A matter of hours before his execution in 1793, Louis XVI is reported to have asked if there had been any news of Lapérouse, leader of an expedition to the Pacific Ocean which had left France in 1785. For a beleaguered monarch to have been so preoccupied with the whereabouts of this navigator is an indicator of the manner in which this voyage of exploration had caught the imagination of France, and indeed, much of Europe. Some forty years after it disappeared, evidence of the fate of the expedition was traced to the island of Vanikoro, part of the Solomon Islands, and the mystery was, to a certain degree, solved. But to view Lapérouse and his expedition to the Pacific solely in terms of the mystery of his disappearance is to underestimate the great value of his achievements, and he…
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Citation: Greene, John. "Lapérouse, Jean-François de Galaup, comte de". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 11 August 2021 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=14631, accessed 08 September 2024.]