I refer to Brian N. Tarpey’s letter The rightful Owners Of De Valette’s Sword (August 29).

For us Maltese to successfully claim the sword awarded after the 1565 siege, by the Spanish emperor to Grand Master de Valette, we must first do away with some inconvenient truths such as the 1798 document which passed all of the old Order’s properties to France, and the 1800 document where Britain gave the French honourable terms of surrender, including the right to keep their arms and spoils.

The first document (cosigned by Maltese representatives) can be read to easily distinguish what was really “Maltese” from those properties formerly held by the Order. This harks of the two jurisdictions that prevailed in Malta between 1530 and 1798.

These truisms mean that we have no justified claim to the sword because any erstwhile property of the authentic order that was supposedly “looted” by the French between June 1798 and 1800 was already legally French, and therefore theirs for the taking.

(It also means that as far as Britain, France and we Maltese acted, the authentic Order was extinct and there was therefore no risk of any legal claim that could be raised by any other “order”. Respectfully, this counters Dr Tarpey’s conclusion).

I suppose one could raise my own preference that the Maltese first asserted a claim of succession to erstwhile Order property when they rose in September 1798 (and later called for Independence, British protection, Maitland’s declaration of 1813 etc. etc.), but the argument cannot apply in this case because the sword was already despatched before September 1798.

(The other argument first raised by our courts in 1880s in “Grech vs Depiro” is “unsafe” for our purposes because it could only mean ownership of the sword is vested in the incumbent king of Sicily.)

The silver lining of this misguided “sword campaign” is that it allows us to reassess what is getting published and taught, and affords us an excellent opportunity to finally purge ourselves of lingering myth and imprecision which have long been wrongly perpetuated as fact.

The same Emperor directly bestowed on certain Maltese some remarkable honours for their bravery during the same siege. Why is this part of Maltese history ignored, yet so much misguided importance is placed on this sword?

I wonder if we are just victims of a wicked agenda to sideline real Maltese history for something which is “borrowed”.