Beware of Heroes: Admiral Sir Sidney Smith’s War against Napoleon
Peter Shankland
Copyright © Peter Shankland 1975
The right of Peter Shankland to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
First published in the United Kingdom in 1975 by Purnell Book Services Ltd.
This edition published in 2015 by Endeavour Press Ltd.
To my son Michael
Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter One – Early Career
Chapter Two – The Prophecy
Chapter Three – The Lucky Escape
Chapter Four – The Lure of the East
Chapter Five – Kléber, the Proud Alsatian
Chapter Six – Minister at the Porte
Chapter Seven – The Way of the Conquerors
Chapter Eight – The Defence of Acre
Chapter Nine – Bonaparte Defeated
Chapter Ten – Divided Loyalties
Chapter Eleven – The Treaty
Chapter Twelve – The Ambassador Extraordinary
Chapter Thirteen – The Passing of a Great Republican
Chapter Fourteen – The Landing at Alexandria
Chapter Fifteen – The Murder of the Mamelukes
Chapter Sixteen – Bonaparte becomes Napoleon
Chapter Seventeen – Triumph and Resentment
Chapter Eighteen – Leader of the Massi
Chapter Nineteen – The Second Chance
Chapter Twenty – Crusade in Vienna
Chapter Twenty-One – History Made, and Re-made
Note on Sir Sidney Smith’s Detractors
Bibliography
Acknowledgements
‘One has to admit that Fortune’s wheel makes strange revolutions, but before it can truly be called a revolution, the turn of the wheel must be complete. Today you are as high as you can be, but I do not envy you your happiness because I have a still greater happiness, and that is to be as low in Fortune’s wheel as I can go, so that as soon as that capricious lady turns her wheel again, I shall rise for the same reason that you will fall.
‘I do not write this to distress you, but to bring you the same consolation that I have when you reach the point where I am. You will occupy this same prison — why not you as well as I? I did not expect to be shut up here any more than you do now...
‘But of course I don’t have to convince you that you will come here, because to read these lines you must be here. I assume that you will have this room also because the gaoler is a good man: he gave me the best room and he will do as much for you.’
Part of a letter written by Sir Sidney Smith on the window shutter of his room in the Temple Prison in Paris, addressed to Napoleon Bonaparte
Prologue
It is curious to look back on the past with the insight time has given us, to see the course of history being diverted by small decisions and by small omissions, to see great projects being brought to nothing by seemingly trivial circumstances, to see how significantly fate has intertwined the lives of friends and enemies.
Napoleon Bonaparte in 1798 determined to conquer the East. Britain, owing to the lack of bases from which to operate, had withdrawn her fleet from the Mediterranean, leaving the way open. He had at his command the finest armies in Europe. In the East there were no organised armies between the Mediterranean and British India, so there was nothing that could seriously oppose him. All along the south coast of France his troops were encamped, waiting to embark in the transports; his ships of war were ready at Toulon to escort them.
His plan was to take possession of the Island of Malta first, because of its strategic position and fine harbour; the fortress guarding it had already been sold to his agents by the Grand Master of the Knights of St. John who for centuries had held the island for Christendom. Then he would go on to fertile Egypt, once known as The Granary of Rome, develop it as a French colony and make it a base for further operations. Egypt was a dependence of Turkey, and France was at peace with both countries, so the surprise, he thought, would be complete. In all his campaigns Britain was the real enemy; against her he carried on a deep and unrelenting feud. The object of the invasion, he said, was ‘to make the English tremble’.
Almost alone in divining his intentions was a young British naval officer, Sir Sidney Smith, who had been on a diplomatic mission to Constantinople. He reported to Lord Grenville, the Foreign Minister, six months before it happened, that France would probably invade Egypt.
The names of both Napoleon Bonaparte and Sir Sidney Smith had come prominently before the public for the first time at the Siege of Toulon in December 1793. The town, with several others, had revolted against Robespierre’s Reign of Terror, and Admiral Lord Hood was holding it with an international force for Royalist France. Bonaparte, through his activity and initiative in command of the besieger’s artillery, hastened the fall of the town. Sidney Smith, leading a party of British seamen, set fire to the French fleet and arsenal while the last defences were crumbling. It was a name Bonaparte never forgot; it became a name of ill omen to his superstitious mind. Years later he retained a vivid recollection of the scene, and he described it thus:
The whirlwind of flames and smoke from the arsenal was like the eruption of a volcano, and the thirteen vessels blazing in the roads were like thirteen magnificent displays of fireworks. The masts and the forms of the vessels were silhouetted against the flames which lasted many hours and presented an unparalleled spectacle. The French were torn to the heart to see such great resources and so many riches consumed in so short a time.
