In August 1810, London’s Quarterly Review publishes a review of François Péron’s Voyage de Découvertes aux Terres Australes. It’s an impressive tome with, as its frontispiece, an idyllic image of kangaroos, dwarf emus and black swans at Malmaison.
With a pen dipped in vitriol, the reviewer writes:
‘In June 1800, Monsieur Otto, the resident commissary for French prisoners of war, addressed an application to the Lords of the Admiralty to obtain the necessary passports for two armed vessels, Le Géographe and Le Naturaliste, which the French government had appointed for a voyage of discovery round the world “pour mettre le Capitaine Baudin à l’abri de toute attaque hostile, et lui procurer une réception favourable dans les établissements Britanniques où il pourra être obligé de relâcher momentanément” (to protect Captain Baudin from any hostile attack, and to obtain a favourable reception in British establishments he may be obliged to visit temporarily).
‘In consequence of this application, the good-natured Minister, without further inquiry into the tenor of Captain Baudin’s instructions, or the particular object of his mission, obtained His Majesty’s commands that the French vessels “should be permitted to put into any of His Majesty’s ports in case of stress of weather, or to procure assistance, if necessary, to enable them to prosecute their voyage”.
‘The perusal of Monsieur Péron’s book has convinced us that Monsieur Otto’s application was grounded on false pretences, and that the passport was fraudulently obtained; that there never was any intention to send these vessels on a voyage round the world, as stated by Monsieur Otto, but that the sole object of it was to ascertain the real state of New Holland; to discover what our colonists were doing, and what was left for the French to do, on this great continent, in the event of a peace; to find some port in the neighbourhood of our settlements, which should be to them what Pondicherry was to Hindustan [Pondicherry, a French colony in India, was captured by the British in 1793]; to rear the standard of Bonaparte, then First Consul, on the first convenient spot; and finally, that the only circumnavigation intended on this voyage d’espionnage was that of Australia.’1
Matthew Flinders, on reading Péron’s account of the expedition, is shocked to find that his discoveries have been claimed by the French. The entire coast from Western Port, in what is now southern Victoria, to Cape Nuyts, in South Australia, has been named Terre Napoleon. Among others, Kangaroo Island is named Île Decrès, Spencer Gulf is called Golfe Bonaparte, and Gulf St Vincent, Golfe Josephine.
Flinders writes: ‘The publication of the French voyage of discovery, written by Monsieur Péron, was in great forwardness, and the Emperor Napoleon, considering it to be a national work, had granted a considerable sum to render the publication complete. From a Moniteur of July 1808, it appeared that French names were given to all of my discoveries, and those of Captain Grant, on the south coast of Terra Australis. It was kept out of sight that I had ever been upon the coast, and in speaking of Monsieur Péron’s first volume the newspaper asserted that no voyage ever made by the English nation could be compared with that of Le Géographe and Le Naturaliste.
‘It may be remembered that after exploring the south coast up to Kangaroo Island, with the two gulfs, I met Captain Baudin and gave him the first information of those places, and of the advantages they offered him, and it was but an ill return to seek to deprive me of the little honour attending the discovery.’2
François Péron will never face his accusers. At his home in Cérilly, France, on 14 December 1810, while working on the second volume of his Voyage de Découvertes, he dies of tuberculosis – the same disease that took his bête noire, Nicolas Baudin. Péron is 35 years old. It will be left to Louis de Freycinet to complete the work.
Four years later, maintaining the rage, the Quarterly Review is in no doubt that Flinders’ prolonged imprisonment on Isle de France was ‘a trick to rob him of the merit of his discoveries’, and relays Flinders’ recollection that when, in Port Jackson, he showed Baudin, Péron and Henri de Freycinet one of his charts, Freycinet said to him, ‘Captain, if we had not been kept so long picking up shells and butterflies at Van Diemen’s Land, you would not have discovered the south coast before us.’3
Péron stated that his claims of French discoveries were confirmed by the expedition’s charts, but never published the charts, leaving the British to suspect that no such charts exist. ‘How then,’ asked Flinders, ‘came Monsieur Péron to advance what was so contrary to truth? Was he a man destitute of all principle?’
Generously, he concluded, ‘My answer is that I believe his candour to have been equal to his acknowledged abilities, and that what he wrote was from overruling authority and smote him to the heart.’4
In other words, that Péron had been ordered to lie and reluctantly obeyed. Well, maybe.