Beware of Heroes: Admiral Sir Sidney Smith's War against Napoleon

by Peter Shankland

  The Freemen of the City of Rochester invited him to stand as the borough’s candidate for Parliament. In his letter accepting their invitation he wrote:

  I hope I do not stand in opposition to the well-founded claims of any other candidate. I am incapable of usurping the right of any other gentleman; my expectations rest upon your kindness and my known public character, without intending offence or injury in any other quarter. My political creed is the English constitution, my party, the nation. Highly as I prize the honour of becoming your representative, I will not purchase that, or any other distinction, by renouncing an atom of my independence...

  He was triumphantly elected.

  Pitt had resigned, and all his Cabinet with him, as a protest against the King’s veto on his Irish policy — he stood for complete Catholic emancipation, stipends for all clergy and the abolition of tithes; he went into semi-retirement at Walmer. It was the new government with Addington Prime Minister, Lord Hawkesbury at the Foreign Office and the Earl of St. Vincent First Lord of the Admiralty, that had concluded, on 27th March, 1802, the Treaty of Amiens, making peace.

  Bonaparte was now absolute master of France. The Republican party who had enlisted his services to overthrow Barras, had been easily manoeuvred out of all semblance of authority. Few of them had foreseen, like Kléber, that he would establish himself as dictator. The violently anti-Bonapartist Army of Egypt, instead of returning to strengthen it while the issue was hanging in the balance, was a year too late because the British Government had repudiated in advance Sir Sidney’s convention. Ministers had been unable to understand what had appeared so obvious to him, that the most urgent task was to thwart if possible Bonaparte’s inevitable bid for supreme power in France which, if successful, would lead to an age of constant war and the glorification of military aggression. The Army of Egypt, depleted to half its original strength, was absorbed without difficultly in Bonaparte’s new regime. He did not honour his promise to give each soldier six acres of land. He did not even allow them to bring Kléber’s body into France. It was deposited in the chapel of the Château d’If, the convict island within sight of Marseilles.

  The most intelligent of his advisers, his brother Lucien, who had organised the coup d’état of the 19th Brumaire, and who had saved the situation by an audacious trick when it nearly failed, regretted his action almost immediately afterwards. He had thought, with the rest of the party, that his brother would be a republican general, championing their cause. It was Bonaparte’s reiterated complaint that he had missed his destiny at St. Jean d’Acre that opened his eyes to his brother’s true nature:

  It is one of the most extraordinary phenomena of our times [he wrote] that we have seen rise up from the heart of civilised Europe a man not only the destroyer of the common liberties of his country but imbued with the spirit of the conquests of Gengis Khan or Tamourlaine, and who, if he lives long enough, will end by precipitating Europe upon Asia, the object of his regrets, to which a successful war with Russia, which is not difficult to foresee sooner or later, would only too easily open the door.

  On 26th April, a month after the Treaty of Amiens had been signed, Bonaparte offered an amnesty to the emigres who wished to return to France. Colonel Bromley, who hadn’t seen his wife and son for nearly three years, decided to take advantage of this offer: he felt that Sir Sidney no longer needed him now that the Egyptian Campaign was over and Europe was at peace. Sir Sidney did his utmost to dissuade him, telling him that his life would be in constant danger under the Consulate, and that he ought rather to make a career as an officer in the British Army. It was all in vain; his friend was homesick for France. So Colonel Bromley disappeared and Monsieur Jacques, Jean, Marie, François de Tromelin Boudin turned up in France and claimed the amnesty: it was granted, his name was deleted from the list of emigrés and he was informed that his property would be restored to him provided that it had not been sold during his absence. His ancestral estate, situated in a district in which the Revolution had never been popular, had been respected, so he settled down with his wife and child in the Château of Coatserho, near Morlaix in Brittany, the home in which he had been born.

  Major Le Grand returned to France also, but it would not have been safe for young Frotté to do so: during his absence in the Levant, disaster had overtaken his family. His elder brother, the indomitable General of the Army of Normandy, had at last been decisively defeated. ‘Pursue Frotté wherever he may seek refuge,’ Bonaparte wrote to the republican general, Chamberlac, when he heard the news. ‘I desire earnestly that my aide-de-camp, whom I send you, may bring me back news of Frotté’s complete destruction.’ It was easily accomplished. Frotté and his staff were given safe conducts to come in and discuss terms, and when they did so, they were all arrested and shot.

