Nothing is left of those memorials, further than a few notes of the expenses of his journeys; from which he appears to have examined the coasts of the Black Sea, the Bosphorus, the Dardanelles, the Archipelago, and the Ionian Islands. But he was now to distinguish himself on a higher scene of action.
In September 1793, the officers of the French navy at Toulon, and the chief inhabitants, disgusted with the Revolution, and alarmed by the cruelties of the Revolutionary tribunals; hoisted the white flag, and proposed to Lord Hood, commanding the British squadron off the coast, that he should take possession of the city and shipping, in the name of Louis XVII.
It must be confessed, that there never was a great military prize, more utterly thrown away, nor an effort of loyalty more unlucky. The whole transaction only gives the lesson, that what the diplomatists call "delicacy" is wholly misplaced when men come to blows, and that in war promptitude is every thing. The first act of Lord Hood ought to have been to remove the fleet, strip the arsenals, and send the whole to England, there to be kept secure for its rightful king. The next ought to have been, to give every inhabitant the means of escaping to some safer quarter, with his property. The third ought to have been, to garrison the forts with every soldier who could be sent from Gibraltar and England; from which we could have sent 50,000 men within three weeks. Toulon then might have been made the stronghold of a loyal insurrection in the south, and the garrison of all the foreign troops, which the French princes could muster.
Not one of these things was done. The ships were left until the last moment, through "delicacy" to the people; the people were left to the last moment, through a perilous confidence in the chances of war; and Toulon was lost by an attack of ragamuffins, and the battery of Lieutenant Buonaparte, which an English regiment would have flung into the sea, and sent its commandant to an English prison.
But, even in the midst of these instances of ill-luck, Sir Sidney Smith made himself conspicuous by his services. When returning from his Mediterranean survey, he happened to stop at Smyrna; and there observing a number of British sailors loitering about the streets, he offered them service; and purchasing a small lateen-rigged vessel, about forty feet long, which he manned with forty sailors, and steering for Toulon, he turned over his little vessel and its crew to Lord Hood.
This was another example of that activity of mind and ready attention to circumstances, which characterised his career. A hundred other officers might have seen those sailors wandering about Smyrna, without thinking of the purchase of a vessel to make them useful to their country; or might have been too impatient to return to England, for a detour to Toulon.
Lord Hood, though a brave man, was a dull one, and had all the formality of a formal time. Sir Sidney's gallant volunteering was forgotten, and the defence of Toulon was carried on under every possible species of blundering. At length the enemies' guns began to play from the heights, and the order was given for the fleet to retire. Whether even this order was not premature may still be doubted; for the French batteries, few and weak, could scarcely have made an impression on so powerful a fleet; and the British broadsides might have made it impossible for the enemy to hold the town, especially after all its works had been dismantled. But the order was given, and was about to be executed, when Sir Sidney asked the question which seems to have occurred to no one else: "What do you mean to do with all those fine ships: do you mean to leave them behind?" Some one called out,—"Why, what do you mean to do with them?" The prompt answer was,—"Burn them, to be sure." By some chance, the answer reached Lord Hood's ears; he immediately sent for Sir Sidney, and to him, though on half pay, and then irregularly employed, was given this important duty.
The employment was highly perilous, not only from the hazards of being blown up, or buried in the conflagration, but from the resistance of the populace and galley-slaves, besides that of the troops, who, on the retreat of the English, were ready to pour into the town. His force, too, was trifling, consisting only of the little vessel which he had purchased at Smyrna, three British gun-boats, and three Spanish. But the operation was gallantly performed. The stores of the arsenal were set on fire; a fireship was towed into the middle of the French fleet, and all was soon one immense mass of flame: perhaps war never exhibited a scene more terribly sublime. Thirteen sail of the line, with all the storehouses, were blazing together. The French, too, began to fire from the hills, and the English gun-boats returned the fire with discharges of grapeshot on the troops as they came rushing down to the gates of the arsenal. All was uproar and explosion.
The most melancholy part of the whole narrative is the atrocious vengeance of the Republicans on gaining possession. An anecdote of this scene of horror, and of the especial treachery of Napoleon, is given on the authority of Sir Sidney.
"The Royalist inhabitants, or the chief portion of them, had been driven into the great square of the town, and compressed there into one huge mass. Napoleon then discharged his artillery upon them, and mowed them down. But as many had thrown themselves on the ground to escape the grapeshot, and many were only wounded, this villain of villains cried out aloud,—'The vengeance of the Republic is satisfied, rise and go to your homes.' But the wretched people no sooner stood up than they received another discharge of his guns, and were all massacred. If any one act of man ever emulated the work of the devil, this act, by its mingled perfidy and cruelty, was the one."