Napoleon Bonaparte never came to the South Valley. But when he
was a teenager of 16 years, he tried to join a French Navy
expedition that would have brought him to our region of the
world.
Napoleon Bonaparte never came to the South Valley. But when he was a teenager of 16 years, he tried to join a French Navy expedition that would have brought him to our region of the world.
I’d like to imagine how history might have turned out if the young Corsican, a second lieutenant at the military academy in Paris back in the 1780s, had gotten himself on the scientific expedition led by the great French explorer Jean-François de La Perouse. Although Napoleon made the shortlist for the voyage, he was not selected.
Although not as famous as Bonaparte, La Perouse’s life story is equally fascinating. He was born on Aug. 23, 1741 near the French town of Albi. After studying in a Jesuit college, at the age of 15 he entered the French naval college in Brest and developed his seamanship skills.
During the Seven Years’ War, he fought the British in the waters off North America. After beating the English frigate Ariel in a battle in the West Indies, La Perouse rose in ranks to become a commodore. In August 1782, he captured England’s Prince of Wales Fort and Fort York located in Ontario on the Hudson Bay.
La Perouse was not just a military man. He was also keen on scientific exploration. In 1785, Louis XVI appointed him to lead an expeditionary voyage around the world in order to correct nautical maps and open new trade routes. The expedition would also explore the North and South Pacific for geographic, scientific, and ethnological discoveries.
On Aug. 1, 1785, the expedition’s two ships, the 500 ton frigates Astrolabe and Boussole, left the port of Brest and sailed off with a crew of 220 men. Among them were 10 scientists and mathematicians. After sailing around the Cape Horn, the ships entered the Pacific. They made stops on Easter Island and the Sandwich Islands (now known as Hawaii). La Perouse was the first European to walk on Maui. The ships next sailed north to Alaska, then swung south along the North America’s northwest shores to British Columbia. Expedition members saw Mount Shasta erupt on Sept. 7, 1786.
At around 3 p.m. on Sept. 14, 1786, the ships came out of a fog off the California coast and soon anchored in Monterey Bay. Small boats were launched, taking La Perouse and his men to sandy beaches where they were met by Franciscan monks and Spanish soldiers. At the presidio and the mud-huts of what would evolve into the Carmel mission, the monks provided the French explorers with food, fresh water and gifts.
California at that time was still an isolated frontier, and Monterey was more than 2,000 miles from Mexico City, the cultural and political heart of Spain’s North American empire. So a man of La Perouse’s prestige was indeed a welcome visitor for the Franciscan fathers.
La Perouse kept a journal of his expedition. He included in it many entries about the coastal California Indian tribes he met during his exploration of the region. He described how the Franciscans treated the Indians, requiring them to spend an hour every the morning at Mass. The French explorer’s critical descriptions of the punishment the missionaries gave the native people evokes sympathy even today:
“Women are never whipped in public, but in an enclosed and somewhat distant place that their cries may not excite a too lively compassion, which might cause the men to revolt,” he wrote. “The latter, on the contrary, are exposed to the view of all their fellow citizens, that their punishment may serve as an example. They usually ask pardon for their fault, in which case the executioner diminishes the force of his lashes, but the number is always irrevocable.”
On Sept. 22, 1786, La Perouse’s expedition sailed from the Monterey Bay. The two ships continued on to Japan and Russia. In Samoa, a group of islanders attacked the adventurers, killing a dozen men. La Perouse in January 1788 gave his journals to the captain of the HMS Frigate Sirius which was sailing back to Europe.
Unfortunately, in some unknown location in the South Pacific, the two ships were lost. No one knows exactly what calamity occurred, but there were no survivors. Only La Perouse’s records given to the Sirius remain to share his scientific findings.
If the teenage Napoleon had joined the French expedition team, he also would have been lost. We can only guess how world events might have turned out if that had been the case. Without Napoleon’s devastation of Russia and other European countries, the course of history would have been dramatically different.
Napoleon’s name went down in history. La Perouse’s name is now virtually unknown. The explorations of La Perouse, however, no doubt provided greater benefit to mankind than Napoleon’s imperial conquests.
