Sidney Smith

Sidney Smith stopped Napoleon at Acre, and Napoleon said afterwards that the man had made him miss his destiny. He was a Royal Navy officer of conspicuous ability and even more conspicuous self-regard, made lieutenant at seventeen, and he spent the peace as a volunteer with the Swedish navy against Russia, which earned him a foreign knighthood and the sneering nickname the Swedish Knight from colleagues who thought it unbecoming. He burned the French fleet at Toulon in 1793, was captured in 1796 while cutting out a ship in the Seine estuary, and spent two years in the Temple prison in Paris before escaping with forged orders. In 1799 he was sent to the Levant and took command of the defence of Acre against Bonaparte's Syrian campaign. He captured the French siege artillery at sea as it came down the coast, put his own guns and marines into the walls alongside Jezzar Pasha's garrison, and held the town through eight weeks and eleven assaults until plague and casualties forced Bonaparte to retreat to Egypt. It was the first time Bonaparte had been stopped. Smith then negotiated the Convention of El Arish for the French evacuation of Egypt, which his own government repudiated, embarrassing everyone. He fought at the Nile campaign's aftermath, commanded in the Mediterranean, and in 1807 escorted the Portuguese royal family and court to Brazil ahead of the advancing French, which is how the Braganzas came to rule from Rio. His later career stalled because almost nobody senior could work with him. He spent his last years in Paris campaigning against Barbary slavery and died there in 1840.

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