French invasion of Malta

• 1. Introduction

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  The French invasion of Malta began on the 6th of June 1798, when lookouts spotted Napoleon Bonaparte's fleet off the coast of Gozo. Grand Master Ferdinand von Hompesch zu Bolheim governed the islands on behalf of the Knights Hospitaller, a religious military order. Napoleon's ships were sailing as part of a wider Mediterranean campaign waged by the French Revolutionary Wars. Three days after that sighting, one of Napoleon's officers climbed into a small boat and rowed toward shore with a request for the Grand Master.

  Could Hompesch satisfy a fleet of that size without inviting disaster. Would Malta's soldiers and townspeople fight to protect the order that had sheltered them for generations. Or would their leaders look for another way out. And what future awaited an order whose entire identity was tied to these islands. Within days, a written message arrived that stopped treating the Knights as a friend and started treating them as an enemy.

• 2. A Fading Order

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  Serious money troubles gripped the Order of St. John by 1792, the product of a slide that had started long before. Fighting Muslim powers had once defined the Knights, but that task no longer made sense by the 18th century. Europe itself had been reshaped by new alliances and new wars. Money problems pushed the Order toward dependence on France, and French-born Knights came to fill most of its ranks.

  Outside observers had their own reasons to watch Malta closely. Sitting at the middle of the Mediterranean, the islands guarded sea lanes that mattered to every rival power. Their walls counted among the most formidable anywhere on the continent. Turmoil in France only raised the stakes, since a weakened Order now held ground that a stronger nation might want for itself.

  Word reached the Order in March 1798 that ships were massing with weapons at Toulon. Hompesch read that buildup as a threat aimed at Portugal or Ireland, not his own islands. He saw no reason to expect an imminent strike. A paper reportedly warning him of the coming attack may have reached his desk on the 4th of June. Scholars have never settled whether that paper was authentic.

• 3. A Fleet Demands Water

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  News of the danger sent Hompesch scrambling to gather his officers and call every militiaman to his post. Command of the Grand Harbour cities, the beating heart of Malta's defenses, fell to Maltese troops serving under Knights. Valletta, Floriana, Birgu, Senglea and Cospicua made up that inner ring. Elsewhere along the coast, ordinary militia stood watch alongside a handful of Knights drawn from the Order's own fleet.

  Jean-Andoche Junot, one of Napoleon's aides, approached the Grand Master on the 9th of June with an unusual ask. He wanted the French warships allowed into port long enough to refill their water casks. Hompesch put the question to his Council. They agreed to let no more than four vessels enter at once. That limit came from an old rule barring large Christian fleets from Maltese ports whenever hostilities loomed.

  A day later, Napoleon had a letter drafted for Hompesch, put into final form and signed by a man named Caruson. Its tone was cold. Napoleon claimed to be offended that his ships had been turned away. He reminded Hompesch just how large his army was, and how little chance any defense stood against it. The letter pressed for a settlement rather than a fight. It pledged that ordinary Maltese people would keep their faith, their customs and their belongings untouched.

  Even as messengers carried that ultimatum toward the Palace, French soldiers had already begun massing along several stretches of coastline.

• 4. Landings on Malta

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  Boots hit the sand at St. Paul's Bay on the morning of the 10th of June, with Louis Baraguey d'Hilliers directing the assault. Maltese defenders put up a fight but soon gave way. Every gun position guarding that bay and the neighboring village of Mellieħa fell into French hands without a single French soldier dying in the effort. On the Maltese side, a knight and a soldier were killed, and roughly 150 knights and islanders ended up as prisoners.

  Down the coast, troops under Louis Desaix waded ashore at Marsaxlokk, a wide southern bay. Resistance there crumbled once Fort Rohan fell, and the defenders simply walked away from the remaining shoreline positions. Desaix's remaining soldiers reached dry land without firing another shot.

  At St. Julian's, the force commanded by Claude-Henri Belgrand de Vaubois came ashore. A lone galley, two smaller galleots and a chaloup tried to intercept them from the harbour mouth, without success. Soldiers from three battalions of the 4th Light Infantry and two of the 19th of the Line pushed inland. Companies of the Maltese Regiment offered only a brief show of defiance. Those defenders then pulled back toward Valletta. Once Desaix's men arrived from Marsaxlokk to reinforce the line, the city found itself ringed on every side.

  Hospitaller troops tried to turn the tide with a sudden charge that pushed the French into a retreat, if only briefly. A battalion of the 19th of the Line sprang an ambush that broke the charge apart. French soldiers pressed forward again, driving the defenders back behind Valletta's walls and seizing the Order's own banner from the head of the retreating column.

  Vaubois then split off part of his men and marched toward Mdina, the old inland capital where scattered militia had gathered. Inside the Bishop's Palace, city elders weighed their odds and judged further fighting pointless. They struck a bargain: surrender in exchange for guarantees over faith, freedom and property. Noon had barely passed before Mdina belonged to Vaubois.

  Far out to sea, a second French detachment was still forcing its way onto the shores of Gozo.

• 5. Gozo Falls

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  Jean Reynier commanded the force sent against Gozo, built around the 3rd Company of Grenadiers and the whole of the 95th Demi-Brigade. Roughly 2300 men stood ready to oppose them. That garrison combined 300 regular soldiers, 30 of whom rode horses, alongside 1200 coastguardsmen and 800 local militia.

  Around one in the afternoon, Reynier's troops came ashore near a spot called Redum Kebir, not far from Nadur. The site sat wedged between the Ramla Right Battery and the Sopu Tower. Gunners at both positions opened up as soon as the French appeared, and French artillery answered in kind. Pushing uphill under steady fire, the invaders eventually silenced the Ramla guns and cleared the way for the rest of their men to land. Sergeant-Major Bertrand did not survive the crossfire, one of the few French names recorded among the casualties.

