June 12, 1798, witnessed Malta falling into the hands of the French Republican army led by Napoleon Bonaparte. Less than three months later, in September, the Maltese were up in arms in a revolt against their French masters. Almost exactly two years later, the French were on their way back to their homeland, beaten and humiliated, after a hard, two-year-long war in which the Maltese fought bravely against the odds, but aided by the British, Neapolitans and Portuguese.

But why did the insurrection break out so soon, barely three months after the Order of St John had left Malta? How can we explain the fact that the Maltese leaders included men who had previously hailed and, indeed, even aided and abetted the French conquest of Malta?

Bishop Vincenzo Labini’s pastoral letter of August 13, 1798. Courtesy: National Library of Malta.

On Sunday, September 2, 1798, the French tried to despoil the church of Our Lady of Mount Carmel in Mdina after trying, in vain, to sell the property of the Franciscan Friars Minor at Rabat. The crowd seemed happy at having impeded the sale and quietened down, but a considerable number of men from Żebbuġ and Siġġiewi continued to foment trouble.

The French commander, Captain Lazare Masson (1758-98), tried to disperse the crowd by bullying, but he was brutally killed when the mob hurled him into the street from the balcony of Notary Pietro Antonio Bezzina’s house, where he had taken refuge. The French garrison then closed the gates of Mdina. The Maltese seized all the arms they could lay their hands on but the initial attacks on Mdina failed.

Emmanuele Vitale (1759-1802) was acclaimed leader by the people and some semblance of order began to appear in the Maltese ranks. Notary Saverio Zarb, from Attard, led the seizure of a small armoury from San Anton Palace and sent men to guard the San Giuseppe Road, linking Valletta and Mdina, to prevent French reinforcements from relieving the old city. Another small armoury, at Żebbuġ, was also seized.

Title page of Bosredon Ransijat’s Journal de Siége et Blocus de Malte (Paris, 1801).

The next day, Monday, an assault on Mdina was successful, and the French garrison was mercilessly massacred with an undescribable atrocity. The Maltese had casualties too and, in these two days, six men – Giovanni Cortis, Giuseppe Borg, Marco Cortis, Marozz Galea, Giovanni Chircop and Maruzzo Vella – lost their lives.

Reinforcements sent from Valletta by the French military governor, General Claude-Henri Belgrand de Vaubois (1748-1839), were beaten back. Vaubois soon gave up all attempts to regain control of the countryside but kept a tight hold on the fortified cities and forts around Grand Harbour and Marsamxett Harbour, confident that a poorly-armed irregular force would be unable to dislodge him.

However, as a result of immediate Maltese contacts with Sicily, by September 19, a Portuguese naval squadron started a blockade of the harbours, thus starting the process by which, eventually, through the British fleet, the French were effectively hemmed in by land and sea till lack of supplies forced them to capitulate on September 5, 1800.

The French were convinced that the Maltese uprising was not wholly spontaneous, and events seem to indicate that they were right. In fact, a list of what might be termed ‘coincidences’ point at some sort of central direction of events. Thus we cannot but note that:

Our Lady of Mount Carmel church, Mdina, which the French tried to despoil on September 2, 1798.

• The revolt only broke out after the island received news that the French fleet had been defeated at Aboukir Bay in Egypt; this meant that the French in Malta were isolated and that they would not be able to easily obtain supplies and reinforcements should an insurrection break out.

• Only three days after the outbreak, on September 5, a Dominican lay brother, Domenico Falzon, was executed after being found guilty of being a party to an anti-French plot five days before September 2. Can we assume that Falzon was privy to a well-organised scheme?

• Why did so many men from Siġġiewi and Żebbuġ happen to be at Rabat and Mdina on an ordinary Sunday morning?

• How was it that Notary Vitale was immediately elected leader?

• How was it that Notary Zarb took the correct military decisions regarding the San Anton armoury and the guarding of the San Giuseppe Road? He seems to have been very quick, perceptive and clear-sighted for a non-military notary public.

• The country settled down to the new war conditions very quickly and without fuss. Why?

• How does one explain why a national assembly of notables from each district was immediately convened?

All these questions and ‘coincidences’ make it difficult to believe that the revolt was the spontaneous outburst of a disorganised rabble. Even though documentary proof is conspicuous by its absence, circumstantial evidence inevitably indicates that the insurrection was meticulously planned by a group of capable and determined men.