  Many hundreds of Britons who for years had been denied the pleasures of continental travel took advantage of the peace to visit France. Among them was Lieutenant Wright of The Tigre who had seen Paris only as a fugitive and from the prison windows of the Temple. His visit annoyed the British Ambassador, Whitworth, who complained that he was too well known, and that his presence might cause irritation to the French Government. Then Wright was warned by an ex-deputy, who had been a fellow prisoner in the Temple, that there was a warrant out for his arrest, so he hastily returned to England.

  The most illustrious of the visitors to Paris was the eminent statesman Charles James Fox, Pitt’s greatest political opponent. He dined with Marshal Junot, Governor of Paris, and in the course of the evening there was an altercation about the Convention of El Arish. Thinking that Sir Sidney had been compromised by something that had been said, Junot broke out indignantly in his defence: he contrasted his behaviour with that of Pitt, whom he quoted as having said, with reference to the French Army of Egypt, ‘The destruction of that perfidious army is a matter of rejoicing; the interests of human nature require its total annihilation.’

  Mr. Fox turned crimson, then pale as death, and made no immediate answer; at the end of a minute he murmured, ‘I beg your pardon, Mr. Pitt never used such words. No. Those terrible words never fell from the lips of Mr. Pitt, — they are Mr. Dundas’s.’

  Madame Junot recorded this conversation and added that her husband while he was in Egypt, had beheld in Sir Sidney a man for whom Bonaparte had a strong dislike, and to whom of course his staff took a dislike also: but when his ship was intercepted on the way to France and he became a prisoner of war, he got to know him better, and for the rest of his life cherished the most affectionate regard for him.

  Fox had opposed Britain’s participation in the French wars and staunchly upheld the principles of the Revolution. After two conversations with Bonaparte he remarked, ‘It’s all up with Liberty,’ and he went back to London disillusioned. He would have joined Pitt in the new coalition government that was formed in May 1804, but the king refused to accept him as a minister.

  Chapter Seventeen – Triumph and Resentment

  Sir Sidney took his seat in parliament on the opening of the session on 16th November, 1802. His friends Spencer and Grenville, were now in opposition, so he naturally joined them.

  It was unfortunate for his career as a naval officer that he soon found himself in disagreement with his old chief on the subject of the naval estimates. The Earl of St. Vincent, burning like many other seamen, before and since, to drive out corrupt and profiteering dockyard officials, was introducing much-needed reforms, and he was also reducing the navy and the naval dockyards to a peacetime establishment. But Bonaparte was laying down new ships, buying naval stores, and turning Antwerp into a great arsenal. Sir Sidney was one of the speakers who criticised St. Vincent’s plans in parliament. He said he regretted the great reductions that were suddenly made both in the King’s Dockyards and in the navy in general, and that a prodigious number of men had been thus reduced to the utmost poverty and distress. He feared that they would be compelled by dire necessity to seek employment in foreign states and that the very sinews of their st
rength and safety would be wasted. He warned the House of the very serious danger of a French invasion.

  Of Bonaparte’s belligerent intentions there could be little doubt. Soon after the conclusion of the Peace of Amiens, he had annexed Piedmont, 21st September, 1802 and in the following month French troops under Marshall Ney occupied Switzerland. His Ambassador at the Court of St. James, General Andréossy, warned him that although the British Government sincerely desired peace, his actions would arouse general resentment. ‘Everybody wants peace,’ he wrote.

  By preserving the peace of Europe you will crush this country without appealing to the arbitrament of the mailed fist. But I cannot too often repeat my conviction that any Cabinet that may be in power must be treated with tact, for the Cabinet is responsible to public opinion as expressed in the House of Parliament.

