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 engineer of lower rank may be sent out, who will not interfere with me. I have begun this business successfully, and I feel myself quite equal to go on with it, for it is nothing new to me.’ But a few days later, when he learned that a detached squadron was to be sent against Sidon, under the command of Captain Maurice Berkeley [q. v.] of the Thunderer, he wrote very strongly to the admiral, complaining that he should have all the ‘fag’ of the service, while a junior was to have the opportunity of distinction. Stopford gave way, and appointed him to command the expedition, which returned within two days, having taken possession of Sidon without much difficulty.

On his return to the camp Napier found the admiral intent on a combined attack on Beyrout. The marines were sent to their ships, and Napier, in command of the Turks, advanced through the mountains to the position of the Egyptian army, on the heights to the south of the Nahr-el-Kelb. On 10 Oct., as he was preparing to attack, he received a formal order to retire and hand over the command to Sir Charles Smith, who had just returned from Constantinople with a firman appointing him commander-in-chief of the Turkish army. Napier judged that to attempt a retreat at that time might be disastrous, and took on himself to disobey the order. For some time the battle raged fiercely; at a critical moment a Turkish battalion quailed and refused to advance; Napier threw himself among them, and, as he expressed it, ‘stirred them up with his stick,’ or pelted them with stones, till, to avoid the attack of the commodore in their rear, they drove out the less furious enemy in their front. The result of the victory was immediate. The Egyptians evacuated Beyrout; and Napier, mollified by so brilliant a close to his command, went on board the Powerful without reluctance.

Acre was now the only position on the coast held by the enemy. By the end of October the admiral had instructions to take possession of it also, and accordingly the fleet went thither. On 2 Nov. the ships anchored some distance to the southward, and went in with the sea-breeze on the afternoon of the 3rd. Their fire was overwhelming; within two hours most of the enemy's guns were silenced, and the explosion of the principal magazine virtually finished the action. The next morning the town surrendered. Napier's conduct, however, had given rise to much dissatisfaction. In order to see more clearly what was going on, Stopford moved his flag to the Phœnix steamer, and ordered Napier in the Powerful to lead in from the south against the western face. He was to anchor abreast of the southern fort on that side, the ships astern passing on and anchoring in succession to the north of the Powerful. Contrary to his orders, and without any apparent reason, he passed outside the reef in front of the town, came in from the north, and anchored considerably to the north of the position assigned him, thus crowding the ships astern, and leaving the space ahead unprovided for. It was not till after some delay that the admiral succeeded in placing a ship in the vacant position (, pp. 202–3). The next morning he sharply expressed his disapproval of Napier's conduct, on which Napier applied for a court-martial. The general wish in the squadron was that the dispute might be settled amicably, in order not to lessen the credit of the action. Stopford, who was a very old man, wrote that a difference of opinion did not imply censure, to which Napier, in a rude note, replied: ‘I placed my ship to the best of my judgment; I could do no more.’ Stopford condoned the offence, but the many officers in the fleet who had suffered by Napier's capricious disobedience neither forgave it nor forgot it.

It was, however, necessary to strengthen the squadron off Alexandria, and Napier was ordered to take command of it. He arrived there on 21 Nov., and understanding, by the copy of a letter addressed to Lord Ponsonby, the ambassador at Constantinople, that the government would approve of recognising Mohammed Ali as hereditary pasha, subject to his restoring the Turkish fleet and evacuating Syria, he forthwith proposed, agreed to, and signed a convention on these terms; and that without authority, without instructions, and without consulting the admiral, from whom he was not forty-eight hours distant. The first intelligence that Stopford had of the negotiation was the announcement that the convention was signed. He immediately repudiated it, and wrote to that effect both to Napier and the pasha. The Porte protested against it as unauthorised, and the several ministers of the allied powers at Constantinople declared it null and void. The home governments took a more favourable view of it, and, though they refused to guarantee the succession to Mohammed Ali's adopted son, the convention was otherwise accepted as the basis of the negotiations. Napier himself considered this as a complete justification of his conduct; but Captain (afterwards Sir) Henry John Codrington [q. v.], then commanding the Talbot, wrote with justice to his father of Napier's behaviour: ‘It was not only disrespectful to an