Ferdinand von Hompesch zu Bolheim

• 1. Introduction

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  Ferdinand von Hompesch zu Bolheim became the 71st Grand Master of the Knights of Malta in 1797, and within a year he had presided over one of the most humiliating surrenders in the Order's long history. A military force that had held Malta since 1530, that traced its origins to the Crusades, and that had repelled the Ottoman Empire itself, capitulated to Napoleon Bonaparte in less than a week. No shot was fired in a great siege. No epic last stand marked the moment. The Order simply handed over the keys to an island fortress after a single day of French landings. How did it come to that? What kind of man held the Grand Mastership when centuries of sovereignty dissolved? And what happened to Hompesch himself when it was all over?

• 2. A German Rises

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  Hompesch was born on the 9th of November 1744 in the village of Bolheim, now part of the town of Zülpich in the Eifel region. His full baptismal register read Ferdinand Joseph Antoine Herman Louis, a name befitting the elaborate formality of his world. He was admitted to the Knights Hospitaller on the 10th of July 1761, at just fourteen years old, which required a special dispensation from the Holy See. His entry point into the Order was as a page to the Grand Master Manuel Pinto da Fonseca.

  The decades that followed were a patient accumulation of rank and responsibility. By 1768 he had reached the grade of castellan. Two years later he held the rank of lieutenant, overseeing the inspection of the Order's ships and fortifications. In 1774 he took charge of the island's munitions. He was, by any measure, a man who climbed steadily rather than brilliantly.

  In late 1775, Hompesch was posted as the Order's ambassador to the court of the Holy Roman Emperor in Vienna, a position he would hold for the next twenty-five years. At that court he pursued one of his pet projects: reuniting the Protestant Bailiwick of Brandenburg with the Order. The German knights largely blocked him, and the effort came to nothing. He accumulated commanderies across German-speaking lands through the 1770s, 1780s, and into the 1790s, stretching from Rothenburg and Herford to Basel, Colmar, and Villingen in the Black Forest.

  On the 17th of July 1797, the Order's chapter elected him Grand Master, making him a Prince of the Church and the first German ever to hold the office. He marked his elevation by raising the towns of Zabbar, Zejtun, and Siggiewi to city status on Malta.

• 3. Napoleon at the Gates

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  In 1798, Hompesch received a warning: the French fleet sailing toward Egypt intended to strike Malta along the way. He ignored it and made no effort to reinforce the island's defenses. On the 6th of June 1798, the advance squadron of that fleet arrived off Malta's shores. One French ship was allowed into the harbour for repairs.

  Three days later, on the 9th of June, the main fleet appeared. At its head was Napoleon Bonaparte, commanding twenty-nine thousand men. Hompesch's Order could muster perhaps seven thousand. Bonaparte demanded unrestricted access to the harbour for his entire fleet, citing the need for water provisions. Hompesch replied that only two ships at a time could enter. Napoleon took that as a provocation and ordered the invasion to begin.

  French troops came ashore on the 10th of June. The resistance was thin from the start. Local Maltese people were themselves restless, many wanting the Order gone from their island. A rule of the Order forbade fighting against fellow Christians, which paralyzed its French members, who had no wish to fire on their own countrymen. With internal division compounding military weakness, Hompesch capitulated on the 11th of June. The following day he signed a treaty ceding sovereignty over Malta to France.

  The treaty's terms offered Hompesch something in return. France promised to use its influence at the Congress of Rastatt to secure a principality for him equivalent to the one he was surrendering. He was also promised an annual pension. Neither guarantee would prove reliable.

• 4. Exile and Contested Authority

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  On the 18th of June 1798, Hompesch sailed from Malta to Trieste, where he tried to establish a new headquarters for the Order. His diplomatic activity from that city was energetic if ultimately futile. On the 12th of October he sent a formal protest to foreign governments against the French occupation of Malta. Eleven days later, on the 23rd of October, he published a second manifesto from Trieste, again registering his objections.

  By the summer of 1799, he had given up the fight in a different sense. On the 6th of July he sent two letters of abdication: one to Francis II, Holy Roman Emperor, and one to Paul I of Russia. He sent nothing to the pope, despite canon law requiring papal acceptance for a valid abdication. The pope, for his part, never accepted the resignation, leaving Hompesch's status formally unresolved.

  Settled in Ljubljana, Hompesch then reversed himself entirely. On the 7th of May 1801, and again on the 20th of September 1801, he publicly declared that the 1799 abdication letters had been drafted by the Austrian government, not by him, and that he had been forced to sign them under duress. On that basis he argued his abdication was invalid. It was a striking claim: that the head of a sovereign military order had been compelled by a foreign government to resign, and had done so without telling the pope.

  Whether the claim was true or tactical, it settled nothing. Hompesch moved to Montpellier in 1804. He died there the following year, on the 12th of May 1805, penniless and suffering from asthma. He is buried in the Church of Saint Eulalie in Montpellier, the last man ever to hold sovereign authority over the island of Malta on behalf of the Order.