Spain and the Order of the Hospital 1796-1797 : a critical edition of seven original letters from Spain to the Lords of the Common Treasury on Malta

Abstract

The present dissertation is on the very last few years of the Order of the Hospital on Malta, the central Mediterranean fortress-island which that institution had held as its conventual headquarters since 1530. In discussing the Knights’ surrender of Hospitaller Malta in 1798, historians generally focus their whole attention on the role revolutionary France and her military machine under Napoleon Bonaparte played in this episode. They almost ignore completely the complimentary part contributed by the Spain of Charles IV and his Prime Minister, Manuel Godoy. It is precisely the purpose of the present exercise to fill, in a very modest way, at least a tiny part of this lacuna. Relations between Spain and Hospitaller Malta do not appear to be a very favourite subject among History undergraduates. Rummaging in the very wide and rich collection of works in the Library of the History Department of the University of Malta, the only two dissertations that I could trace which, in a rather narrow sense, somehow approach the subject belong to Lycia Cilia. In 2010 she submitted her B.A. Hons dissertation on ‘The Order of the Hospital's Experiences during the Magistracy of Juan D'Homedes (1536-1553) and in 2012 she submitted her M.A. dissertation on ‘The State of the Hospitaller Commandery of Barcelona in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. She based most of her research on archival documentation in Spanish. The main reason behind this sad situation among history students appears to be very likely the fact that most of the sources available on the subject are in Spanish, and unfortunately the Spanish language is not yet sufficiently diffused in Malta. This explains precisely why I have chosen to undertake this study, Spanish being my native language, and this offered me a great advantage which I could not ignore. At the other extreme, Professor Carmel Vassallo's contributions to the historiography of Hispano-Maltese relations have been considerable. Moreover, further research is being carried out on Hispano-Maltese relations. Yet, there are still several aspects of the subject which are to date still un-researched. The subject of the present dissertation is one such - Spain, the Order of the Hospital, and Malta in 1796 and 1797.