The 1807 Permis de Séjour found by Charles Xuereb in Paris providing Vassalli’s description at age 44, from which a true image of the Maltese patriot was reconstructed.

In his contribution on elementary education in Malta during the early British period (The Sunday Times of Malta, January 25), Lino Bugeja briefly refers to instruction under the Knights and the French.

Unfortunately, he fails to mention Maltese educator, linguist and political ‘democrat’ Mikiel Anton Vassalli (1764-1829), who pioneered a plan for public schooling right at the end of the 18th century.

Inspired by the Enlightenment, Vassalli put forward a plan in which the Church and the Order would have provided free education for the benefit of the Maltese nation. Vassalli was imprisoned for his revolutionary beliefs but managed to leave the island and presumably returned to Malta with the French in 1798.

Among the many initiatives taken by Napoleon Bonaparte in Malta, education was on the forefront. It included Vassalli’s proposal to open a number of schools which were to be paid for by public funds. Unfortunately, the peasants’ revolt in early September disrupted the administration of the new Maltese republican government.

Vassalli fared worse. He was arrested by the Maltese Congress, led by Canon F. S. Caruana, imprisoned and finally exiled by Captain Alexander Ball in 1801 without any reprieve or compassionate intervention by the Żebbuġ ‘cleric-general’, who knew him so well.

Vassalli was un homme de lettres; rather sickly he shied away from martial roles. After his return to Malta in 1820, he persisted in his academic activities but was refused a Catholic burial with the result that we do not have any trace of his remains.

Vassalli was gradually rehabilitated as a linguist after the 1930s but hardly ever recognised as a patriot for his belief in Maltese political self-reliance.

While Ball was given instant recognition with a mausoleum at the entrance of Grand Harbour upon his death in 1810, Vassalli’s monument sporting a Garibaldi military beard was erected in 1984 in Żebbuġ.

With his true image now reconstructed following an 1807 Permis de Séjour I discovered in Paris, Maltese society should strive to erect a new monument in the capital city, the ‘sacred public space of citizenship’.

During the 19th century with Vassalli out of the way, public schooling in Malta had to wait another eight decades before it was taken seriously following the Keenan report. In his contribution, my friend Lino Bugeja also states that during the French interlude the university ‘was reduced to an école centrale’. The école centrale’ was established to replace the university, teaching maths, astronomy, mechanical and physical education, navigation, chemistry and oriental languages.

This academic institution was attached to the Bibliothèque et le Cabinet d’Antiquités, a natural history museum, a botanical garden and the observatory.

It was also to conduct a course in anatomy, medicine and childbirth at the Valletta hospital.