not return to St. Cloud, within hail of Paris, till October 12th.[1]) Then the officials surrounding him were kept busy with preparations for crowning himself and the Empress Josephine, a ceremony performed by Pope Pius VII, at Notre Dame, on December 2nd. The consequence was that this piece of business about an unfortunate English captain in Ile-de-France—like nearly all other business concerned with the same colony at the time—got covered up beneath a mass of more urgent affairs, and remained in abeyance until the agitation stimulated by Banks, Fleurieu, Bougainville, Malte-Brun and others forced the case under the attention of the Emperor and his ministers.
Even then the despatch did not reach Ile-de-France till July, 1807, sixteen months after the date upon it; and it was then transmitted, not by a French ship, but by an English frigate, the Greyhound, under a flag of truce. The reason for that was unfortunate for Flinders as an individual, but entirely due to the efficiency of the navy of which he was an officer. In 1805 the British fleet had demolished the French at Trafalgar, and from that time forward until the end of the war, Great Britain was mistress of the ocean in full potency. Her frigates patrolled the highways of the sea with a vigilance that never relaxed. In January, 1806, she took possession of the Cape of Good Hope for the second time, and has held it ever since. The consequences to Decaen and his garrison were very serious. With the British in force at the Cape, how could supplies, reinforcements and despatches get through to him in Ile-de-France? He saw the danger clearly, but was powerless to avert it. Of this particular despatch four copies were sent from France on as many
- ↑ The movements of Napoleon day by day can be followed in Schuerman's Itinéraire Général de Napoleon.
