Louis Antoine de Bougainville
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Louis-Antoine de Bougainville (1729â€"1811) |
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Louis-Antoine de Bougainville |
Louis Antoine de Bougainville, Comte de Bougainville (
November 12 1729 –
August 20 1811) was a French navigator and military commander.
Bougainville was born in
Paris,
France, the son of a notary. In early life, he studied law, but soon abandoned the profession, and in
1753 entered the army in the corps of
musketeers. At the age of twenty-five he published a treatise on the
integral calculus, as a supplement to
De l'HĂ´pital's treatise,
Des infiniment petits.
In
1755 he was sent to
London as secretary to the French embassy, and was made a member of the
Royal Society.
In
1756 he went to Canada as captain of dragoons and
aide-de-camp to the
Marquis de Montcalm. He took an active part in the
capture of Fort Oswego in
1756 and in
1757 at the
Battle of Fort William Henry. He was wounded in
1758 at the
successful defence of
Fort Carillon. He sailed back to France the following winter, under orders from the marquis to obtain additional military resources for the colony; during this crossing, he continued familiarising himself with the ways of the sea, skills that would later serve him well. Having distinguished himself in the war against Great Britain, he was rewarded with the cross of St Louis and returned to Canada the following year with the rank of colonel, but with little supplies to show for his trip - the metropolitan authorities having decided that "When the house is on fire, one does not worry about the stables".
During the pivotal year of
1759 (see
Seven Years' War and
French and Indian War), he participated in the defence of the capital of
New France, the fortified
Quebec City. With a small elite troop under his command, among which the
Grenadiers and the
Volontaires Ă cheval, he patrolled the north shore of the
St. Lawrence River, upstream from the city, all summer long stopping the British several times from landing and thus cutting communications with Montreal. He was not given sufficient time, however, to rally his troops and attack the British rear when they successfully climbed up to the
Plains of Abraham and attacked Quebec on
September 13.
Following the death of the Marquis de Montcalm and the fall of Québec on
September 18 - after the colonel's aborted attempt to resupply the besieged city - De Bougainville was dispatched to the western front by his new commanding officer,
Chevalier de LĂ©vis and attempted to stop the British advance from his entrenchments at
ĂŽle-aux-Noix. He was among the officers that accompanied de LĂ©vis to
Saint Helen's Island off Montreal for the final holdout before the general capitulation of
1761.
Shipped back to Europe along with the other French officers, all deprived of military honours by the victors, Bougainville was prohibited from taking up any further active duty against the British under the terms of surrender. He spent the remainding years of the Seven Years' War (
1761 to
1763) as a diplomat and helped negotiate the
Treaty of Paris that eventually conceded most of New France to the
British Empire.
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The Boudeuse, of Louis Antoine de Bougainville |
Falklands settlement
After the peace, when the French government conceived the project of colonising the
Falkland Islands, Bougainville undertook the task at his own expense. But the settlement excited the jealousy of
Britain and the French government, trying to get
Spain involved in resisting the British, sold it to the Spanish on condition that they could use of the islands as a stepping-stone to the Pacific.
Circumnavigation
In 1766 Bougainville received from
Louis XV the mission to
circumnavigate the globe. He would become the 14th navigator in western history, and the first Frenchman, to sail around the world, and the completion of his mission would bolster the prestige of France following its defeats during the
Seven Years' War. Bougainville left
Nantes on 15 November
1766 with two ships:
La Boudeuse and
L'Étoile. On board was the botanist
Philibert Commerçon and his valet, later unmasked by the ship's surgeon as
Jeanne Baré, Commerçon's mistress.
Tahiti
He saw islands of the
Tuamotu group on the following March 22, on April 2 saw the peak of
Mehetea and famously visited the island of
Otaheite shortly after and narrowly missed becoming their discoverer, unaware of a previous visit, and claim, by
Samuel Wallis in
HMS Dolphin less than a year previously. He claimed the island for France and named it
New Cythera.
They left westward to southern
Samoa and the
New Hebrides, then on sighting
Espiritu Santo turned west still looking for the
Southern Continent. On June 4 he almost ran into heavy breakers and had to change course to the north and east. He had almost found the
Great Barrier Reef. He sailed through what is now know as the
Solomon Islands that, due of the hostility of the people there, he avoided. He named
Bougainville Island for himself. The expedition was attacked by people from
New Ireland so they made for the
Moluccas. At
Batavia they received news of
Wallis and
Carteret who had preceded Bouganville.
Return to France
On 16 March
1769 the expedition completed its circumnavigation and arrived at
St Malo, with the loss of only seven out of upwards of 200 men, an extremely low level of casualty, and a credit to the enlightened management of the expedition by Bougainville. His voyage of circumnavigation was also notable for being the first to include a woman, Jeanne Baré.
The legend begins
Describing Tahiti in his
1771 book
Voyage autour du monde, Bougainville offered a vision of an earthly paradise where men and women live happily in innocence, away from the corruption of civilisation. He powerfully illustrated the concept of the
noble savage, and influenced the
utopian thoughts of philosophers such as
Jean-Jacques Rousseau before the advent of the
French Revolution.
Denis Diderot's book,
Supplément au voyage de Bougainville, retells the story of Bougainville's landing on Tahiti, narrated by an anonymous reader to one of his friends: this fictional approach to Bougainville's expedition, along with the description of the Tahitians as noble savages, is meant to criticise Western ways of living and thinking.
A new command
After an interval of several years, he again accepted a naval command and saw much active service between
1779 and
1782, including participating in the
Battle of the Chesapeake. In the memorable engagement of the
Battle of the Saintes, in which Admiral
George Rodney defeated the
Comte de Grasse, Bougainville, who commanded the
Auguste, succeeded in rallying eight ships of his own division, and bringing them safely into
Saint Eustace. He was promoted to
chef d'escadre and, on reentering the army, was given the rank of
maréchal de camp.
After the peace he returned to Paris, and obtained the place of associate of the Academy. He projected a voyage of discovery towards the
North Pole but this did not meet with support from the French government.
Promotion and Retirement
Bougainville obtained the rank of vice-admiral in
1791; and in
1792, having escaped almost miraculously from the massacres of Paris, he retired to his estate in
Normandy. He was chosen a member of the Institute at its formation and, returning to Paris, became a member of the Board of Longitude. In his old age
Napoleon I made him a senator, count of the empire and member of the
Legion of Honour. He died in Paris on the
August 31,
1811. He was married and had three sons, who served in the French army.
Bougainville's name is given to the largest member of the
Solomon Islands; and to the
strait which divides it from the island of
Choiseul. It is also applied to the strait between
Mallicollo and
Espiritu Santo islands of the
New Hebrides group, and the South American climbing shrub
Bougainvillea spp. is named after him.
13 ships of the
French Navy were named in his honour:
* A
privateer (1797-1800) captured by the
HMS Amazon.
* A privateer captured by the frigate
HMS Eurydice in June 1801.
* A privateer captured by the
HMS Scorpion in March 1807.
* A
brig captured by the English in 1809.
* A brig-
aviso (1830-1856)
* A steam aviso (1858-1889)
* A colonial aviso Bougainville (1929-1940)
* An aviso (1875-1920), launched as the
Allier and renamed in 1887.
* A three-masted barque (1902), sunk by a German submarine in 1916.
* A mobilised cargo (1914), captured by the Japanese in 1942.
* A colonial aviso (1929-1940).
* An auxiliary cruiser (ex
Victor Schoelcher) sunk by the British in 1942
* The present
Bougainville (1986) is an electronic intelligence ship
*
Biography at the Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online
