Terre Napoleon | Page 4

(October) The expedition sails. (December) Grant reaches Port Jackson in the Lady Nelson.
1800. Battle of Marengo.
1801. (May) Baudin's ships reach Australia. (July) Flinders sails from England in the Investigator. (August) Le Geographe reaches Timor. (November) Baudin's ships sail from Timor to Tasmania. (December) The Investigator reaches Australia.
1801. Battle of Copenhagen.
1802. (January) Murray discovers Port Phillip. (February) Flinders discovers Spencer's Gulf; Murray enters Port Phillip. (March) French ships separated by storm. (April) Meeting of Flinders and Baudin in Encounter Bay; Flinders enters Port Phillip. (May) Investigator reaches Port Jackson. (June) Baudin reaches Port Jackson. (July) Flinders sails for Gulf of Carpentaria. (November) French ships leave Sydney. (December) Le Naturaliste sails for Europe; the Cumberland at King Island; Robbins erects the British flag; Le Geographe and Casuarina sail for Kangaroo Island.
1802. Peace of Amiens.
1803. (January) Freycinet in Spencer's and St. Vincent's Gulfs. (June) Le Geographe again at Timor; Le Naturaliste enters Havre; Investigator returns to Port Jackson. (July) Baudin abandons exploration and sails for Mauritius. (August) Flinders wrecked in the Porpoise. Derwent River Settlement formed. (September) Death of Baudin. (December) Flinders calls at Mauritius in the Cumberland; is imprisoned.
1803. Sale of Louisiana by France to United States. Renewal of the great war.
1804. Le Geographe arrives at Lorient. Hobart Settlement formed.
1804. Napoleon becomes Emperor.
1805. Battle of Trafalgar.
1806. Napoleon signs order for release of Flinders.
1806. Death of William Pitt.
1807. Publication of first volume of Voyage de Decouvertes aux Terres Australes, with first atlas.
1810. (July) Liberation of Flinders. (October) Mauritius blockaded by the British. (December) Capitulation of Mauritius; death of Peron.
1810. Napoleon marries Marie Louise.
1811. Second part of French atlas published.
1812. Publication of Freycinet atlas of charts.
1812. The retreat from Moscow. British Naval War with U.S.A.
1814. Publication of Flinders' Voyage to Terra Australis; death of Flinders (July).
1814. Abdication of Napoleon.
1815. Publication of volume 3 of Voyage de Decouvertes.
1815. Battle of Waterloo.
1816. Publication of volume 2 of Voyage de Decouvertes, with revised map of Australia.
1821. Death of Napoleon.
1826. Westernport Settlement projected and abandoned.
1829. Foundation of Western Australia.
1832. Death of Decaen.
1832. English Reform Bill.
1835. Batman finds site of Melbourne.
1836. Foundation of South Australia.
1837. City of Melbourne founded.
1837. Accession of Queen Victoria.
1851. Colony of Victoria established.
1851. Louis Napoleon's coup d'etat.
1853. French annexation of New Caledonia.
1854. Crimean War.
1859. Colony of Queensland established.
1860. Lincoln, President of the United States.

TERRE NAPOLEON.
INTRODUCTION.
PART 1.
A continent with a record of unruffled peace. Causes of this variation from the usual course of history. English and French colonisation during the Napoleonic wars. The height of the Napoleonic empire and the entire loss of the French colonies. The British colonial situation during the same period. The colony at Port Jackson in 1800. Its defencelessness. The French squadron in the Indian Ocean. Rear-Admiral Linois. The audacious exploit of Commodore Dance, and Napoleon's direction to "take Port Jackson" in 1810.
Australia is the only considerable portion of the world which has enjoyed the blessed record of unruffled peace. On every other continent, in nearly every other island large in area, "war's red ruin writ in flame" has wrought its havoc, leaving evidences in many a twinging cicatrice. Invasion, rebellion, and civil war constitute enormous elements in the chronicles of nations; and Shelley wrote that the study of history, though too important to be neglected, was "hateful and disgusting to my very soul," because he found in it little more than a "record of crimes and miseries." A map of the globe, coloured crimson as to those countries where blood has flowed in armed conflicts between men, would present a circling splash of red; but the vast island which is balanced on the Tropic of Capricorn, and spreads her bulk from the tenth parallel of south latitude to "the roaring forties," would show up white in the spacious diagram of carnage. No foreign foe has menaced her thrifty progress since the British planted themselves at Port Jackson in 1788; nor have any internal broils of serious importance interrupted her prosperous career.
This striking variation from the common fate of peoples is attributable to three causes. First, the development of a British civilisation in Australia has synchronised with the attainment and unimpaired maintenance of dominant sea-power by the parent nation. The supremacy of Great Britain upon the blue water enabled her colonies to grow to strength and wealth under the protection of a mighty arm. Secondly, during the same period a great change in British colonial policy was inaugurated. Statesmen were slow to learn the lessons taught in so trenchant a fashion by the revolt of the American colonies; but more liberal views gradually ripened, and Lord Durham's Report on the State of Canada, issued in 1839, occasioned a beneficent new era of self-government. The states of Australia were soon left with no grievance which it was not within their own power to remedy if they chose, and virtually as they chose. Thirdly,