Short answers, pulled from the story.
The French invasion of Malta took place in June 1798, opening when Napoleon's fleet was spotted off Gozo on the 6th of June. The Knights Hospitaller signed their capitulation to France on the 12th of June.
Napoleon Bonaparte commanded the French invasion of Malta as part of the Mediterranean campaign of the French Revolutionary Wars. Louis Baraguey d'Hilliers, Louis Desaix, Claude-Henri Belgrand de Vaubois and Jean Reynier each led one of the separate landing forces under him.
The Knights Hospitaller, the Order of St. John, governed Malta before the French invasion under Grand Master Ferdinand von Hompesch zu Bolheim. Their fall in 1798 closed out 268 years of Hospitaller rule over the islands.
Knights and Maltese militia fought back against the first French landings on the 10th of June 1798, yet French troops had overrun most of the archipelago in well under a day. Hompesch subsequently opened truce talks aboard the flagship L'Orient, culminating in a convention signed on the 12th of June that handed the islands' sovereignty to France.
French forces occupied Malta after the invasion, with General Vaubois left in charge of a garrison. Unpaid debts, new taxes and church looting sparked a Maltese uprising within three months, leading to a two-year siege that ended only when France surrendered the island to Britain in 1800.
French forces seized close to 1200 artillery pieces across Malta and Gozo combined, alongside 40000 muskets, 1500000 lb of gunpowder, two ships of the line, a frigate and four galleys. Gozo alone accounted for about 116 of those guns.