when General Decaen undertook the
enterprise of revivifying French influences in India.
The secret instructions which he received from the First Consul, dated
January 15th, 1803, were the following:
"To communicate with the peoples or princes who are most impatient
under the yoke of the English Company.... To send home a report six
months after his arrival in India, concerning all information that
he shall have collected, on the strength, the position, and the
feeling of the different peoples of India, as well as on the
strength and position of the different English establishments; ...
his views, and hopes that he might have of finding support, in case
of war, so as to be able to maintain himself in the Peninsula....
Finally, as one must reason on the hypothesis that we should not be
masters of the sea and could hope for slight succour,"
Decaen is to seek among the French possessions or elsewhere a place
serving as a _point d'appui_, where in the last resort he could
capitulate and thus gain the means of being transported to France with
arms and baggage. Of this _point d'appui_ he will
"strive to take possession after the first months ... whatever be
the nation to which it belongs, Portuguese, Dutch, or English....
If war should break out between England and France before the 1st
of Vendémiaire, Year XIII. (September 22nd, 1804), and the captain
general is warned of it before receiving the orders of the
Government, he has _carte blanche_ to fall back on the Ile de
France and the Cape, or to remain in India.... It is now considered
impossible that we should have war with England without dragging in
Holland. One of the first cares of the captain-general will be to
gain control over the Dutch, Portuguese, and Spanish
establishments, and of their resources. The captain-general's
mission is at first one of observation, on political and military
topics, with the small forces that he takes out, and an occupation
of _comptoirs_ for our commerce: but the First Consul, if well
informed by him, will perhaps be able some day to put him in a
position to acquire that great glory which hands down the memory of
men beyond the lapse of centuries."[208]
Had these instructions been known to English statesmen, they would
certainly have ended the peace which was being thus perfidiously used
by the First Consul for the destruction of our Indian Empire. But
though their suspicions were aroused by the departure of Decaen's
expedition and by the activity of French agents in India, yet the
truth remained half hidden, until, at a later date, the publication of
General Decaen's papers shed a flood of light on Napoleon's policy.
Owing to various causes, the expedition did not set sail from Brest
until the beginning of March, 1803. The date should be noticed. It
proves that at this time Napoleon judged that a rupture of peace was
not imminent; and when he saw his miscalculation, he sought to delay
the war with England as long as possible in order to allow time for
Decaen's force at least to reach the Cape, then in the hands of the
Dutch. The French squadron was too weak to risk a fight with an
English fleet; it comprised only four ships of war, two transports,
and a few smaller vessels, carrying about 1,800 troops.[209] The ships
were under the command of Admiral Linois, who was destined to be the
terror of our merchantmen in eastern seas. Decaen's first halt was at
the Cape, which had been given back by us to the Dutch East India
Company on February 21st, 1803. The French general found the Dutch
officials in their usual state of lethargy: the fortifications had not
been repaired, and many of the inhabitants, and even of the officials
themselves, says Decaen, were devoted to the English. After surveying
the place, doubtless with a view to its occupation as the _point
d'appui_ hinted at in his instructions, he set sail on the 27th of
May, and arrived before Pondicherry on the 11th of July.[210]
In the meantime important events had transpired which served to wreck
not only Decaen's enterprise, but the French influence in India. In
Europe the flames of war had burst forth, a fact of which both Decaen
and the British officials were ignorant; but the Governor of Fort St.
George (Madras), having, before the 15th of June, "received
intelligence which appeared to indicate the certainty of an early
renewal of hostilities between His Majesty and France," announced that
he must postpone the restitution of Pondicherry to the French, until
he should have the authority of the Governor-General for such
action.[211]
The Marquis Wellesley was still less disposed to any such restitution.
French intervention in the affairs of Switzerland, which will be
described later on, had so embittered Anglo-French relations that on
October the 17th, 1802, Lord Hobart, our Minister of War and for the
Colonies, despatched a "most secret" despatch, stating that recent
events rendered it necessary to postpone this retrocession. At a later
period Wellesley received contrary orders, instructing him to restore
French and Dutch territories; but he judged that step to be
inopportune considering the gravity of events in the north of India.