In the following year, when the Reign of Terror came to an end, Bonaparte was thrown into prison because of his affiliation with the Robespierre Party. He was rescued by Paul Barras, Commander-in-Chief of the Army of the Interior, who made him his aide-de-camp; in September 1795, when the fauburgs of Paris were in revolt, his action in blasting the insurgent crowds with artillery in the rue Saint-Honoré and on the banks of the Seine established his reputation and saved the government. On 10th October, 1795, he was appointed second-in-command of the Army of the Interior, and on the 16th he was given the rank of General of a Division, and on the 20th, when Barras became a member of the Directory, the new governing body of France, he succeeded him as Commander-in-Chief of the Army of the Interior. He was twenty-seven.
‘I shall never be able to show my thanks and devotion sufficiently,’ he told Barras. ‘All my family are already overwhelmed by your benefits.’
On 9th March of the following year he married Josephine de Beauharnais, the intimate friend of Barras. On the 21st he left Paris to take command of the Army of Italy.
The appointment came at a fortunate time for him. Since the previous December, France and Piedmont had been discussing an armistice; it was concluded at the end of April. The gate to Italy was open, and General Bonaparte entered. An Austrian army, about equal in numbers to the French, guarded the rich plain of Lombardy. Bonaparte turned its left flank by invading, without warning, the neutral state of Parma to get across the River Po at Piacenza. The Austrian rearguard fought a bitter action at Lodi while the main body withdrew to reform, exposing the whole of Italy to the invader.
According to eighteenth century principles, war was a means to settle disputes. It was held that excessive use of force caused resentment and led inevitably to future wars; victories should decide who is right, but not leave residues of hatred and revenge. The armies of the Revolution changed all this. They waged war w
ithout rules, total war, which struck the peace-loving Italians with horror and paralysed all resistance. Moving rapidly with comparatively small forces (following the theories of the Comte de Guilbert), living on the country and levying huge contributions from declared enemies and neutrals alike instead of encumbering himself with a supply train, General Bonaparte quickly overran North Italy. The Austrians attempted several times to descend into the northern plain again but were always defeated. Finally they withdrew across the Alps.
Bonaparte followed them, and found himself on the plain before Vienna with supplies exhausted, too weak to advance any farther, and with the Italians, driven to desperation by the plundering, godless invaders, beginning to revolt behind him.
He hurriedly negotiated the Peace of Leoben (18th April, 1797) by which he surrendered, without the authority of the Directory, the main objects for which they were at war. He satisfied the Austrians by offering to seize the thousand-year-old republic of Venice and hand it over to them. The terms of this unholy bargain were kept secret. In order to justify a declaration of war against Venice, which had preserved a state of unarmed neutrality towards both belligerents, he tried to provoke her to hostile acts by abuse and insult; and he paid an agent, Salvadori, to forge a Venetian Government manifesto calling upon the people of the mainland to attack the French. In spite of the Venetian Government’s protests he had this widely distributed and used it as a pretext to destroy the republic and transfer its territories to Austrian rule.
These high-handed actions alienated republican sympathisers throughout Italy, and also in Paris: ‘The infamous Peace of Leoben’ Barras called it; but because he depended upon the support of the army to keep him in power, there was little he could do about it. The young general, who had threatened more than once to use his troops to silence criticism, was hailed as the hero of heroes, the new Alexander. The looted gold and art treasures of Italy were pouring into France.
At the height of his popularity he received a letter from Sir Sidney Smith, appealing to him for assistance. Sir Sidney, while commanding the frigate Diamond, blockading the coast of France, had boarded and captured the privateer Le Vengeur off Le Havre, but before he could get her away the tide swept her far up the river Seine where he was assailed by numerous enemy craft and, after a stout resistance, forced to surrender. His destruction of the French fleet at Toulon had not been forgotten; instead of being treated as a prisoner of war, he was taken to the Temple Prison in Paris, and treated as a criminal. Bonaparte refused to intervene on his behalf.
Retribution for this lack of chivalry came in a totally unpredictable way: Sir Sidney’s release from the Temple, which Bonaparte could easily have arranged, was effected many months later by a group of Royalist partisans at the risk of their lives, and this led to a friendship between Sir Sidney and its leader that wrecked the great plan for the conquest of the East, and diverted the course of world history.
Chapter One – Early Career
Bonaparte’s campaign in Italy made it clear that established methods of waging war and of conducting diplomacy were inadequate to deal with an enemy who no longer observed the rules that had been painfully evolved by civilised nations, and who had added to his armoury the weapons of psychological and ideological warfare.
Sidney Smith was one of the new men that the times required. He had inherited British naval and military traditions in full measure but, unlike most of his contemporaries, he did not follow exclusively traditional lines of thought; with the natural consequence that he was disliked and distrusted by those who did. He had a wider understanding of the historical forces at work than most of his contemporaries; in one situation after another he understood what had to be done, and tried to do it.
