Bali de Souza's establishment of a Fondazione for the production and supply of bronze cannon for the Order of St John, 1770

Abstract

The mid-eighteenth century was an important and frantic period in the military administration of the Hospitaller knights of St John. The 1750s and 1760s, in particular, saw massive efforts directed towards the reorganization and upgrading of the Order’s military equipment and its storage facilities. Chief amongst these undertakings was the introduction of a much needed restructuring of the knights’ armouries and of their ordnance department. In particular, a massive purchase of weapons, begun in 1759, involving an armaments deal with the weapons-manufacturing firm of St Etienne en Forest, in France, for the supply of 20,000 infantry muskets, 700 pairs of Pistolets d’Arcon (cavalry pistols), 700 pairs of boarding pistols, sabres and ‘gros trombons à fourchette’, was not only meant to upgrade the then-existing quality of the Order’s equipment, as well as create an adequate reserve of serviceable weapons, but it was also meant to introduce a much needed degree of standardization. By the late 1760s, the Order of St. John could muster a force of some 18,000 men and hundreds of cannon with which to defend some 25 km of bastioned ramparts and scores of coastal defences. Rationalizing the logistics underpinning this growing organization had become a serious priority. One individual who was directly involved in much of this rearmament programme was the Portuguese Knight Fra Raimondo de Souza (Sousa) da Silva, Balì di Lessa and Langone, ‘Gran Croce della ven.da Lingua di Castiglia e Portugallo’ and member of the Congregation of War and Fortification, the main body responsible for directing and overseeing all the defence preparations of the Maltese islands. In 1769, Balì de Souza was instrumental in reviewing the storage facilities and state of equipment in the Order’s armouries. In his report Balì de Souza mentioned some 24,000 muskets ‘in pessimo stato per la ruggine’, a large number of which were ‘totalmente inservibili’ and practically useless, particularly those earmarked for use by the militia. At the time, the master armourer had estimated that these thousands of unserviceable firearms required the employment of at least a hundred forzati, or gente di ciurma, if they were to be repaired in a reasonable period of time.