Circumstantial evidence indicates that the insurrection was meticulously planned by a group of capable and determined men

But why, one may ask, did the Maltese revolt after less than three months of French rule? It is true that the Maltese had not been really happy under the Order of St John but it did not take them long to find out that the tyranny of the Knights was certainly milder than that of their new masters.

A drawing by R. Caruana Dingli depicting Captain Lazare Masson being thrown from the balcony of the house in Mdina. Photo: Outlines of Maltese History, by S. Laspina, 1966

Irrespective of the various reforms the French were carrying out, such as at the law courts and in education, most Maltese soon had an axe to grind for one reason or other, as shall be amply demonstrated.

In October 1798, Bosredon Ransijat (1741-1812) –president of the French Commission of Government in Malta – analysed what had caused the Maltese uprising and published his findings in his very informative 1801 war-diary Journal du Siége et Blocus de Malte, now also available in a 2013 English translation by Joe Scicluna. Among the reasons he expounded and explained are the following:

• The disastrous French religious policy: the Maltese had looked with suspicion when the French started the spoliation of St John conventual church, Valletta. This alarm spread with the spoliation of other churches such as the one at Qormi.

On June 12, 1798, Bonaparte had guaranteed the free practice of Catholicism in Malta but, on the very next day, he ordered all foreign clerics, including nuns but excluding the bishop, out of the island. No one could take religious vows before the age of 30, and each religious order could retain only one convent.

The bishop had the right of surveillance only over ecclesiastics; marriage was to be a civil affair and no future recourse to the Papacy was to be allowed.

There was intense indignation over this religious policy but the French government seemingly disregarded indications of the coming storm. Actually, matters had deteriorated to the point that the government prevailed upon Bishop Vincenzo Labini (1735-1807) to issue a pastoral letter on August 13, 1798, to allay the indignation aroused by governmental acts: he was promised that there was not going to be any interference in points of faith and that parish property was not going to be touched. Yet, the French Commissioner, Michel L.E. Regnaud de Saint-Jean d’Angely (1770-1837), disclosed on August 26 that there was fanatical agitation following the suppression of convents.

Notary Emanuel Vitale: he assumed command of the insurrection at its inception.

• Contrary to what had been previously promised, no payment was ever given to the Maltese inhabitants for damages suffered during the fighting between the French and the Order of St John.

• Napoleon Bonaparte had taken a number of Maltese sailors to serve with the French forces in Egypt and their pay was to be given to their families in Malta.

However, these salaries were never paid locally, and the Maltese in French service returned to their homeland because they were not paid the full wages promised to them.

• The French suspended all payments of interest on loans which had been forwarded to the Order of St John and they did not pay off other outstanding debts.

• All the pensions paid by the Order of St John were suspended.

• The daily distribution of bread to the poor was discontinued.

• The rate of interest on loans over 20 scudi advanced by the Monte di Pietà was increased from 4 1/6 per cent to six per cent.

• Leases granted for the term of three successive lives were altered, retrospectively, to a fixed term of 100 years. In many cases, people found that their lease had expired.

• The people were annoyed at the billeting of officers and resented the taxes levied for the erection of barracks.

Ransijat goes on to state that the French navy did not have the necessary funds to sustain its workforce. Discharges of Maltese personnel followed, and the rest were not paid for their services. The result was that there were not enough sailors to man the warship and the frigate that had been expropriated from the Order.

Another reason was that Sicily had placed Malta under quarantine on the arrival of the French and, therefore, the Maltese could neither obtain provisions nor export their cotton to Spain, thus exacerbating the misery of the “many Maltese women who depended heavily on their income from spinning cotton” and “found themselves without work”.

Another cause for the Maltese anger, as Ransijat termed it, was that “most of the silver in the cathedral of Città Vecchia [Mdina] was expropriated and converted into coins to settle the wages of the garrison” which “was a big affront to the Maltese. From that moment on, many of them, especially the village folk, were convinced that we [i.e. the French] would do the same to all the other churches on the island.”

This, therefore, was the situation existing at Malta in September, 1798. The situation was already explosive, and the sale of the Mdina tapestries merely provided the spark by which the flame was kindled and, ultimately, led to one of the most glorious episodes in Maltese history.

Joseph F. Grima, retired casual history lecturer, Asst Director of Education and is the author of Malta u Franza 1798-1800, Malta, 2006