Marion was a Malouin, and St Malo was effectively the base for French activities in their Indies. Marion went to sea at the age of eleven, with the Compagnie des Indes, and was only twenty-one when he had a moment of glory – adroitly smuggling Bonny Prince Charlie to France after the disaster of Culloden. In the Seven Years’ War he fought gallantly at Quiberon Bay (1759), a battle in a storm, when Hawke wrecked elaborate plans for an invasion of England.

When peace returned, France had lost Canada and there was a feeling that compensation should be sought elsewhere. She retained some important colonies in the Caribbean, and in the Indian Ocean the important island Ile de France (now Mauritius), which had a remarkably progressive Governor, the aptly named Pierre Poivre. What had been lost in America might be made good in the Pacific. Hence a renewed interest in exploration of the South Sea; the motivating impulse behind Bougainville’s great circumnavigation (1766–69) was to restore French naval prestige and self-confidence. The material results of the voyage were at best mediocre: no Southern Continent, no route to China, no spices (all objectives), and few new islands.

But culturally it had an enormous impact. It launched Polynesia on its long career (not quite ended yet) as an Earthly Paradise inhabited by any number of desirable and all too willing Eves, noble and nude if not antique. This was not due to Bougainville himself but to his botanist, Commerson, who went overboard with his lush pictures of sexual licence, which were far from the truth. Most importantly, Bougainville brought back with him a young Tahitian, Aotourou (Ahu-toru) who was anxious to see the world. He was under pledge to bring him back to Tahiti.

Aotourou was initially naïve enough to ask if Paris was as fine as a little Dutch port in the East Indies. But once in the real Paris he rapidly adjusted, even visiting the Opera by himself. He was a tremendous social success, being presented to the Royal family as well as the radical philosophers Helvetius and d’Holbach.

The problem of getting him back to Tahiti seemed to be solved when the Crown agreed to provide Marion with two ships for a voyage into the South Sea. The objectives were mixed: commerce and discovery, as well as the primary task of returning Aotourou, whose death from smallpox at the French island of Bourbon (now Reunion) destroyed the ostensible raison d’être of the voyage.

Marion’s instructions enjoined a return to Mauritius in the event of Aotourou’s death, but business was business, and Marion pressed on to New Zealand, sighting the smooth snowy cone of Cook’s Mount Egmont on 25 March. On 4 May he anchored in the Bay of Islands; enough basic Polynesian had been learnt from Aotourou for communication with the Maori, and at first all was amity. Marion, who had imbibed romantic thoughts from Commerson, felt quite at home, and was blind to any thought that after five weeks he might be outstaying his welcome. On 12 June he went ashore with a fishing party, and next day he and some thirty of his men were massacred. Du Clesmeur took a bloody revenge, not to mention possession of ‘France Australe’.

According to a contemporary, Jean-Jacques Rousseau himself found his faith in the Good Savage sadly shaken by Marion’s tragic death: ‘Is it possible that the good children of Nature could be so wicked?’ Another contemporary was more direct, indeed brutal: ‘It is unfortunate that it has cost the King 400 to 500 livres to have a bankrupt massacred in New Zealand.’ As a final touch, some of the Frenchman’s thighbones were turned into flutes by the Maori.

It is a far cry from Bonny Prince Charlie in the Hebrides to massacre in the Bay of Islands, and the story of Marion is worthy of this handsome retelling.