Today 213 years ago it was a Sunday. It was September 2, 1798 and the same old city of Mdina, which only 12 Sundays before greeted the liberating French and hosted General Vaubois to lunch at the bishop’s residence was now up in arms after killing Lazare Masson, the commanding officer of the town’s 60-odd garrison who would later be all massacred while defending their post.

Many Maltese villagers, mostly made up of peasants, were protesting against the proposed auctioning of sacred art from two churches, one in Mdina and one in Rabat. This bloody rebellion seems to have been earmarked as the start of a full-scale insurrection with the whole countryside besieging the new government and its garrison of 4,000 French soldiers in the harbour cities for two years until the islands, some 20,000 deaths later on September 5, was surreptitiously ceded to the British forces in the Mediterranean, without the latter losing one man.

Malta it seems registered most of its victories in the month of September. On September 8, we celebrate the Knights’-led victory over the Ottoman forces in 1565 and the Allied victory over the Axis in 1945.

But somehow one is intrigued by the total absence of any celebration to mark the only Maltese victory achieved mostly through its own initiative, costing so much death, 200 years ago. Why? How is it that two centuries later, while we still vividly remember the looting of the churches by the forces of Bonaparte, we never bothered to mark this remarkable Maltese success? Documentation in Malta and abroad amply record that the Maltese countryside led by religious figures, Canon Francesco Saverio Caruana from Żebbuġ and notary Emanuel Vitale, rector of the Rabat Confraternity of St Joseph, who at the time were both hailed as “generals”, waged war to the French garrison between 1798 and 1800.

With its crowded calendar of festivities how is it that the Catholic Church in Malta – for a time led by the same “general” when Canon Caruana became Bishop of Malta (1831-1847) – never commemorated these Maltese heroes and their victory over what initially was dubbed by many as a holy war against the evils of illumination? Were the Maltese selective in their collective memory or was it a case of someone fabricating this memory in such a manner that enabled the Maltese to remember the wrong the French soldiers did and not the Maltese heroism? Were our forefathers ashamed to celebrate such a victory? Or worse still, never bothered? In the centuries that followed was it embarrassment, treason to memory or sheer carelessness that kept us from remembering?

While understandably our archives abound with evidence showing the British rulers’ interest in keeping the antagonism of the French alive in Malta, other contemporary documents and publications, both religious and popular, almost always served the same master as they were very often penned by English authors or Maltese employed by the colonial government. This strategy has had its long-term effect so much so that a recent Facebook campaigner embarked on the idea of requesting France to return de Valette’s sword and dagger from the Louvre in Paris without equally being interested in also campaigning for the return of a number of Maltese historical icons now on display in several museums in the UK.

Students of collective memory know that in recollection we do not retrieve images of the past as they were originally perceived but rather as they fit into our present conceptions which in turn are shaped by the social forces that act on us, including the nature of political power that can influence the content of our memories.

For a number of years the study of collective memory has been connected to national identity. Some say that this phenomenon began in 1980 when the governments of France, Britain and Brazil, independently, dedicated a year to the celebration of national heritage. Other countries, foremost among them Israel, have created numerous centres devoted to past recollections. Russia, Germany and Poland are continuously re-writing their histories.

Conscious of such social movements Malta established its own agencies and non-governmental organisations to cater for the island’s patrimonju although little has been done so far to address issues of national identity that result from our memory.

In post-independent Malta many are still not fully aware of the administrative, commercial, artistic and intellectual legacy the Order of St John, especially through its three French langues, left us that later served us in good stead to achieve real autonomy. Valletta, especially in the 18th century, was home to the Maltese intelligentsia, eager to welcome the challenges of the Enlightenment. During the 19th century the island saw the arts hastily replaced by the utilitarian role of a naval outpost providing mundane services and provisions.

After almost two centuries of colonial rule, Valletta today can hardly show any architectural British presence but branding abounds. There are five large copies of Britain’s coat of arms surrounding Queen Victoria sitting in her pride of place next to the President’s Palace and numerous monuments to British and colonial personalities in the city gardens and environs.

In July this year the public has been informed that a statue to de Valette, Valletta’s founder, a Frenchman, will be erected in a new but secondary square in the city. This is a welcome addition to the capital as it marks the first homage to its founder in our times.

While we seem to be recollecting our past and remembering those who strongly contributed to our identity, we still do not seem to be at ease while doing it. In de Valette’s case we are not only afraid of giving him our pride of place instead of Queen Victoria – a beautiful artistic statue which could be moved to Hastings Gardens next to the Maltese heroes’ monument of Sette Giugno – but hardly anyone remembers this great Frenchman’s demise on August 21, which also happens to be the day of his elevation to Grand Master of Malta in 1557.

It has been said that in creating national identity societies tend to manipulate the past in order to create the present. With the erection of de Valette’s statue in the city that bears his name, who knows… our collective memory might be getting a stirring.