  Bonaparte ignored Andréossy’s warning, so he probably felt so secure at the time, and so confident, that he didn’t care whether the steps he was taking to consolidate his power in Europe would provoke a declaration of war from Great Britain at this stage or not. He deliberately provoked a rupture by refusing any reasonable discussion of the points at issue between the two countries, and by continuing to develop Antwerp and to fortify the coast of Holland. No British Government could survive which consented to leave the mouth of the Scheldt, because it faced the mouth of the Thames, in possession of the French. Addington stipulated, therefore, that Bonaparte should evacuate it, as he had bound himself to do under the earlier Treaty of Luneburg between France and Austria, and until he had done so, Britain would not evacuate Malta which she had bound herself to do under the Treaty of Amiens. Neither side would give way. War was declared on 18th May, 1803.

  A message was brought to Sir Sidney telling him that Major Frotté had been arrested while attempting to land secretly on the Continent, and that he had been imprisoned in the Temple. He hastened to General Andréossy, who was packing to return to France, and asked him to intercede with Bonaparte for his young friend. On his arrival in Paris General Andréossy did so, with unhappy results: ‘That he served with Sidney Smith is one more reason for keeping him a close prisoner,’ Bonaparte replied, and he ordered him to be confined in the Castle of Besançon for greater security.

  To many people war came so unexpectedly that there were about 10,000 British tourists in France. They were arrested and held as prisoners of war. Among them was Lord Elgin who was denied diplomatic immunity. After two years and eight months in Constantinople and an extensive tour in Greece, he had sailed in the Diana, frigate, on the 13th January for England. In order to visit Paris on the way home, he had disembarked, with Lady Elgin, at Marseilles. In England he had been bitterly attacked by Cobbett in The Political Register for having neglected to implement the Commercial Treaty with Turkey which had been negotiated before his arrival in Constantinople by John Spencer Smith. It would have given the freedom of the Black Sea to British ships, and the status of most favoured nation to ships calling at Turkish ports. French influence was growing at the Porte, and it was no longer possible to obtain such favourable terms.

  Actually Elgin had not neglected to implement the treaty; he had discarded it on the grounds that the trade was not of sufficient importance. ‘Mercator’ in the Naval Chronicle commented on the pernicious system of interest which resulted in filling important foreign missions with novices who could not be considered as qualified to manage British concerns in the Levant. But it was Bonaparte who put him under lock and key and effectually prevented him from continuing his career.

  The British fleet, in spite of the rapid deterioration of its strength resulting from St. Vincent’s policy, was still larger than the French; but it had responsibilities in many parts of the world, and the French might have been able to concentrate theirs in superior strength in home waters. To prevent this, the usual close blockade of their ports was ordered though the British ships were ill-equipped and undermanned. St. Vincent, who had done so much to train the superb seamen who fought under Nelson, and to establish the tradition that Britain’s first line of defence was the unrelenting blockade of the French ports, had established another tradition: that the office of First Lord of the Admiralty must always be held by a civilian. The peace which, with all the violence of a prejudice, he had imagined to be permanent had lasted only thirteen months.

  Nelson was entrusted with the blockade of Toulon: he reported that the ships were distressed for almost every article:

  They have entirely eat up their stores, and their real wants not half complied with. I have applications from the different line-of-battle-ships for surveys on most of their sails and rigging, which cannot be complied with, as there is neither cordage nor sails to replace the unserviceable stores...

  His fleet was 800 or 900 men short of its complement. Only four ships were fit for winter cruising. St. Vincent was unable to help him because he had allowed the whole establishment of the navy to run down. ‘You will do very well,’ he wrote to Nelson, ‘with the resources of your mind.’ He was famous for his pithy replies to appeals and complaints.

  Bonaparte had quickly assembled an army of 100,000 men for the invasion of England: it was encamped along the north coast of France in seven divisions while vast preparations were being made in all the continental ports from Texel to Bordeaux to construct a fleet of small craft to ferry it across the Channel. It was necessary, therefore, for British ships to watch not only the great French naval bases but all the small ports as well, to prevent, if possible, the invasion fleet from assembling at the embarkation ports. Sir Sidney in the Antelope, fifty guns, was in command of a small squadron watching the port of Flushing.

