Marsamxett Harbour was defended by the Knights of St John with two forts, originally meant to defend the city of Valletta. They are Fort Tigné and Fort Manoel. Fort Tigné was built on what came to be known as Dragut Point. It was so called after the fatal injury of the Ottoman corsair Dragut by a shell allegedly fired from Fort St Elmo during the Great Siege of 1565. This was in reply to the shelling of St Elmo from the point on the promontory at the mouth of Marsamxett Harbour.

The fort is named after Balì René Jacques de Tigné, who made the first donation of 1,000 scudi towards its construction. The building was started in December 1792. It was Grand Master de Rohan who suggested naming the fort after the donor to show the Order's gratitude. The balance of 6,000 scudi was paid by the Grand Master himself.

Fort Tigné was designed by the Order's chief engineer, De Tousard. Its construction was supervised by the Maltese engineer Antonio Cachia.

Fort Tigné was built on a diamond-shaped design with a circular tower facing the mouth of Marsamxett Harbour. Stephen C. Spiteri, author of Fortresses of the Knights (BDL, 2001) describes it thus: "It is surrounded by a dry ditch, itself commanded by three protruding counterscarp galleries (vaulted chambers built in the thickness of the ramparts) fitted with musketry loopholes. Access to these galleries was through the underground tunnel leading from the interior of the Fort.... The circular tower or keep was itself fitted with two tiers of musketry loopholes and a roof-mounted battery of four guns to command both the interior of the work and the entrance to the harbour.The original parapet of the keep, demolished and replaced by a thicker one in the 19th century was fitted with four embrasures. A shallow ditch separated the keep from the rest of the fort. In February 1796 the Fort was ready to be garrisoned and to be in receipt of artillery."

According to Spiteri, "Fort Tigné resisted the repeated French assaults and bombardments of the Napoleonic invading force in 1798. It engaged the French fleet with its guns and provided covering fire to a rally from the fort in a galley to attack the French landing boats disembarking their troops at St Julian's Bay. Fort Tigné only threw open its gates to the French after the surrender of the Order."

It is hoped that the restoration of the damaged and neglected Fort Tigné attains the level of perfection as described by Stephen Spiteri.

Fort Manoel

Manoel Island inside Marsamxett Harbour was known during the early period of the Order's rule as the Isolotto del Vescovo. It belonged to the Cathedral Chapter. As it was planned to build a fort on the island, negotiations between the Order and the Cathedral Chapter resulted in the exchange of the Isolotto for land known as Tal-Fiddien near Rabat. The Order constructed a quarantine hospital, Lazzaretto, on the side of the island facing Valletta.

In 1760 the engineer Maurizio Valperga produced a design of a fort to defend the island and Valletta at the same time.

The chapter on Fort Manoel in Fortresses of the Knights contains the information that the fort designed by Bali de Tigné was a star-shaped work with corner bastions, a larger ravelin and tenaille and the ditch. The tenaille was a small outerwork placed inside the ditch between two adjoining bastions and designared to protect the curtain wall linked to the flanks of adjoining bastions.

The decision to fortify the Isolotto was taken by Grand Master Antonio Manoel de Vilhena.

Charles de Mondion, the Order's resident engineer, was asked to design the new work but in effect he only modified Tigné's original design. In plan the fort was a square with four corner bastions, a tenaille and a ravelin in the ditch facing the land front and a small demi-lune facing the sea.

The bastions on the land front were strengthened by two cavaliers joined together by a long curtain wall fitted with 11 embrasures and containing long bomb-proof barrel-vaulted casements. A casement is a vaulted chamber built in the thickness of the ramparts and used as a barrack or gun position with firing through embrasures. These were designed to accommodate the garrison in times of siege. The outer bastions facing the harbour were each provided with a large gunpowder magazine.

The space inside the fort was occupied by a large parade ground. This was flanked on three of its sides by barrack rooms and a chapel dedicated to St Anthony of Padua. The design of the chapel has been variously attributed to the Roman architect Romano Carapecchia while others opined that it was the work of Mondion himself. Two of the four barrack blocks were built on either side of the chapel. Beneath the piazza two huge underground cisterns provided the fort with its own water supply.

The main entrance to the fort was through a baroque gateway in the centre of the east curtain between the bastions of St Anthony and St Helen. In front of the gate was a small drop ditch defended by a wooden palisade. The front was flanked on three of its sides by a deep rock hewn ditch. The glacis was elaborately counter-mined. The ravelin in the ditch contained a large vaulted chamber which was intended to serve as an assembly point for a company of about 100 troops.

Government has rightly made it a condition on the entrepreneur, the MIDI consortium, to fully restore the fort to its original state along with the development of this vast area.

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