After the surrender of Alexandria, 2 Sept. 1801, he was sent home with despatches, and arrived in London on 10 Nov.
In the general election of 1802 he was returned as M.P. for Rochester, and during 1803 had, under Lord Keith, command of a squadron of small craft on the coast of Flanders and Holland. On 9 Nov. 1805 he was promoted to be rear-admiral, and in January 1806 he hoisted his flag on board the Pompée for service in the Mediterranean, where Lord Collingwood was instructed to employ him in a detached command on the coast of Naples. From May to August 1806 he carried on a successful war of outposts against the French, and another, more bitter and not so successful, against the English military officers, with whom he was supposed to be co-operating, and especially against Sir John Moore (1761–1809) [q. v.], who was quite unable to understand the real merit hidden beneath so much extravagance and vanity. Colonel (afterwards Sir Henry Edward) Bunbury [q. v.], then chief of the staff under Stuart or Moore, tells many stories of Smith's absurdities, and says ‘he was an enthusiast, always panting for distinction, restlessly active, but desultory in his views, extravagantly vain, daring, quick-sighted, and fertile in those resources which befit a partisan leader; but he possessed no great depth of judgment, nor any fixity of purpose save that of persuading mankind, as he was fully persuaded himself, that Sidney Smith was the most brilliant of chevaliers. He was kind tempered, generous, and as agreeable as a man can be supposed to be who is always talking of himself’ (Narrative of some Passages in the great War with France, p. 232). Moore described Smith as ‘most impudent;’ but Bunbury, although naturally taking the soldier's estimate of the man, says ‘the coming of the admiral and the energy of his first proceedings soon produced a wide effect. Arms and ammunition were conveyed into the mountains of Calabria; the smaller detachments of the enemy were driven from the shores, and some of the strongest points were armed and occupied by the insurgents and parties of English marines and seamen. The admiral spread his ships and small craft along the coasts from Scylla to the Bay of Naples, he took the island of Capri: threatened Salerno and Policastro; scattered through the interior his proclamations as “commander-in-chief on behalf of King Ferdinand,” and the insurrection soon kindled throughout the Basilicata and the two Calabrias, though the bands acted in general with little concert or collective strength’ (ib.)
In August Smith had instructions to put himself under the orders of Sir John Thomas Duckworth [q. v.], with whom he co-operated in the futile demonstration off Constantinople in February–March 1807. In the summer he returned to England, and in November was sent out as senior officer to the Tagus, with his flag in the Hibernia. At Lisbon he made the arrangements for the departure of the prince regent and the royal family to the Brazils, and sent several of the ships under his orders as a convoy to the Portuguese squadron. In February 1808 he was himself sent out to Rio de Janeiro, to take command of the South American station, but a bitter quarrel which broke out between him and Lord Strangford, the English minister, led to his being summarily recalled in the summer of 1809. A later correspondence with Canning seems to show that the parts of Smith's conduct which Strangford had represented as irregular were strictly in accordance with his secret instructions; but in any case it was obviously impossible to permit the minister at a foreign court and the commander-in-chief on the station to be writing abusive letters to or at each other [see Smyth, Percy Clinton Sydney].
On 31 July 1810 Smith was promoted to be vice-admiral, and in July 1812 went out to the Mediterranean as second in command under Sir Edward Pellew (afterwards Viscount Exmouth) [q. v.] In March 1814, being in very bad health, he was allowed to return to England with his flag flying in the Hibernia. With her arrival at Plymouth in July Smith's service came to an end. In June 1815 he found himself, at the critical moment, at Brussels, and on the afternoon of the 18th rode out to the army, joined the Duke of Wellington, and rode with him from St. Jean to Waterloo. ‘Thus,’ he wrote, ‘though I was not allowed to have any of the fun, I had the heartfelt gratification of being the first Englishman that was not in the battle who shook hands with him.’ He accompanied the army to Paris, where, in the Palais Bourbon, on 29 Dec., he was invested by the Duke of Wellington with the insignia of the K.C.B., to which he had been nominated in the previous January. On 19 July 1821 he attained the rank of admiral. During his later years he lived principally in Paris, amusing himself with a fictitious order of ‘Knights Liberators’ or ‘Knights Templars,’ which he had formed and of which he constituted himself president. It had for its proposed aim the liberation of Christian slaves from the Barbary pirates; but its efforts seem to have been limited to correspondence. On 4 July 1838 Smith was nominated a
