According to Charles Xuereb’s book, France in the Collective Memory, Perceptions, Identities after Bonaparte in British Malta, Napoleon never pillaged Malta (The Sunday Times of Malta, October 26) and according to official records of that time, only three incidents are listed of petty theft in churches by French soldiers.

It seems Xuereb never checked the records of the Paymaster General of the French forces, Esteve, who sent an account from Cairo to the National Treasury in France on September 21, 1798, just two months after the Battle of the Nile, in which he details various silver objects sold in Alexandria.

Diamonds, pearls and other jewels were sold by auction in Cairo, as well as other gold objects converted into specie (coins) at the Cairo Mint, which had been ‘found’ in Malta.

As to French scholars having spent six days carefully cataloguing everything in St John’s Co-Cathedral, Esteve gives a detailed account of the silverware that was recorded as also ‘found’ in that church by the French and disposed of in Egypt.

This shows the Church did not willingly provide the French silverware, which Xuereb’s book implies was “given freely” by the Church to the French.