On May 5, 1821, 200 years ago this week, Napoleon I, Emperor of the French, born in 1769 on the island of Corsica in the Mediterranean,  expired, at the age of 51, on the island of St Helena in the South Atlantic. Considered by many as an islander – born and died on islands – he was also exiled on the Italian island of Elba in 1814, from where he made his surprise heroic comeback for 100 days in 1815, until finally he faced allied enemies for the last time at Waterloo.

In June 1798, then a promising 29-year-old French general, Bonaparte dropped anchor in Malta for six days on his way to Egypt before his rise to conquer most of the continent, removing monarchies, and reign as the lord of Europe for 15 years. The French Malta interlude did not last long but it did ignite what was to become the island’s long road to future freedom and independence.

Napoleon’s legacy is this year being marked not only by the expectant post-pandemic tourist industry, with tours to the scenes of his triumphs at Austerlitz, Rome and in Egypt, and to his Ajaccio childhood home, as well as Longwood House where he died, but also, as expected, by President Emanuel Macron, who is the youngest French leader since the celebrated emperor. Auction houses are set to capitalise on a current boom in Napoleana, demonstrated by the 2014 sale to a South Korean billionaire of one of the emperor’s emblematic bicorn hats for €1.9 million.

The 200th anniversary of Napoleon’s death special souvenir edition of France in the Maltese Collective Memory by Charles Xuereb that Malta University Press is publishing this month, containing an additional seven-page text marking Bonaparte’s link to Malta.

Fondation Napoléon head, author Thierry Lentz, recently told Le Figaro that Napoleon’s time in power marked a fundamental moment in French history: “France would not exist as it is today if there had not been those 15 years during which Napoleon founded institutions that have shaped French identity, from the legal system, law courts and lycées to control of the provinces from Paris, and the famous Légion d’Honneur.”

The Maltese islands at the time of Bonaparte’s arrival were still slumbering in a benign despotic state under the Knights of Malta, who were fast approaching their last chivalric days.

Maltese endorse takeover

On June 12, 1798, the island became French. A convention signed by Bonaparte on behalf of the French government, and Knight Bosredon de Ransijat, on behalf of the Order, passed over the territory and the Order’s possessions to the Republic. For the first and only time, four Maltese leaders – Baron Mario Testaferrata, former Uditori Benedetto Schembri and Gio. Nicolò Muscat, and ex-counsellor F. T. Bonanni – were invited to endorse an international agreement that involved the Maltese nation, a feat rarely recognised by any power, before or after.

A typical plaster statue of Napoleon, one of many that were imported in Malta during the 19th century, perpetuating the emperor’s cult under British rule. Photo shows a coloured version of the statue as commissioned by the author.

François Bernoyer, the official head tailor of the French army, leaves a pertinent contemporary description of the island and its inhabitants. In his letter to his fresh bride in France, he wrote: “All the inhabitants of the island have become French citizens and form part of the Republic. Outside the city walls, one could see sporadic miserable peasant habitations amid dry, arid land, badly cultivated. One does not see the beautiful villas usually found outside European cities; only convents, numerous chapels and wayside crosses at every corner. It gives you a clear idea of the people’s faith.” He bestowed praise on Valletta, “full of beautiful palaces with terraces and stepped roads, allowing horses to move around without hindrance”.

Civil ideas for a modern state

During six days at Palazzo Parisio in Merchants Street, Valletta, the young general saw the opportunity to assume a social and administrative role for the first time by testing his civil ideas for a modern state. In less than a week, he devised more than 150 national decrees that appear to have been a blueprint for his future organisation of France and other conquered countries. He was determined to transform the inexperienced new nation from a medieval country into a republican collectivité locale.

The French Malta interlude did not last long but it did ignite what was to become the island’s long road to future freedom and independence

In 1798, the Maltese were brusquely tossed into modern revolutionary politics of ‘democracy’. Bonaparte’s substantial corpus of new domestic orders promoting equality, justice, administration, secularism, health and education, destined to wrench Malta out of its feudal niche, must have fortified the hearts of the daring who, alas, were the educated minority.

The Emperor on his deathbed on May 5, 1821, on St Helena, seen here one hour before he expired. Painting by Jean-Baptiste Mauzaisse

In Valletta, Bonaparte wrote Malta’s first political and social constitution founded on equality, abolishing slavery – arguably a world first – suppressing all feudal aristocratic titles. He organised the local National Civil Guard and the Légion Maltaise, composed of Maltese soldiers and Jacobin knights, who accompanied him to Egypt. Furthermore, Bonaparte’s strong communication to the Bey of Tunis demanded freedom of all Maltese captives. In his revolutionary human rights spirit, he extended freedom to more than 2,000 Turkish or Moorish slaves kept by the Order on its galleys, 520 of whom profited from the French fleet’s crossing to Alexandria to return home.

