Page:Englishmen in the French Revolution.djvu/256

236 and then archly told him that news had arrived that very morning of the success of the expedition. Smith's vanity, indeed, was inordinate. His secretary, Captain Wright, also died at Paris, but under strangely different circumstances. In March 1803 he was sent over as attaché to the Embassy, and Lord Whitworth feared that this would be an additional obstacle to peace, as his escape from the Temple might be recollected. However intelligent he might be, a less known man would have been equally useful. Cruising off Morbihan in 1804, Wright was captured and again imprisoned in the Temple. He was identified by two of the prisoners implicated in Georges' conspiracy as having landed them, and he was produced as a witness at the trial, but refused to answer, maintaining that he owed no account of his naval operations except to his own Government. There is reason to believe that he was tortured to extract a confession, and that this having failed, the authorities, afraid to release him lest he should expose their infamy, strangled him in prison and then pretended he had committed suicide.

Sidney Smith's nephew, George Sidney Smith, was captured with Wright, was several years a prisoner at Verdun, and owing to his knowledge of French, commanded the boat which conveyed Napoleon to Elba.

Two other inmates of the Temple in the closing