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

by Peter Shankland

  In October 1810, now an Admiral of the Blue, he married the widow of Sir George Rumbold, diplomat. By doing so he gained a devoted wife and three charming daughters, one of whom was already married to an officer who had served under him in Italy and the Dardanelles, Lieutenant Arabin.

  On 18th July, 1812, he hoisted his flag in the Tremendous at Portsmouth, and proceeded to join the Mediterranean Fleet as second-in-command to Sir Edward Pellew. On his way out he stopped at Cartagena, took part with the land forces in a skirmish with the French, and wrote a long report to the Admiralty stating that Cartagena, ‘the only port by which the navy can effectually supply the army in the south of the Peninsula’, was insufficiently defended, and making various recommendations to remedy the situation. In their reply the Admiralty expressed ‘their great surprise at receiving communications direct from Admiral Sir Sidney Smith, which, if necessary to be communicated at all, should have been transmitted through his commander-in-chief’.

  Sir Edward, a tolerant though uninspiring leader, does not appear to have been offended on this occasion, but relations quickly became strained when Sir Sidney upheld the right of a court martial to clear an officer whom the commander-in-chief wanted condemned.

  He was employed for some time in the routine blockade of Toulon. Then, with his flag now in the Hibernia, he was sent to investigate complaints that the Sardinians were granting licences to French vessels and affording them asylum and protection; and that the shore batteries had fired with grape shot on H.M.S. Euryalus, Captain Coghlan, while she was chasing a French privateer. In the absence of the British chargé d’affaires he settled the matter directly with the King of Sardinia, and cemented good relations by entertaining him and his court at a banquet in the Hibernia at Cagliari. He sent the bill to the Foreign Office, pointing out that the expenditure was economical ‘because peace and friendship is cheaper than hostility’. This view was not accepted, and he was left with the bill.

  On 1st July, 1814, he returned to Plymouth and struck his flag. Napoleon had already abdicated (5th April, 1814), and Paris was in the hands of the Allies.

  As he again had no immediate prospect of further employment, he set about trying to obtain a command for himself and at the same time to serve one of the causes that lay closest to his heart — that of the Christians who had fallen into the hands of the Tunisian and Algerian corsairs. They were forced to work in chains like beasts of burden, and were treated with appalling cruelty while waiting for a chance to be ransomed. His plan was to form an international force which, under his command, would put an end to this shameful traffic for ever. At the same time he never forgot his personal campaign against Napoleon. He did not share the prevailing belief that the man he called ‘the arch-destroyer of the peace of Europe’, would remain inactive on his little island of Elba; but he hoped, under the pretext of establishing an anti-corsair patrol, to make it impossible for him to leave it without being intercepted. The Congress of Vienna had opened, to draw up treaties of peace and re-draw the map of Europe. He wanted above all things to go there and persuade all the rulers to adopt his views.

  While he was pondering how this could be done, he received an unexpected visit from an old friend, Hyde de Neuville, one of the conspirators who had rescued him from the Temple. After many adventures he had become a respected diplomat, high in the confidence of the restored Bourbon Government. One of the objects of his visit to London was to learn something through English eyes of the true situation of France. Sir Sidney was delighted to inform him. He told him that the sudden success of the Bourbons, brought about by events in which they had merely been unconscious actors, had given them a false sense of security. Louis XVIII, he thought, was governing wisely, and was giving France time to recover from the period of revolution and despotism — but there was one dark spot that no one bothered his head about: Napoleon could in a few hours be again in the midst of his battalions.

  ‘Your countrymen are under a great illusion,’ he said, ‘if they believe that the prestige that surrounds his name is destroyed by France’s recent reverses. For a long time yet it will exist in the spirit of the nation as a glorious legend that flatters the people whose characteristic it is to be easily seduced by glory.’ All this, and a great deal more, Hyde noted down and embodied in a report to his government, commenting that Sir Sidney had enlightened him more than all the eminent men he had spoken to.

