I thank Brian Tarpey for his letter (‘Napoleon’s loot from Malta’, The Sunday Times of Malta, November 2) following this newspaper’s article of the previous Sunday on the alleged looting of St John’s Co-Cathedral in 1798.

From my research it emerges that no pillaging was ever officially sanctioned during the French interlude, so much so that a French officer, a certain Favier from Valence, was summarily executed on General Bonaparte’s orders soon after the disembarkation of troops after the officer was accused, together with three other soldiers, of attempting to plunder the Convent of St Catherine in Valletta.

Tarpey might be referring to Bonaparte’s order of June 13, 1798, to citizen Berthollet, the army’s treasury controller “to appropriate gold, silver, and precious stones from St John’s and other locations that belonged to the Order of Malta” that was to be sold or melted or manufactured into coins. The same order adds that “any necessary items required to practise the religion will be left at the church”. He might also have been referring to another order, this time in Cairo on August 26 of the same year, to citizen Poussielgue to sell or convert to coins “diamonds we found in Malta”.

Besides it being international practice at the end of the 18th century for conquering armies to use funds from new possessions, both orders referred to items taken from St John’s in Valletta, which previously belonged to the Order.

The Convention of June 12, 1798, between the Order and the French Republic, signed by both sides as well as by four Maltese representatives, one from the Neapolitan court and a Spanish diplomat, clearly states that “all sovereign rights and properties” of the islands of Malta “are relinquished to the French Republic”. Bonaparte decided to grant the use of the same prestigious temple to the Bishop of Malta, where he said Mass for the first time on July 14, 1798.

Furthermore, according to the order of June 18, public education and hospitals were to be funded “from the sale of suppressed convents and monasteries”.

Not very different from what Vassalli had proposed under the Order and for which he was arrested.

Even if, for argument’s sake, one were to consider these possessions as belonging to the Maltese population, I fail to understand why Great Britain – when the Maltese islands were confirmed as its possession in 1815 – decided not to allow Malta to benefit from the 100 million French francs it was compensated by post-Napoleonic France under the excuse of the island having been absorbed by its empire.