Sir Sidney Smith cannot be passed over, for although prisoners of war, as concomitants of all wars, receive little notice here, his was an exceptional case. Indeed, his long detention was due to the demand of France that 4000 Frenchmen should be exchanged for him, a great though unwitting compliment. He and his brother Spencer had been educated at a military college at Caen. While trying to cut out a privateer from Havre in April 1796 he was captured, with twenty or thirty officers and men. The Directory refused to treat "this monster" as a prisoner of war, on account of his burning of the French ships at Toulon, and consigned him, with his secretary, John Wesley Wright, to the Temple, though not, as is sometimes said, to the rooms in which the royal family were confined in 1792. He was interrogated, with a view to a prosecution for arson. Lord Malmesbury notified in 1797 that unless Smith was liberated on parole no French officer in England would be allowed a similar, privilege. When Babœuf's followers attempted to break out of the Temple, Smith helped to overpower them. Swinburne, when recalled, thought himself on the point of arranging the affair, but his successor, Captain James Cotes, accomplished nothing. Bribery and stratagem were, however, more effective than diplomacy. Count Tromelin, a Vendean émigré captured with Smith, passed himself off as his English servant, John
