Bonaparte, at any rate, received the proposal "with interest," and we learn from Peron* (* Voyage de Decouvertes 1 4.) that he definitely authorised the expedition at the very time when his army of reserve was about to move from Geneva to cross the Alps in that astonishing campaign which conduced, by swift, toilsome, and surprising manoeuvres, to the crushing victory of Marengo. The plan of the Institute was therefore ratified in May 1800. The Austrians at that time were holding French arms severely in check in Savoy and northern Italy. Suchet, Massena, Oudinot, and Soult were, with fluctuating fortunes but always with stubborn valour, clinging desperately to their positions or yielding ground to superior strength, awaiting with confidence the hour when the supreme master would strike the shattering blow that, while relieving the pressure on them, would completely change the aspect of the war. It was while pondering his masterstroke, and deliberating on the choice of the path across the Alps that was to lead to it, that Bonaparte gave his approval; while elaborating a scheme to overwhelm the armies of Austria in an abyss of carnage, that he expressed the wish that, as the expedition would come in contact with ignorant savages, care should be taken to make it appear that the French met them as "friends and benefactors." It may here be parenthetically remarked that it does not make us think more favourably of Freycinet that when, in 1824, he issued a new edition of the Voyage de Decouvertes, he omitted all Peron's references to Napoleon's interest in the expedition, and his direction that when savages were met the French should appear among them "comme des amis et des bienfaiteurs."* (* Peron, 1 10.) While Peron tells us that this laudable wish was personally expressed by the First Consul, Freycinet* (* 1 74, in the 1824 edition.) altered the phrase to "le gouvernement voulut," etc. He had absolutely no justification for doing so. The reader of the second edition of the book had a right to expect that he was in possession of the original text, save for the correction of incidental errors. But in 1824 Napoleon was dead, a Bourbon reigned in France, and Freycinet was the servant of the monarchy to which he owed the command of the expedition of 1817. The suppression of Napoleon's name and the record of his actions from Peron's text, was a puerile piece of servility.