  With the beachhead secure, Reynier sent part of his brigade toward Fort Chambray, the post guarding Mġarr, Gozo's principal harbour. The goal was to sever the island's link with Malta. Villagers who had fled there for safety packed the fort when it gave up the fight around two in the afternoon. The remaining troops pushed through the village of Xagħra toward Rabat and its ancient Cittadella. Along the way, a small unit peeled off to hold the Marsalforn Tower. Darkness had fallen by the time the Cittadella yielded.

  Guns taken across Gozo numbered around 116 in total, split between 44 inside the Cittadella, 22 at Chambray and the rest scattered among coastal posts. French troops also hauled away muskets and three stockpiles of grain. Back on the main island, the harbour fortresses had not yet followed Gozo's example.

• 6. Fear Inside the Walls

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  Panic spread fast through Valletta and the neighboring Cottonera once news of the landings broke. Hompesch and his councilors stayed put inside the Palace, joined by a cluster of other Knights unwilling to leave. Priests carried a statue of Saint Paul through the streets in procession, begging for divine mercy.

  Suspicion turned deadly for two Frenchmen living in the city, murdered by residents convinced they had helped plan the invasion. Rumors flew that inmates at the Slaves' Prison were plotting a revolt of their own. After two young Knights were killed in the Cottonera, many braced for a broader uprising against Order rule itself.

  Loyalties split down the middle behind the fortifications, some residents favoring the French cause and others firmly against it. A portion of the Order's French-born members already leaned Republican and backed Napoleon openly. Jean de Bosredon de Ransijat, who held the ranks of Commander and Grand Cross while managing the Treasury, found himself locked inside Fort St. Angelo. His crime was a letter to Hompesch declaring he would not raise arms against France and asking to sit out the fight entirely. Maltese delegates begged the Grand Master to seek a ceasefire, and other voices urged him simply to open talks with Napoleon.

  Fort Ricasoli and Fort Manoel refused to bow under repeated bombardment, only lowering their flags once the wider surrender was already signed and sealed. French guns pounded Fort Tigné on the 11th and the 12th of June without letup. Its defenders had no way of knowing that peace talks were already unfolding elsewhere in the harbour. Overnight between the 12th and 13th, that garrison finally slipped away, leaving the fort for French troops to claim soon afterward.

• 7. Terms Aboard L'Orient

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  Facing that pressure, the Council chose to seek a ceasefire rather than fight on. Monsieur de Fremaux, the Batavian Republic's consul on the islands, was the first pick to deliver the request. His age proved an obstacle, so a staff member named Monsieur Mélan carried the letter in his place. Mélan reached Napoleon's flagship L'Orient at nine in the morning on the 11th of June.

  Mélan returned bearing only a promise that an envoy would follow, and by midday General Junot had arrived with a modest party of French officers. Several Knights sympathetic to Napoleon's cause walked beside him, Ransijat among them, newly released from confinement.

  Hompesch's State Congregation welcomed the delegation and agreed to pause fighting for 24 hours while talks played out aboard L'Orient. A formal convention followed on the 12th of June, signed by Napoleon alongside representatives of the Order and the Maltese population. That document handed sovereignty of the islands to France. France, in turn, agreed to find the Grand Master a new principality to replace what he had lost. It also vowed not to touch the private belongings of individual Knights or Maltese residents. Pensions were promised to Hompesch and to French members of the Order. France further pledged similar payments for Knights hailing from the Cisalpine, Roman, Ligurian and Helvetic Republics.

  A first wave of surrenders was due by noon that same day: Fort Manoel, Fort Tigné, Fort St. Angelo, the works at Birgu and Senglea, and the Santa Margherita and Cottonera Lines all changed hands on schedule. A second wave followed by noon the next day, covering Valletta, the Floriana Lines, Fort Saint Elmo, Fort Ricasoli and whatever fortifications remained. Command of the Order's fleet was likewise due to pass into French hands that same day.

  Within that 24 to 48 hour window, every corner of the island came under French control. Inventories drawn up afterward listed close to 1200 cannon, 40000 muskets and 1500000 pounds of gunpowder. French forces also took two full-sized warships, a frigate and four galleys once flying the Order's flag. A rule stretching back 268 years had come to an end.

• 8. After the Capitulation

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  Napoleon himself stepped onto Valletta's docks on the 13th of June, once the fighting had stopped for good. He remained six days in all, sleeping his first night at the Banca Giuratale before settling into Palazzo Parisio for the rest of his stay. When most of his fleet sailed on toward Egypt, General Vaubois stayed behind with a garrison to keep order. That garrison opened a new chapter of French rule over Malta.

  During that short visit, Napoleon issued a string of orders meant to remake Maltese institutions along Republican lines. Hompesch and a group of fellow Knights packed what little they could carry, some sacred relics and icons among it. They departed the island within days of signing away their rule. Tsar Paul I of Russia took the exiled Order under his protection, and a faction of Knights later hailed him as their new Grand Master. What remained of the Order slowly transformed into today's Sovereign Military Order of Malta. That body still claims sovereignty despite holding no land of its own.

  Ordinary Maltese people welcomed the Knights' fall at first, hoping for better treatment under French rule. That hope curdled once France left old debts unpaid and piled on unfamiliar taxes. Pensions went unpaid, the Church's traditional privileges were clipped, and soldiers stripped valuables from local churches. Barely three months on, islanders took up arms against their new rulers and seized most of the archipelago. British, Neapolitan and Portuguese forces helped them do it.

  French troops held on inside Valletta and the Cottonera through two grinding years of siege. Vaubois finally handed the city to the British in 1800. That single surrender turned Malta into a British protectorate and set in motion 164 years under the British crown.