CHAPTER XV

A FRENCH COLONIAL EMPIRE

ST. DOMINGO—­LOUISIANA—­INDIA—­AUSTRALIA

“Il n’y a rien dans l’histoire du monde de comparable aux forces navales de l’Angleterre, a l’etendue et a la richesse de son commerce, a la masse de ses dettes, de ses defenses, de ses moyens, et a la fragilite des bases sur lesquelles repose l’edifice immense de sa fortune.”—­BARON MALOUET, Considerations historiques sur l’Empire de la Mer.

There are abundant reasons for thinking that Napoleon valued the Peace of Amiens as a necessary preliminary to the restoration of the French Colonial Empire.  A comparison of the dates at which he set on foot his oceanic schemes will show that they nearly all had their inception in the closing months of 1801 and in the course of the following year.  The sole important exceptions were the politico-scientific expedition to Australia, the ostensible purpose of which insured immunity from the attacks of English cruisers even in the year 1800, and the plans for securing French supremacy in Egypt, which had been frustrated in 1801 and were, to all appearance, abandoned by the First Consul according to the provisions of the Treaty of Amiens.  The question whether he really relinquished his designs on Egypt is so intimately connected with the rupture of the Peace of Amiens that it will be more fitly considered in the following chapter.  It may not, however, be out of place to offer some proofs as to the value which Bonaparte set on the valley of the Nile and the Isthmus of Suez.  A letter from a spy at Paris, preserved in the archives of our Foreign Office, and dated July 10th, 1801, contains the following significant statement with reference to Bonaparte:  “Egypt, which is considered here as lost to France, is the only object which interests his personal ambition and excites his revenge.”  Even at the end of his days, he thought longingly of the land of the Pharaohs.  In his first interview with the governor of St. Helena, the illustrious exile said emphatically:  “Egypt is the most important country in the world.”  The words reveal a keen perception of all the influences conducive to commercial prosperity and imperial greatness.  Egypt, in fact, with the Suez Canal, which his imagination always pictured as a necessary adjunct, was to be the keystone of that arch of empire which was to span the oceans and link the prairies of the far west to the teeming plains of India and the far Austral Isles.