So active was the French propaganda at the Mahratta Courts, and so
threatening were their armed preparations, that he redoubled his
efforts for the consolidation of British supremacy. He resolved to
strike at Scindiah, unless he withdrew his southern army into his own
territories; and, on receiving an evasive answer from that prince, who
hoped by temporizing to gain armed succours from France, he launched
the British forces against him. Now was the opportunity for Arthur
Wellesley to display his prowess against the finest forces of the
East; and brilliantly did the young warrior display it. The victories
of Assaye in September, and of Argaum in November, scattered the
southern Mahratta force, but only after desperate conflicts that
suggested how easily a couple of Decaen's battalions might have turned
the scales of war.
Meanwhile, in the north, General Lake stormed Aligarh, and drove
Scindiah's troops back to Delhi. Disgusted at the incapacity and
perfidy that surrounded him, Perron threw up his command; and another
conflict near Delhi yielded that ancient seat of Empire to our trading
Company. In three months the results of the toil of Scindiah, the
restless ambition of Holkar, the training of European officers, and the
secret intrigues of Napoleon, were all swept to the winds. Wellesley now
annexed the land around Delhi and Agra, besides certain coast districts
which cut off the Mahrattas from the sea, also stipulating for the
complete exclusion of French agents from their States. Perron was
allowed to return to France; and the brusque reception accorded him from
Bonaparte may serve to measure the height of the First Consul's hopes,
the depth of his disappointment, and his resentment against a man who
was daunted by a single disaster.[212]
Meanwhile it was the lot of Decaen to witness, in inglorious
inactivity, the overthrow of all his hopes. Indeed, he barely escaped
the capture which Wellesley designed for his whole force, as soon as
he should hear of the outbreak of war in Europe; but by secret and
skilful measures all the French ships, except one transport, escaped
to their appointed rendezvous, the Ile de France. Enraged by these
events, Decaen and Linois determined to inflict every possible injury
on their foes. The latter soon swept from the eastern seas British
merchantmen valued at a million sterling, while the general ceased not
to send emissaries into India to encourage the millions of natives to
shake off the yoke of "a few thousand English."
These officers effected little, and some of them were handed over to
the English authorities by the now obsequious potentates. Decaen also
endeavoured to carry out the First Consul's design of occupying
strategic points in the Indian Ocean. In the autumn of 1803 he sent a
fine cruiser to the Imaum of Muscat, to induce him to cede a station
for commercial purposes at that port. But Wellesley, forewarned by our
agent at Bagdad, had made a firm alliance with the Imaum, who
accordingly refused the request of the French captain. The incident,
however, supplies another link in the chain of evidence as to the
completeness of Napoleon's oriental policy, and yields another proof
of the vigour of our great proconsul at Calcutta, by whose foresight
our Indian Empire was preserved and strengthened.[213]
Bonaparte's enterprises were by no means limited to well-known lands.
The unknown continent of the Southern Seas appealed to his
imagination, which pictured its solitudes transformed by French energy
into a second fatherland. Australia, or New Holland, as it was then
called, had long attracted the notice of French explorers, but the
English penal settlements at and near Sydney formed the only European
establishment on the great southern island at the dawn of the
nineteenth century.
Bonaparte early turned his eyes towards that land. On his voyage to
Egypt he took with him the volumes in which Captain Cook described his
famous discoveries; and no sooner was he firmly installed as First
Consul than he planned with the Institute of France a great French
expedition to New Holland. The full text of the plan has never been
published: probably it was suppressed or destroyed; and the sole
public record relating to it is contained in the official account of
the expedition published at the French Imperial Press in 1807.[214]
According to this description, the aim was solely geographical and
scientific. The First Consul and the Institute of France desired that
the ships should proceed to Van Diemen's Land, explore its rivers, and
then complete the survey of the south coast of the continent, so as to
see whether behind the islands of the Nuyts Archipelago there might be
a channel connecting with the Gulf of Carpentaria, and so cutting New
Holland in half. They were then to sail west to "Terre Leeuwin,"
ascend the Swan River, complete the exploration of Shark's Bay and the
north-western coasts, and winter in Timor or Amboyne. Finally, they
were to coast along New Guinea and the Gulf of Carpentaria, and return
to France in 1803.