  Learning that his old friend was on his way to Vienna, Sir Sidney told him of his plan for ending slavery in North Africa, and for preventing Napoleon’s escape from Elba. Together they wrote a memorial embodying his ideas, and signed by him, calling upon the nations to engage themselves by treaty each to furnish its contingent for an amphibious force that should constantly guard the shores of the Mediterranean, pursuing and capturing all pirates by land and sea. It was headed, ‘Memorial upon the necessity and the means to end the piracies of the Barbary Powers’. Hyde enclosed a copy of this memorial to his government, adding:

  Sir Sidney wishes to go to Vienna, but I doubt if he would be very useful there: he is a man of action, a true Chevalier sans peur et sans reproche, but his head is not as good as his heart...

  He went on to explain that with all his practical spirit, his sound judgement and the exceptional generosity of his character, there was something airy in his imagination, and he wouldn’t have much credit as a statesman.

  He would be useful, however [Hyde concluded], in the enterprise against the corsairs; and also, with his well-merited reputation for bravery and energy, he would have the confidence of the Sovereigns, and the important thing was to interest them in this great project.

  In spite of his friend’s doubts, Sir Sidney still wanted to go to Vienna, though unsupported by his own or by any other government. What finally decided him was a visit from the dethroned King of Sweden, Gustavus IV, then resident in London, who came to him in a hack chaise and asked him to plead his cause before the allied sovereigns, claiming the succession, not for himself, but for his son. This appeal from the man who had given him his knighthood was irresistible. He set out with his family for Vienna, his bright escutcheon emblazoned very large upon the panels of his coach. He got there in time for the grand rout given by the Emperor of Austria to celebrate the arrival of the Czar and the King of Prussia, for which the famous Riding School, draped with white satin fringed with silver, decorated with panoplies and standards and lighted by 8,000 candles, had been transformed into a ball-room.

  When the sovereigns took their places surrounded by the women most celebrated for their beauty and elegance, Lady Sidney Smith’s daughters were among them; and they were launched into the giddy whirl of ‘the dancing congress’, one of them taking the part of The Queen of the Gods in a brilliant musical tableau at the Imperial Palace. Meanwhile Sir Sidney, from the moment of his arrival, earnestly and persistently pleaded the rights of Gustavus IV, descendant of Gustavus Adolphus and Charles the Twelfth, who had lost his throne through his undeviating opposition to Napoleon. His rights were gravely discussed by ambassadors and kings, and it was hard to deny them — but it was a lost cause all the same. In order to encourage Marshal Bernadotte in his refusal to involve his adopted country in Napoleon’s invasion of Russia in 1812, the Allies had guaranteed to him by secret treaties the succession to the throne of Sweden which the Swedes themselves had offered him.

  The prospects of his anti-slavery campaign seemed to be equally unfavourable. Many were finding the Congress a wonderful opportunity for unbridled pleasure after tensions and restraints of war. They looked upon Sir Sidney’s prolonged accounts of the cruelties being inflicted upon their less fortunate fellow Christians as a great bore, and in consequence he was christened ‘Long Acre’, the name of one of the longest streets in London.

  The business of the Congress was being conducted among scenes of unparalleled splendour, each delegate vying with the others to provide free and sumptuous entertainment. Sir Sidney had no official support, and he was seriously in debt. He had
spent more than his salary in supporting his emigré friends, in financing the insurrection in Calabria, and in entertaining the Prince Regent of Portugal and the King of Sardinia; and the government was in no hurry to reimburse him. His marriage had contributed greatly to his happiness, and also to his financial embarrassment. The leader of the British delegation, Lord Castlereagh, on learning that the Foreign Office had never paid him for his services in Constantinople, came to his rescue.

  To raise funds for his anti-slavery campaign, Sir Sidney invited all the sovereigns, ambassadors, delegates and other people of importance to a dinner and ball at their own expense, on 29th December, 1814. He fixed the price of the dinner at three ducats, something less than thirty shillings, and of the ball at ten florins. He announced that the proceeds were to go towards the purchase of an immense silver lamp for the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem and for the redemption of Christian slaves in Barbary. He called this charity gala ‘a pic-nic dinner’. The originality of the idea had an immediate appeal, and a great number of tickets were sold.

