k was speedily hoisted and saluted by the
blue-jackets of the British vessel; for it was rumoured that French
officers had said that King Island would afford a good station for the
command of Bass Strait and the seizure of British ships. This was
probably mere gossip. Baudin in his interviews with Governor King at
Sydney disclaimed any intention of seizing Van Diemen's Land; but he
afterwards stated that _he did not know what were the plans of the
French Government with regard to that island_.[216]

Long before this dark saying could be known at Westminster, the
suspicions of our Government had been aroused; and, on February 13th,
1803, Lord Hobart penned a despatch to Governor King bidding him to
take every precaution against French annexations, and to form
settlements in Van Diemen's Land and at Port Phillip. The station of
Risden was accordingly planted on the estuary of the Derwent, a little
above the present town of Hobart; while on the shores of Port Phillip
another expedition sent out from the mother country sought, but for
the present in vain, to find a suitable site. The French cruise
therefore exerted on the fortunes of the English and French peoples an
influence such as has frequently accrued from their colonial rivalry:
it spurred on the island Power to more vigorous efforts than she would
otherwise have put forth, and led to the discomfiture of her
continental rival. The plans of Napoleon for the acquisition of Van
Diemen's Land and the middle of Australia had an effect like that
which the ambition of Montcalm, Dupleix, Lally, and Perron has exerted
on the ultimate destiny of many a vast and fertile territory.

Still, in spite of the destruction of his fleet at Trafalgar, Napoleon
held to his Australian plans. No fact, perhaps, is more suggestive of
the dogged tenacity of his will than his order to Peron and Freycinet
to publish through the Imperial Press at Paris an exhaustive account
of their Australian voyage, accompanied by maps which claimed half of
that continent for the tricolour flag. It appeared in 1807, the year
of Tilsit and of the plans for the partition of Portugal and her
colonies between France and Spain. The hour seemed at last to have
struck for the assertion of French supremacy in other continents, now
that the Franco-Russian alliance had durably consolidated it in
Europe. And who shall say that, but for the Spanish Rising and the
genius of Wellington, a vast colonial empire might not