In September, 1800, the ships, having on board twenty-three scientific
men, set sail from Havre under the command of Commodore Baudin. They
received no molestation from English cruisers, it being a rule of
honour to give Admiralty permits to all members of genuinely
scientific and geographical parties. Nevertheless, even on its
scientific side, this splendidly-equipped expedition produced no
results comparable with those achieved by Lieutenant Bass or by
Captain Flinders. The French ships touched at the Ile de France, and
sailed thence for Van Diemen's Land. After spending a long time in the
exploration of its coasts and in collecting scientific information,
they made for Sydney in order to repair their ships and gain relief
for their many invalids. Thence, after incidents which will be noticed
presently, they set sail in November, 1802, for Bass Strait and the
coast beyond. They seem to have overlooked the entrance to Port
Phillip--a discovery effected by Murray in 1801, but not made public
till three years later--and failed to notice the outlet of the chief
Australian river, which is obscured by a shallow lake.
There they were met by Captain Flinders, who, on H.M.S.
"Investigator," had been exploring the coast between Cape Leeuwin and
the great gulfs which he named after Lords St. Vincent and Spencer.
Flinders was returning towards Sydney, when, in the long desolate
curve of the bay which he named from the incident Encounter Bay, he
saw the French ships. After brief and guarded intercourse the
explorers separated, the French proceeding to survey the gulfs whence
the "Investigator" had just sailed; while Flinders, after a short stay
at Sydney and the exploration of the northern coast and Torres Strait,
set out for Europe.[215]
Apart from the compilation of the most accurate map of Australia which
had then appeared, and the naming of several features on its
coasts--_e.g._, Capes Berrouilli and Gantheaume, the Bays of Rivoli
and of Lacépède, and the Freycinet Peninsula, which are still
retained--the French expedition achieved no geographical results of
the first importance.
Its political aims now claim attention. A glance at the accompanying
map will show that, under the guise of being an emissary of
civilization, Commodore Baudin was prepared to claim half the
continent for France. Indeed, his final inquiry at Sydney about the
extent of the British claims on the Pacific coast was so significant
as to elicit from Governor King the reply that the whole of Van
Diemen's Land and of the coast from Cape Howe on the south of the
mainland to Cape York on the north was British territory. King also
notified the suspicious action of the French Commander to the Home
Government; and when the French sailed away to explore the coast of
southern and central Australia he sent a ship to watch their
proceedings. When, therefore, Commodore Baudin effected a landing on
King Island, the Union Jack was speedily hoisted and saluted by the
blue-jackets of the British vessel; for it was rumoured that French
officers had said that King Island would afford a good station for the
command of Bass Strait and the seizure of British ships. This was
probably mere gossip. Baudin in his interviews with Governor King at
Sydney disclaimed any intention of seizing Van Diemen's Land; but he
afterwards stated that _he did not know what were the plans of the
French Government with regard to that island_.[216]
Long before this dark saying could be known at Westminster, the
suspicions of our Government had been aroused; and, on February 13th,
1803, Lord Hobart penned a despatch to Governor King bidding him to
take every precaution against French annexations, and to form
settlements in Van Diemen's Land and at Port Phillip. The station of
Risden was accordingly planted on the estuary of the Derwent, a little
above the present town of Hobart; while on the shores of Port Phillip
another expedition sent out from the mother country sought, but for
the present in vain, to find a suitable site. The French cruise
therefore exerted on the fortunes of the English and French peoples an
influence such as has frequently accrued from their colonial rivalry:
it spurred on the island Power to more vigorous efforts than she would
otherwise have put forth, and led to the discomfiture of her
continental rival. The plans of Napoleon for the acquisition of Van
Diemen's Land and the middle of Australia had an effect like that
which the ambition of Montcalm, Dupleix, Lally, and Perron has exerted
on the ultimate destiny of many a vast and fertile territory.