  The walls of the beautiful hall of the Augarten, a famous public hostelry, were lined with flags of all the nations, an orchestra was installed at each end, and the arrival of each monarch was announced by a fanfare from mounted trumpeters arrayed like heralds in a Shakespeare play. Kings, generals, illustrious statesmen, all crowded to the ‘pic-nic dinner’. No one had ever seen so many of them gathered together in a public restaurant. Some of the guests whispered that there had been nothing like it since Napoleon at the height of his power entertained the crowned heads of Europe at Dresden.

  During the first course the orchestras played the national airs of the different countries. During the second course Sir Sidney got upon his legs and appealed on behalf of the slaves so successfully that thousands of golden ducats were subscribed, each contributing according to his fortune or his benevolence.

  When his long speech had been concluded, when the dishes had run their course, when the wines of Hungary, of the Rhine and of Italy had been sipped, tasted and lauded according to their merit and the royal guests were about to rise, the maître d’hôtel appeared with a silver dish and demanded three ducats from each of them in turn. The Czar and the King of Denmark willingly complied, but when it came to the turn of the King of Bavaria he hunted desperately through all his pockets, unable to find a single coin while the inexorable maître d’hôtel waited, jingling the six ducats he had just received. Prince Eugène, noticing the king’s embarrassment, hastened to the rescue, but he was forestalled by the Czar. With a shout of laughter he emptied his purse into the dish. The laughter was echoed all along the table, and in merry mood the guests passed into the ballroom where many of the young bourgeoisie, usually excluded from such august entertainments, were already assembled.

  As a result of this evening’s work, Sir Sidney was able to form an international association, The Knights Liberators of the Slaves in Africa, of which he was elected President. He corresponded eagerly with all the rulers, dispatched couriers with instructions to his confidential agents in Africa and Asia to encourage the native chiefs and princes, equal sufferers with the Europeans, to make a firmer stand in defence of their peoples against the outrages of the Barbary Corsairs; and he made a charitable fund available to the consuls residing in North Africa for the immediate relief and emancipation of as many slaves as possible. But he had not yet succeeded in creating his international force, or in establishing an anti-corsair patrol to prevent Napoleon’s escape from Elba, when the news came to Vienna that the bird had flown.

  Chapter Twenty-One – History Made, and Re-made

  ‘Le Congrés est terminé,’ Napoleon is said to have announced when he set foot once more on the soil of France. It was so far from being terminé that it made the vital policy decisions that enabled Europe to present a united front to this unexpected threat to the peace so recently established. The most important military leaders and statesmen being conveniently present in Vienna, they declared Napoleon an outlaw, and announced their intention to wage war, not against France, but against him personally.

  This declaration had such an effect in Paris that Fouché advised him to abdicate; his enthusiastic welcome by the army encouraged him to choose the hazard of war. His soldiers, the dominant class during the era of conquest, finding that they were less important under Louis XVIII, had not been able to adjust themselves easily to the new conditions, and many of them smarted under real or imaginary grievances. With the return of the emperor, new vistas of conquest suddenly appeared, and dreams of glory. Uniforms, military music, drums and banners, became the order of the day; those who doubted were seduced by the military ardour of the majority, or followed the line of least resistance. The elected representatives of the people, however, having tasted the absence of constraint, refused to give him back his old dictatorial powers.

  To strengthen his position, he ordered a vast fête in the Champ de Mai on 1st June at which, accompanied by Te Deums, military pageantry and beautifully dressed women, the emperor and his people were to take an oath of loyalty to the new regime. It was not quite a success. Many were perplexed at the sudden turn of events and troubled by conflicting loyalties. Typical of these was Monsieur de Tromelin. He had greatly distinguished himself at Lutzen, where the Russians were sharply repulsed by Napoleon after the retreat from Moscow, and also at Bautzen, both bloody and indecisive contests. He had been regularly promoted for his services in the field until he had become a brigadier general and one of Marshal Oudinot’s right-hand men. He had fought with a good conscience because the campaign of 1813 and 1814 had been represented to the army as necessary to defend France from invasion; but in fact Napoleon had been offered peace terms in 1813 that would have guaranteed to France her natural frontiers — the Rhine, the Vosges and the Pyrenees.

