United States or Ukraine ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
It is difficult to see what other motive Decaen can have had. The sheer cantankerous desire to annoy and injure a man who had angered him can hardly have been so strong within him as even to cause a disregard of the common proprietary rights of his prisoner. The book could have been of no use to Decaen for any other purpose.
All he did was to insert two lines at the bottom of the page in that part of volume 3 dealing with navigation details, where very few readers would observe the reference. There remains the question: Why did General Decaen keep Flinders' third log-book when restoring to him all his other papers?
But why he risked giving offence to Napoleon at all by the disregard of orders, there is, it would seem, nothing in Decaen's papers to show. M. Prentout, who has studied them carefully, is driven back on the suggestion that the prolongation of the captivity was due to "entetement" stubbornness. The obstinacy of Decaen is not a sufficient reason.
Flinders had then been released; but it is significant that he was held in the clutches of General Decaen, despite constant demands for his liberation, until the preparation of the French charts was sufficiently advanced to make it impossible for his own to be issued until theirs had been placed before the world.
Decaen also alleged that Flinders was personally rude to him in presenting himself before him "le chapeau sur la tete." Flinders was undoubtedly smarting under a sense of wrong at the time, but discourtesy was by no means a feature of his character; and to imprison a man for six and a half years for not taking his hat off would have been queer conduct from a son of the Revolution!
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 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.
That was the time which his secret instructions to Decaen marked out for the outbreak of the war that would yield to the tricolour a world-wide supremacy. These schemes miscarried owing to the impetuosity of their contriver.
Assertions commonly made as to French plagiarism of Flinders' charts. Lack of evidence to support the charges. General Decaen and his career. The facts as to Flinders' charts. The sealed trunks. The third log-book and its contents; detention of it by Decaen, and the reasons for his conduct. Restoration of Flinders' papers, except the log-book and despatches.
After the unhappy events which had just befallen her, my mother longed to re-unite her three remaining sons around her. My brother, having been ordered to join the expeditionary force which was being sent to India under the command of General Decaen, was given permission to spend two months with my mother; Félix was at the Military School, and a piece of good fortune brought me also to Paris.
Decaen was not a courtier, nor a scholar, nor a man of sentiment, but a plain, coarse, downright soldier; a true Norman, and a thorough son of the Revolution. He was not the kind of man to be interested in navigation, discovery, or the expansion of human knowledge; and appeals made to him on these grounds on behalf of Flinders were futile.
Word Of The Day