Bonaparte instituted a 10-man Commission of Government, eight of whom were Maltese ‘ministers’, giving them legislative power. The duties of the commission also included the administrative, civil and judicial mechanism, appointing judges and civil and criminal tribunals. Bonaparte’s orders addressed public health, finances and education, on the latter proposing 15 public schools, as promoted earlier by Maltese patriot and linguist Mikiel Anton Vassalli, “to pull the Maltese people out of the state of ignorance”. Sixty Maltese representatives were appointed to administer 12 regional municipalities, each comprising five members, also a first for Malta.

The University was converted into an École Centrale to introduce technical and scientific tertiary courses besides the arts. Sixty young Maltese men from affluent local families were to proceed at their expense to colleges in France, with an option of funding instead a poor candidate if the family preferred not to send its own lad.

Malta’s priests’ ‘dangerous influence’

General Bonaparte on his flagship L’Orient on his way to Malta in 1798. Etching by Vernet from a work by Barthélemy and Mery. Yves Martin Collection

Still, swiftly introduced French republicanism and secularism did not please privileged ecclesiastics and traditional merchants. Chief Commissioner Régnaud de St Jean d’Angely in August 1798 had already realised that “priests are in charge… the destruction of their dangerous influence could only be achieved through public instruction”. Counsel to the State and diplomat Joseph-Marie Portalis later confessed that “in Catholic Quebec, on Malta and Gozo, or in the Orthodox Ionian Islands, good order and public safety (did) not permit us to leave the institutions of the Church to their own devices”.

While Bonaparte’s vein of military victories continued in Egypt, after a three-month chase of the French fleet all over the Mediterranean, Admiral Horatio Nelson, with his smaller and faster British navy force, attacked moored enemy ships in Aboukir Bay that six weeks before had transported one of the largest armies across the Mediterranean. All the French sea craft, except two that escaped to Malta, were sunk on August 1.

As soon as news of the disaster reached Malta, the old nobility, leading cotton merchants, foremost Canon F. X. Caruana and Ċensu Borg Brared, together with several political clergymen, instigated a peasants’ insurrection on September 2, ushering in a two-year blockade of the French garrison behind the bastions of Valletta and Cottonera, where about 37,000 Maltese prospered.

29-year-old General Bonaparte, for the first time in his successful military career, paused in Malta to write more than 150 civil laws in six days. Painting by Jean-Sébastien Rouillard, 1836, Chateau De Versailles

After the leaders of the Maltese insurgents had petitioned the British navy stationed in Naples for assistance, a sea-block of the Grand Harbour was mounted. By September 1800, the French garrison ran out of provisions and capitulated to the British commanders on Manoel Island. It left Malta with honours, accompanied by more than 800 Maltese refugees, including composer Nicolò Isouard Xuereb, who was to become famous in imperial Paris.

By 1799, General Bonaparte had already been appointed Consul of France, replacing the republican Directory. After a series of victorious military campaigns that followed on the continent, he crowned himself Emperor in 1804. Fifteen years of Napoleonic reign in France dotted with wars against most European monarchies lingered on until Waterloo when, in 1815, the French emperor was defeated by the Prussian and British armies.

After the departure of the French in 1800, the political situation in Malta remained unchanged. Britain, after a ruse that kept interested powers guessing when it would abandon the island, in 1813 absorbed it as a fortress colony within the British Empire, legitimising the act – without consulting the Maltese – at the Congress of Vienna two years later.

‘Best harbour in the Mediterranean’

In custody of the British on St Helena, the tenacious emperor was left with enormous time on his hands. He took up gardening, taught catechism to the young daughter of one of his accompanying loyal officers so that she could receive Catholic confirmation, and dictated diaries. According to his doctor François Carlo Antommarchi, Napoleon died of a chronic gastric ulcer.

Writing his memoirs more than 20 years after having briefly stayed in Valletta, Napoleon did not forget his Maltese interlude. He reserved his highest esteem for Valletta:

“Valletta has the best harbour in the Mediterranean, 30,000 inhabitants, nice houses, beautiful quays, magnificent grain silos, lovely fountains. Freestone built bastions are well maintained while numerous constructions, batteries and the forts pile up one behind the other.” In reaction to Napoleon’s description of Valletta, General Marie-François Auguste de Caffarelli, who had been in Malta with Bonaparte, pleasantly remarked: “Good thing we had people on the inside to open the gates for us.”

Most leading historians now realise that although Napoleon generated tremors in many regimes, successive Restoration governments in European nations, after his demise, showed loyalty to his policies of modernisation, including the delicate balance between liberty and equality.

Colloquy on Franco-Maltese relations

On Friday, May 7, at 9am, the Office of the President of Malta and the Embassy of France are hosting ‘Malta and France: Shared Histories, New Visions’, a public virtual day-long colloquy regarding Franco-Maltese relations, with contributions by several French and local academics and artists. To register, e-mail oprculturesymposia@gov.mt. It may also be followed live on the Palace Facebook page.

Charles Xuereb, Historiographer