On his return to England, Sidney Smith got the command of the Tiger, four-and-twenty guns, and was instructed to watch the coast of Egypt. After having bombarded Alexandria, he set sail for Syria, where his presence and his advice induced the pasha to defend St. Jean d’Acre. It was owing to his aid and obstinate resistance that the siege had to be raised. It was on that occasion that he was presented by the sultan with an aigrette of great price, and received from Napoleon the not less flattering remark: ‘This devil of a Sidney Smith has made me miss my fortune.’
On his return to London he received the freedom of the City, in addition to a magnificent sword of honour. Elected to the Commons, he kept his seat up to the Peace of Amiens, when he obtained a new command, and in 1805 took Capri after a siege of a few hours. When, in 1807, Napoleon had deposed the House of Braganza, he took the Prince Regent of Portugal and his family to the Brazils. Since then he had remained inactive, though, as may be easily imagined, inactivity did not suit his temperament. The Congress of Vienna offered him a magnificent opportunity for displaying his mental energy, and, as a consequence, he was one of the first to arrive. He represented himself as being vested with full powers by the former King of Sweden, Gustavus IV., who, under the title of the Duc de Holstein, had entrusted him with a claim relative to the throne he had lost. That very honourable mission had been bestowed upon him in virtue of his being a former Swedish naval officer and a knight of the ‘Order of the Sword.’
At the very opening of the conferences, Sir Sidney Smith had submitted to the supreme tribunal of Europe the declaration of his august client. The moment seemed well chosen. Justice, reparation, legitimacy, were religiously invoked watchwords in Vienna. In appealing to the conscience of sovereigns, the deposed monarch brought their own arguments to bear upon them. In his note, Gustavus-Adolphus reminded them that he had been deposed only by the influence of Napoleon, with whom he had declined all relationship, especially since the death of the Duc d’Enghien. He furthermore pointed out that the Swedish nation, in excluding him from the throne, had only yielded to a political necessity and to the threats of the great Powers; that at the moment of his abdication he was a prisoner; that since then he had always refused to renounce the rights of his son; that he felt confident of this prince, when he arrived at his majority, proving himself worthy of his birth, of the Swedish nation, and of his illustrious forefathers; and that, finally, he did not claim the throne on his own account.
In politics, however, the most logical arguments are not always the most valid ones. The days and months went by without there being the slightest question of restoring his sceptre to the deposed monarch. Practically sent away without having produced the least impression as far as his embassy was concerned, Sidney Smith was, however, not at all discouraged. ‘If, contrary to all possibility, I fail with this august tribunal,’ he said, ‘I’ll bring it without the slightest fear before the tribunal of my own country. As long as we have a Parliament in England, there will be a court of justice for the whole of Europe. I’ll ask why a legitimate king comes to be deprived of his rights; I’ll ask to know the reason of the most relentless enemy of Bonaparte falling a victim to his intrigues; of the abandoning to misfortune of the man who was the first to attack the Colossus with all the ardour of a knight of olden times. Do not people know that Napoleon never forgave Gustavus for having reproached him with the murder of the Duc d’Enghien, and for having sent back to the King of Prussia the Order of the Black Eagle, which he, Gustavus, declined to wear in common with Bonaparte?
‘If it be objected that Gustavus signed his abdication, I’ll answer that he was not a free man, that a father cannot sign away the rights of his son, that a sovereign cannot depose his dynasty. Ought not this descendant of the great Gustavus, of Charles XII., to inspire in this spot the interest inseparable from such magnificent memories? When on every side the principles of equity are loudly evoked, will they dare by the strangest contradiction to reject the most sacred, those of an inheritance founded on glory and hallowed by ages? In fine, if history is henceforth to be the sole judge of arbitrary acts, it is to history that Gustavus-Adolphus shall appeal. Posterity, more equitable than this Congress of kings, shall say of the prince that if certain brilliant peculiarities made him, perhaps, an object of envy and enmity, it is very rarely that vice does not avenge itself upon a brilliant destiny with calumny. As for myself,’ added the admiral, ‘a constant courtier to fallen grandeur, I shall remain true to my affections and to my principles, and defend until the end the rights of legitimacy and evil fortune.’
