The great French voyage of the Napoleonic period, the ambitious voyage to the "terres Australes" or southern continent under Baudin, chronicled by its participants Louis de Freycinet (later to command his own voyage) and the scientist François Péron, and published in six separate volumes over a period of ten years. The Baudin voyage has  been characterised as the last great Enlightenment voyage, and was perhaps its purest expression, combining as it did scientific curiosity and research, territorial and geo-political ambition, and the spirit of enquiry on the widest scale;