I thank Brian N. Tarpey for replying (May 4) to my letter of April 30. The point of my letter War Casualties (not siege casualties) was that G. Mitrovich wrote in 1836 that “the British troops did not have one single soldier killed by the enemy”. He did not allege that they did not suffer from fever or other diseases. That is the statement that as far as I know, has never been contradicted.

Mr Tarpey had enquired (February 17) whether a cemetery had ever been discovered that was built for the burial of British soldiers and marines “who died between 1799 and 1800 while besieging the French in Valletta”. His reply of May 4, based on sources he posted from three different archives, confirms Mitrovich’s allegation that not a single soldier died in action. Indeed, Mr Tarpey found that “a number of marines are recorded having died from fever and other illnesses”. General Graham wrote that even British soldiers died in the same way.

It is known that Mediterranean remittent fever was rampant in that period, as it confirmed to be for another century. British soldiers and marines, like everyone else living in Malta and Minorca (where the British soldiers came from) must have contracted this “gastric remittent fever” (now known as brucellosis or undulant fever). Even Neapolitan troops in Malta would surely have died of the same fever as other illnesses, during the two years the siege lasted, but, like the British, none of them seems to have been killed by the enemy, as Mitrovich put it.

On the other hand, parochial records in Malta give the names of Maltese, and also some Portuguese soldiers, killed by the enemy, and the place of death. Mr Tarpey chose to mention the time-worn allegation that 20,000 Maltese died during the siege. That figure has been discounted by modern historians as exaggerated, which explains why I never brought it up.

I just wrote that “the Maltese lost thousands of their countrymen”. These thousands would include “killed by the enemy” as well as those who died of misery and famine, which would not have been suffered by any foreign troops, whether Portuguese, British or Neapolitan. Only disease was common to all.