Terre Napoleon | Page 7

them till the
post-bellum readjustment of 1815 was negotiated.
A similar record applies to Senegal, in West Africa. It had been French
since the era of Richelieu, with intervals of capture, restoration, and
recapture. The British ousted their rivals once more in 1804, and gave
back the conquest in 1815.
A careful examination of these details reveals a remarkable fact.
Although the year 1810 saw the Napoleonic empire at the crest of its
greatness in Europe; although by that time the Emperor was the
mightiest personal factor in world politics; although in that year he
married a daughter of the Caesars, and thought he had laid plans for the
foundation of a dynasty that should perpetuate the Napoleonic name in
association with Napoleonic power--yet, in that very year, France had
been stripped of the last inch of her colonial possessions. The nation in
whose glorious Pantheon were emblazoned the great names of
Montcalm and Dupleix, of Jacques Cartier and La Salle, of Champlain
and La Bourdonnais, and whose inveterate capacity for colonisation of
even the most difficult kind can never be doubted by any candid
student of her achievements in this field, both before and since the

disastrous Napoleonic age, was now naked of even so much as a barren
rock in a distant sea upon which to plant her flag.
Such is the picture of the French colonial system as it presents itself
during the period within which occurred the events described in this
book. These facts give poignancy to the reflection of the distinguished
philosophical historian who has written of his country: "A melancholy
consequence of her policy of interference in neighbouring states, and of
occupying herself with continental conquests, has always been the loss
of her naval power and of her colonies. She could only establish
oversea possessions on a durable foundation on the condition of
renouncing the policy of invasion that she practised in Europe during
the centuries. Every continental victory was balanced by the ruin of our
naval power and of our distant possessions, that is to say, the decrease
of our real influence in the world."* (* Leroy-Beaulieu, Colonisation
chez les Peuples Modernes, 1902 edition, 1 220.)
PART 3.
It would be simple to sum up the colonial situation of Great Britain in
the period under review, by saying that she gained just in the measure
that France lost. But such a crude formula would not convey a
sufficient sense of her actual achievements. The end of the great war
left her with a wider dominion than that with which she was endowed
when she plunged into the struggle; but it left her also with augmented
power and prestige, a settled sense of security, and a steeled spirit of
resolution--elements not measurable on the scale of the map, but
counting as immense factors in the government and development of
oversea possessions.
The details of the British colonial empire during the storm epoch, are as
follow:--
In Canada she governed a belt of country stretching from the Atlantic
to the Pacific, divided for administrative purposes into two areas, one
of which, Lower Canada--embracing the cities of Quebec and Montreal,
and including the basin of the St. Lawrence--was populated principally
by people of French origin. It would be too much to suppose that these

colonists, who jealously preserved the French language and the French
tradition, were indifferent to the doings of their kin across the water;
and there were, indeed, many who cherished the hope that events would
so shape themselves as to restore the authority of France in this part of
the New World. But the habitant was Roman Catholic as well as
French, and the hierarchy was profoundly distrustful of the regime
which it regarded as the heritage of the hateful ideas of 1789. We may
speculate as to what would have happened if Napoleon had set himself
to woo the affections of the French Canadians. But throughout the great
wars Canada remained loyal to the British connection, despite internal
difficulties and discontents.
Great Britain also held Newfoundland, as well as those maritime
provinces which have since become federated as part of the Dominion.
In South America she possessed British Guiana, and for a period, as
related above, French Guiana also.
In the West Indies, in 1800, her flag flew over the entire crescent of the
Windward and Leeward groups from Granada to the Virgins; she was
mistress of Trinidad, Tobago, Jamaica, the "still vexd" Bermudas and
the whole bunch of the Bahamas; and she had interests in San Domingo.
At the Peace of Amiens she retained only Trinidad of the islands
captured during the war; and she presented no very stubborn resistance
to the negro revolt that lost her any further control over the largest of
the sugar islands.
She had the Cape of Good