Still, in spite of the destruction of his fleet at Trafalgar, Napoleon
held to his Australian plans. No fact, perhaps, is more suggestive of
the dogged tenacity of his will than his order to Péron and Freycinet
to publish through the Imperial Press at Paris an exhaustive account
of their Australian voyage, accompanied by maps which claimed half of
that continent for the tricolour flag. It appeared in 1807, the year
of Tilsit and of the plans for the partition of Portugal and her
colonies between France and Spain. The hour seemed at last to have
struck for the assertion of French supremacy in other continents, now
that the Franco-Russian alliance had durably consolidated it in
Europe. And who shall say that, but for the Spanish Rising and the
genius of Wellington, a vast colonial empire might not have been won
for France, had Napoleon been free to divert his energies away from
this "old Europe" of which he professed to be utterly weary?
His whole attitude towards European and colonial politics revealed a
statesmanlike appreciation of the forces that were to mould the
fortunes of nations in the nineteenth century. He saw that no
rearrangement of the European peoples could be permanent. They were
too stubborn, too solidly nationalized, to bear the yoke of the new
Charlemagne. "I am come too late," he once exclaimed to Marmont; "men
are too enlightened, there is nothing great left to be done." These
words reveal his sense of the artificiality of his European conquests.
His imperial instincts could find complete satisfaction only among the
docile fate-ridden peoples of Asia, where he might unite the functions
of an Alexander and a Mahomet: or, failing that, he would carve out an
empire from the vast southern lands, organizing them by his unresting
powers and ruling them as kist and as despot. This task would possess
a permanence such as man's conquests over Nature may always enjoy, and
his triumphs over his fellows seldom or never. The political
reconstruction of Europe was at best one of an infinite number of such
changes, always progressing and never completed; while the peopling of
new lands and the founding of States belonged to that highest plane of
political achievement wherein schemes of social beneficence and the
dictates of a boundless ambition could maintain an eager and unending
rivalry. While a strictly European policy could effect little more
than a raking over of long-cultivated parterres, the foundation of a
new colonial empire would be the turning up of the virgin soil of the
limitless prairie.
If we inquire by the light of history why these grand designs failed,
the answer must be that they were too vast fitly to consort with an
ambitious European policy. His ablest adviser noted this fundamental
defect as rapidly developing after the Peace of Amiens, when "he began
to sow the seeds of new wars which, after overwhelming Europe and
France, were to lead him to his ruin." This criticism of Talleyrand on
a man far greater than himself, but who lacked that saving grace of
moderation in which the diplomatist excelled, is consonant with all
the teachings of history. The fortunes of the colonial empires of
Athens and Carthage in the ancient world, of the Italian maritime
republics, of Portugal and Spain, and, above all, the failure of the
projects of Louis XIV. and Louis XV. serve to prove that only as the
motherland enjoys a sufficiency of peace at home and on her borders
can she send forth in ceaseless flow those supplies of men and
treasure which are the very life-blood of a new organism. That
beneficent stream might have poured into Napoleon's Colonial Empire,
had not other claims diverted it into the barren channels of European
warfare. The same result followed as at the time of the Seven Years'
War, when the double effort to wage great campaigns in Germany and
across the oceans sapped the strength of France, and the additions won
by Dupleix and Montcalm fell away from her flaccid frame.
Did Napoleon foresee a similar result? His conduct in regard to
Louisiana and in reference to Decaen's expedition proves that he did,
but only when it was too late. As soon as he saw that his policy was
about to provoke another war with Britain long before he was ready for
it, he decided to forego his oceanic schemes and to concentrate his
forces on his European frontiers. The decision was dictated by a true
sense of imperial strategy. But what shall we say of his sense of
imperial diplomacy? The foregoing narrative and the events to be
described in the next chapters prove that his mistake lay in that
overweening belief in his own powers and in the pliability of his
enemies which was the cause of his grandest triumphs and of his
unexampled overthrow.
* * * * *