In response to Thomas Zerafa’s letter entitled ‘Can facts be manipulated?’ (The Sunday Times of Malta, January 19), I would say yes, facts are often manipulated, especially by officialdom and its appeasers.

In a recent public debate on British history and national identity, respected historian Richard Evans stated that in spite of Wellington having had a hero cult built around him after Waterloo, the battle was actually won by the Germans “in the shape of Blücher and his Prussian army”.  Evans also reminds us that only a minority of Wellington’s army were British.

The coalition victory against Napoleon in 1815 is a fact but which is the ‘true’ version of events? Debates are healthy but absolute nationalistic statements and accounts of historical particularities shorn of evidence and scientific, investigative research by inquisitive minds rarely produce non-manipulated narratives. Unfortunately, some distorted narratives are authored unwittingly.

In his previous contributions on the French period, I am sure Zerafa could not mention everything but I do not recall reading about Bonaparte’s defence of religion in his week’s stay in Malta when he had one of his junior officers, Favier from Valence, executed after the latter was reported to have attempted to upset a nuns’ convent in Valletta.

Neither did we read about the ferocious violence showed by insurgents in Mdina on September 2, 1798, when ‘Maltese’ victors not only massacred the 60-strong French garrison and sympathisers but went so far as to burn their corpses and eat their livers. This was the first sign of brutality that was to lead to thousands of other deaths during the two-year blockade, which unfortunately also killed thousands of others through malnutrition and disease.

Few eye-witness accounts about the conflict exist; incidentally, the first two were made public by French Commissioner Ransijat and medical officer Robert, printed without delay in Paris.

The first Maltese account by Panzavecchia was published 35 years later. Serious investigation must consider all such accounts a priori as being biased, hence the need for critical analysis.

Mr Zerafa and people who feel “surprised and even shocked” may be pleased to know that eventual publication of my academic research on Maltese identity, focusing on the Maltese collective memory of the French period, could serve as a good basis for further debate and discussion. History is so full of myth, false facts and bias that it has to be unlearned later in life, quips a learned observer.