Christopher Grech’s account of the capture by the British Navy of the French frigate La Sensible on its way to France from Malta in 1798 (The Sunday Times of Malta, April 22) made interesting reading. He remarks, however, that no money or silver was found on board.
Money problems were Napoleon Bonaparte’s greatest headache. The payment of salaries was crucial for the success of the Egyptian expedition. It included some 40,000 soldiers on board 400 ships. It is therefore very unlikely that any money taken from Malta would have been on the Sensible when this was captured by the British.
Charles Testa, in his monumental The French in Malta, clearly indicates the amounts taken out of the Università dei Grani fund as well as from the Monte di Pietà and other sources. All that money must have been loaded on the Orient that was going to Egypt.
The silver and artefacts loaded on the Sensible, however, were meant for the Louvre Museum, whose future director, Dominique Vivant Denon, was in Malta with Bonaparte. He was an artist, a painter and a connoisseur of fine arts. He was the right person to pick and choose the best from the collection of the Knights of St John. Hence the Ximenes cannon.
The battle and capture of the Sensible close to Pantelleria just a few hours after leaving Malta shows how problematic the defence of Malta was for France. Nelson’s fleet practically dominated the Mediterranean, especially with the French Navy in Egypt. Napoleon Bonaparte, who was indeed a great general, must have realised that Malta couldn’t be captured with horses. You can only take Malta through a naval operation, and Admiral Horatio Nelson is proof of this.
The loss of La Sensible was the first among many other ships sent by the French government in a hopeless effort to supply its 4,000 soldiers in Malta who urgently needed food. These sons of a great and proud country were literally starving when General Claude-Henri Belgrand de Vaubois ceded Malta to the British on condition that they were to be transported safe and sound to their homeland. The food was provided by Archpriest Cassar of Gozo.
The Maltese paid the highest price. Thousands died of malnutrition after King Ferdinand of the Two Sicilies instructed his representative in Malta to give away the island to Bonaparte. But that is another story.
One would have expected some of the treasures on board La Sensible to have been thrown overboard before its surrender to the British Navy. Maybe the Ximenes cannon was simply too heavy! Not everything was lost, of course, and a lot reached England, including the cannon. Indeed, some of the silverware is on show in the museum of the Order of St John in London.
We are lucky that some knights were brave and quick enough to remove from St John’s Co-Cathedral and the Auberges (and from the sharp gaze of Denon) a quantity of artefacts we can still appreciate today. But we are extremely lucky that the Caravaggio paintings were not on board that ill-fated ship.