  Meanwhile amid all these warlike preparations on both sides his friend John Bromley, Monsieur de Tromelin, remained quietly at Coatshero, hoping to be left in peace to devote himself to his family, and to the rehabilitation and improvement of his estate. When he had returned to France during the peace, he had hoped that Bonaparte’s government would come close to the ideal he had always fought for — a limited monarchy in which democratic institutions and personal liberty would be respected. He clung to that hope even when the freedom of the press was abolished, and when all opposition groups were silenced.

  Then came more sinister events culminating in the murder of the young Bourbon prince, the Duc d’Enghien, grandson of Condé. He was kidnapped in the neutral state of Baden, taken to Paris and shot in the ditch of the Château de Vincennes after a mock trial. Bonaparte took full responsibility for the crime. Its purpose was obscure: perhaps to terrify the Bourbons, perhaps to make such a breach between himself and them that he could never be suspected by his supporters in France of favouring their interests, perhaps only to announce to the public that a ‘Bourbon Conspiracy’ had been unmasked, for a false account of the affair, presenting the innocent duke as a conspirator, was issued by the controlled press.

  When war broke out again, de Tromelin, though a professional soldier, offered his sword to neither side but, learning that Lady Elgin was alone in Paris and that Lord Elgin had been arrested, he recalled that she had entertained him kindly in Constantinople and went to see if she needed anything.

  At this time John Spencer Smith was British Resident at Stuttgart. He had married the daughter of the Austrian Minister in Constantinople and returned to England in 1801. One day he got into conversation with a French gentleman, Captain Rosey of Metz, who told him that he had contacts with royalist sympathisers in France, and asked if he could be of service in any way. It seems impossible for anyone living outside a police state really to understand what it means to live within one. Spencer Smith answered that both he and his family, his brother Sir Sidney in particular, were deeply concerned because they had heard nothing from Monsieur de Tromelin and they would be grateful for any news of him. The only address he could give was that of Madame de Tromelin, 3, rue Canivet, Paris.

  Captain Rosey was a spy and agent provocateur. On receiving his report, Bonaparte ordered that Monsieur de Tromelin should im
mediately be arrested. He was arrested accordingly at 9 p.m. on 17th April by Police Captain Ravoeu of the Department of the Seine and Oise, together with the police commissioners of Brest and Morlaix, while a strong force of gendarmes ransacked the Château of Coatshero for incriminating letters and documents. It was naturally thought that the redoubtable Sidney Smith, serving somewhere in the Channel, would be in contact with this friend of his living on the sea coast of France. But they found nothing incriminating among de Tromelin’s papers; except a letter he had written, but not yet sent, to an officer in the garrison of Brest, asking if anyone had a carriage for sale because ‘he had lent his to an Englishman who had not returned it’. ‘Who was this Englishman?’ Ravoue demanded, and de Tromelin replied that he was a Dr. Scott who had come to France with the permission of the government. They checked up on Dr. Scott, and found that he was the physician who had been brought from England at Lord Elgin’s request to attend upon him, and upon Lady Elgin at her confinement. They examined the police records of the surveillance of Lady Elgin and her visitors; they showed that Monsieur de Tromelin had called upon her ‘assiduously’ in Paris. He was therefore accused of ‘being in communication with the enemies of the state’, a capital offence, and shut up in solitary confinement in the Abbaye Prison. Thus ended his dream of living peacefully at home while the two countries to which he was bound by ties of affection battled around him.

  A week later he was interrogated. Uncertain of how much was already known about him, he decided to give a full account of his adventures since he had emigrated from France at the age of twenty, thirteen years ago. And so the French Police learned for the first time the identity of John Bromley, the servant to Sir Sidney Smith in the Temple whom they had ‘repatriated’, and the whole story of how the famous escape had been managed — nearly the whole story, for he was careful not to incriminate anyone who was still living and upon whom the secret police could possibly lay their hands. He never mentioned Major Le Grand who had also returned to France and was then at Valencay, or Boisgirad who was still dancing at the Opera. Colonel Phélippeaux, he said, was very strong in the affair, and most of Sir Sidney’s dealings had been with General Frotté, but they were very secretive and had never divulged the names of their accomplices. His own part he described as a very humble one, inspired only by gratitude to Sir Sidney Smith who had brought about his own release: he had joined the conspiracy only because it would not have been honourable to leave his comrade in misfortune without trying to assist him.