In vain they told him that the interest of the nations themselves, the pledges given, and the need for peace, had also to be considered; that Europe could not annul solemn acts, and perhaps least of all those secret treaties that assured to Bernadotte and his dynasty the peaceful possession of the throne of Sweden; that Europe would never reward the eminent services he had rendered to the common cause by a spoliation; that Europe would not expel him from the prominent place of honour to which the general wish of the Swedes had lifted him in order to impose upon them the monarch they had rejected; that the sad position of Gustavus-Adolphus rendered it imperative in him to bear his misfortunes with dignity; and that, finally, when a monarch is deposed, he could only arouse compassion by avoiding to draw attention to his case. In spite of the indifference of the Congress and of the public, Sidney Smith, nevertheless, did not leave a stone unturned in favour of a cause henceforth lost.
The negotiations with regard to his pic-nic dinner had met with fewer obstacles. In Vienna, it was easier to organise a pleasure-party than to obtain the restitution of a throne in an assembly which had seemingly taken it as a principle to despoil the feeble in favour of the strong. The aim of this general convocation was a subscription, at the head of which the admiral had placed his name. The proceeds, it was said, were to be devoted to the purchase of an immense silver lamp for the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem. But it was also soon known that the sums Sidney Smith hoped to collect would be used for the repurchase of the Christians kept prisoners in Barbary. He had already proposed to the Congress a naval expedition for the purpose of annihilating those Barbary powers, of putting an end to their brigandage, and of destroying the disgraceful white-slave traffic in Africa for ever. Naturally, he was to take the command of this anti-piratic army. The Congress had, however, other things to think about than the organisation of a crusade, and this new Peter the Hermit had fain to be content with the simpler means of redeeming the slaves with the gold taken from the purses of the votaries of pleasure. Transplanting English usages into Austria, a dinner seemed to him the suitable bond for this humanitarian work.
A great number of tickets were sold and the day was fixed. The Augarten, eminently suited for such a function, had been chosen. Yan, the restaurateur par excellence, had undertaken all the culinary details of that philanthropic gala fête. The price of the tickets had been fixed at three Dutch ducats, that for the ball to follow at ten florins. The dinner was to be on the table at five o’clock in the beautiful hall so often used by Maria-Theresa and Joseph II. The table itself was in the shape of an elongated horse-shoe; the walls of the apartments had practically disappeared under the standards of all nations. An orchestra had been erected at each end. The sovereigns had not only approved, but approved with great alacrity. The grand personages of the Congress, ministers, generals, and ambassadors, had been equally eager to contribute their ducats. Among the hundred and fifty guests there were as many highnesses as semi-sovereigns, great captains, and illustrious statesmen. Trumpeters on horseback, posted at intervals, announced the monarchs’ arrival by loud blasts. Those ‘glorious entrances’ as they are practised on the English stage proved that the admiral had not forgotten the theatre of Shakespeare.
Yan had done his best, and though that best was good, and Bohemia, Hungary, and the Hereditary States had provided their most delicate edibles, a dinner at the Court would no doubt have been more perfect in every respect. It was, however, a tavern repast, where every one paid his own share; and that novelty had seemed so strange to the crowned heads, or to the heads fated to wear a crown, that no one was absent. It was, indeed, a strange and curious spectacle.
Every one remembers the banquet where Voltaire made Candide dine with seven deposed kings at Venice. Since then, no one had ever seen so many forgathered in a tavern or restaurant. If the number of those who sat down at the Augarten was not absolutely the same, at least they were not deposed, but crowned in real earnest, and very resplendent. The inverse comparison, in fact, presented itself to everybody’s mind. Involuntarily also, the mind reverted to some of those functions where the kings pressed around Napoleon the victorious; a few spoke about it, but in nothing louder than a whisper.