“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 Vendemiaire, 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