  A special committee of the Estates had recommended him to accept these terms, but he had indignantly rejected them: ‘Am I to sacrifice my pride,’ he asked, ‘for peace?’ He had not yet won a victory that would have wiped out the disgrace of the retreat from Moscow: and so the fair fields of France had to be desecrated by the same horrors of war that her own soldiers had so often visited upon other countries.

  Upon Napoleon’s abdication and departure for Elba, Brigadier-General de Tromelin had shared in the common belief that the era of war and destruction was over. He had made his peace with the Bourbons, and joined the Royal Corps of Grenadiers. When Napoleon returned from Elba like a bolt from the blue, he was ready to fight and die at the foot of the throne; but Louis XVIII had fled, and there was no longer any throne to die at the foot of. He went home to his family at Coatshero, once more hoping to be left in peace. On 6th May, 1815, he received orders to join the 6th corps of Napoleon’s Northern Army, and he complied. There seemed to be no alternative.

  When Sir Sidney learned that his arch-enemy was advancing towards Belgium with 300 guns and an army of 120,000 men, he packed his family into the coach with the bright escutcheon and set out for Brussels. When he had found accommodation for them there, he rode out, on 18th June, to take part in the battle that was already raging near Waterloo. Things seemed to be going badly that afternoon. He stemmed the tide of disabled men being sent to the rear, and deserters, and was now and again jammed among broken wagons by a column of disarmed prisoners. He met Sir George Berkeley returning wounded from the field and, ‘thinking his sword a better one to meet his old antagonist on horseback’, he borrowed it.

  He reached the Duke of Wellington — but was not allowed to join in the fighting. He spent the time organising an ambulance service of wagons that brought in 134 wounded from the field of battle to the dressing stations, more than half of them French. At the end of the day he had what he called, ‘the heartfelt gratification’ of being the first Englishman that was not in the battle, who shook hands with the Duke before he got off his horse, and of drinking his health at his table.

  While the armies continued their advance, the Duke sent him with the Comte de Thury
and the Baron de Breda to inspect the route by which it was proposed that King Louis XVIII should return to his capital, and to arrange for the surrender of the garrisons of Arras and Amiens. On 6th July he returned to headquarters, then at Neuilly; he found there his old friend, General de Tromelin who had fought on the opposite side, and whose division had been the last to leave the stricken field. He was then employed by Fouché, the Duke of Otranto, in the negotiations for the Allies to enter Paris without further bloodshed.

  To commemorate the auspicious termination of the war, many officers, including Sir Sidney, were honoured by the Prince Regent: he became a Commander of the Bath. The investiture, by the Duke of Wellington, took place in the Elysée Bourbon Palace, to which Napoleon had retired after Waterloo. The occasion aroused great interest in Paris — the British officer who had first checked the emperor’s victorious career being honoured by the British officer who finally closed it. The prophetic letter which he had written on the shutter of his prison window still existed in many copies. It was read with added interest now that the prophecy had been, in part, fulfilled — but Napoleon could not be imprisoned in the room that Sir Sidney had occupied. On learning that the letter was in circulation in Paris, he had sent for a copy, re-read it, and forthwith ordered the Temple to be pulled down.

  After a number of unsuccessful applications to the Admiralty for further employment, Sir Sidney took a house in Paris, 6, rue D’Anjou, with his wife, his son-in-law Captain Arabin, and the rest of his family. He was beset by financial problems until 1817 when the government repaid him the £4,500 he had advanced to the Italian partisans. Then, in 1818, in full and final settlement of his claim for the repayment of various sums expended in his country’s service, he was awarded an additional pension of £1,000 a year.