dney Smith outside Rouen, and
the problem was how to get through the barriers without a passport.
Smith sent Wright on first, and he was duly challenged for his passport
by the sentinel; whereupon Sidney Smith, with a majestic air of
official authority, marched up and said in faultless Parisian French,
"I answer for this citizen, I know him;" whereupon the deluded sentinel
saluted and allowed them both to pass!

Sidney Smith's escape from the Temple made him a popular hero in
England. He was known to have great influence with the Turkish
authorities, and he was sent to the East in the double office of
envoy-extraordinary to the Porte, and commander of the squadron at
Alexandria. By one of the curious coincidences which marked Sidney
Smith's career, he became acquainted while in the Temple with a French
Royalist officer named Philippeaux, an engineer of signal ability, and
who had been a schoolfellow and a close chum of Napoleon himself at
Brienne. Smith took his French friend with him to the East, and he
played a great part in the defence of Acre. Napoleon had swept north
through the desert to Syria, had captured Gaza and Jaffa, and was about
to attack Acre, which lay between him and his ultimate goal,
Constantinople. Here Sidney Smith resolved to bar his way, and in his
flagship the _Tigre_, with the _Theseus_, under Captain Miller, and two
gunboats, he sailed to Acre to assist in its defence. Philippeaux took
charge of the fortifications, and thus, in the breaches of a remote
Syrian town, the quondam prisoner of the Temple and the ancient school
friend of Napoleon joined hands to wreck that dream of a great Eastern
empire which lurked in the cells of Napoleon's masterful intellect.

Acre represents a blunted arrow-head jutting out from a point in the
Syrian coast. Napoleon could only attack, so to speak, the neck of the
arrow, which was protected by a ditch and a weak wall, and flanked by
towers; but Sidney Smith, having command of the sea, could sweep the
four faces of the town with the fire of his guns, as well as command
all the sea-roads in its vicinity. He guessed, from the delay of the
French in opening fire, that they were waiting for their siege-train to
arrive by sea. He kept vigilant watch, pounced on the French flotilla
as it rounded the promontory of Mount Carmel, captured nine of the
vessels, carried them with their guns and warlike material to Acre, and
mounted his thirty-four captured pieces o