That he succeeded as far as he did while holding the rank of a comparatively junior officer, was due first of all to his own courage and resourcefulness, and then to the chance circumstance that he was allied, through the marriage of his aunt, to the great Pitt family, the most brilliant, the most influential and one of the most eccentric in England. He had the advantage of corresponding personally with cabinet ministers, including Lord Grenville, the Foreign Minister, who was married to his cousin; this gave him his opportunities, but it did not protect him from the unfair criticism, the abuse and the ridicule of those whom he inevitably offended. His remarkable resilience was due to his feeling that he was acting uprightly, without fear or favour; no personal resentment ever clouded his vision, and he wasted no time or energy on useless recriminations. His policy was his own policy, which did not always coincide with that of the government to which he owed obedience. The ideals he followed were his own ideals but they were also, increasingly, those of the most chivalrous of his contemporaries.
He entered the navy in 1777 at the age of thirteen. His rise in the profession, depending like Nelson’s, St. Vincent’s and many others, on a combination of family influence and merit, was extremely rapid. His grandfather had commanded a frigate and died of wounds in Antigua; his father, Captain John Smith of the Guards, had been A.D.C. to Sir George Sackville, and was a Gentleman Usher to the Queen; his uncle, General Edward Smith, commanded the 43rd Regiment and was Governor of Fort Charles, Jamaica.
He first served in the Tortoise; then he transferred to Lord Rodney’s flagship, the Sandwich. On 25th September, 1780, he was appointed Lieutenant of the Alcide, seventy-four guns, but this was not confirmed by the Admiralty till nearly the end of August 1783; in her he took part in the unsuccessful action against the French off Chesapeake, under Admiral Graves, and then in Rodney’s great victory, The Battle of the Saints. In the following month Rodney gave him his first command, the Fury, of eighteen guns, sloop of war. A year later he was posted captain of the Alcmene at the unusually early age of nineteen; he should have been at least twenty-five before being posted captain. The war was now over. After the Peace of Versailles he returned to England and paid off his ship at Woolwich in 1784.
Instead of settling down on his half pay, he embarked upon a series of adventures to ‘further qualify himself for his country’s service’. He went first to Normandy to improve his French, which he had already learned to speak with a perfect accent from his mother. He studied the coast also, the harbours and the new breakwater which was being constructed at Cherbourg. He made friends with some of the officers against whom he had been fighting in the West Indies, and he made love to the French ladies, ‘letting his heart go where it would’.
In 1788 there were rumours of war with the Sultan of Morocco. He immediately went there, visited all the ports, examined the gun positions and the fighting ships, and took soundings in the harbours. He embodied all this up-to-date information in a report to the Secretary of the Admiralty, included an estimate of the force that would be necessary to destroy the Sultan’s naval power, sketched out a tactical plan, and requested to be put in command of the squadron that should carry it out — but the crisis passed. There was no war with Morocco.
He went to Sweden instead where Gustavus IV was engaged in an unequal struggle against the Empress Catherine who was continuing the traditional Russian policy of absorbing the Baltic States. He served there with such distinction, as Naval Adviser, in a series of hard-fought actions, in one of which he saved King Gustavus from death or capture, that he was awarded the Grand Cross of the Order of the Sword. This made him rather unpopular in the navy because a number of British officers were serving as volunteers on the other side, four captains being killed and two seriously wounded in the Russian service during the campaign; King George III recognised the award, and held the investiture in London. Thus Sidney Smith became Sir Sidney.
Next, because his keenly-observed reports on the countries he had visited were of great value, he was sent, with an allowance of £1,500 from the Foreign Office, to proceed overland to Constantinople in order to examine the Black Sea Ports, the Bosphorus, the Sea of Marmora, the Dardanelles, the Archipelago and the Ionian Islands. While he was engaged in this mission war broke out again between Gre
at Britain and France. He bought a small lateen-rigged vessel, named her the Swallow, tender, manned her by offering a passage home to forty stranded British seamen he had found on the waterfront at Smyrna, and joined the Mediterranean Fleet at Toulon.
Here he performed the spectacular exploit that aroused Bonaparte’s undying resentment, learning that the port was about to be evacuated by the international force that was holding it and that no plans had been made to destroy the French ships lying there, he volunteered to go in and burn them. Admiral Hood gave him an official order to do so and put a force of officers and seamen under his command. He carried out the perilous task with admirable coolness and judgement although the Jacobins were breaking into the town, and the dockyard workers had already gone over to the enemy. The terrified inhabitants, men, women and children, were being shot down as they ran to the water’s edge crying to be taken off. Sir Sidney’s boats checked their pursuers with grape shot and embarked all who came to them for help.
Although Sir Sidney had been with the fleet for only a fortnight, and had performed no regular duties, Lord Hood gave him the honour of carrying the dispatches to London. No doubt the affair was lauded and exaggerated there to compensate for the ignominious failure of the Allied defence of Toulon, but Sir Sidney’s official report contained no exaggeration and he gave due credit, as always, to those who served under him. Seldom has a gallant exploit aroused so much resentment on both sides. Some of the regular serving officers never forgave him for snatching the only laurels from the defeat. Collingwood wrote:
No preparation was made either for the destruction of the ships or arsenal, and at last it was put into as bad hands as could be found, Sir Sidney Smith, who arrived there a few days before, and had no public station, either in fleet or army, but was wandering to gratify his curiosity.
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