As a follow up to Judge Giovanni Bonello’s letter (The Sunday Times of Malta, April 28), may I confirm that our famous Grand Master invariably signed his name ‘Jehan de Valette’. And so presumably did his nephew Henri de Valette, who was killed during the Great Siege of Malta in 1565.
However this family name also appears as ‘La Valette’ or ‘De Lavalette’ in French records, notably in the case of Antoine Marie Chamans, Count of Lavalette (October 14, 1769 - February 15, 1830), who was a French politician and general.
Born in Paris the same year as Napoleon Bonaparte, he spent the Revolution in the French Revolutionary Army, where he rose through the ranks to become an aide-de-camp to General Louis Baraguey d’Hilliers. In 1796, after the Battle of the Bridge of Arcole, Baraguey d’Hilliers introduced his aide-de-camp to Napoleon, who was impressed enough to take him onto his personal staff and to entrust him with diplomatic missions. On April 22, 1798, Lavalette was married to Emilie de Beauharnais (1781-1855), niece of Napoleon’s wife Joséphine.
He was Napoleon’s aide-de-camp on his flagship L’Orient during the invasion of Malta in June 1798, and thereafter on land in Egypt. He was present at Napoleon’s coup of 18 Brumaire against the French Directory at the Château de St Cloud outside Paris in 1799.
He chose not to go into exile with Napoleon at St Helena in 1815, since his wife was pregnant, and they had a 13-year old daughter. He was arrested at the beginning of the Bourbon Restoration, and was sentenced to execution by the Ultras (extreme Royalists). By a ruse with his wife, they exchanged clothes in prison, and he escaped to Great Britain with the assistance of a small group of British soldiers, thence to Holland, and finally to Bavaria. His wife Madame Lavalette remained in prison until January 23, 1816.
Lavalette was able to return to France and died in 1830, most likely of lung cancer. He was buried at Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris.
Hence the family name De Valette has evolved into La Valette in the course of centuries.