Page:A History of the Knights of Malta, or the Order of St. John of Jerusalem.djvu/687

Rh position to offer a resistance of three months’ duration. Let your eminent Highness, therefore, be on your guard. Your own honour, and the preservation of your Order, are concerned in the matter. If you yield without a defence, you ‘will be lowered in the eyes of all Europe. I may add that this expedition is looked upon here as likely to prove a disgrace to Bonaparte. He has two powerful enemies in the directory, who have taken this opportunity of getting rid of him—Rewbell and Larevillière Lepaux.”

Such a letter as this, coming from a source so worthy of credence, must, one would imagine, have placed von Hompeach on his guard; but this was not the case. He conceived himself so secure in the friendly disposition of the French republic that he scorned all preparations for resisting an armament which he felt assured was not aimed against his fraternity, and the terror of which was, he believed, merely a bugbear existing in the agitated minds of nervous and timid politicians.

Such, then, was the comparatively unprepared condition of Malta, when, on the 6th June, 1798, a French fleet, consisting of eighteen sail, accompanied by seventy transports, appeared off the island under the command of Commodore Sidoux. Permission was demanded for a few of the vessels to enter the harbour and water; this was granted, two of the transports being admitted for that purpose, as also one of the frigates for repair, the remainder lying at anchor outside. Every effort was made by the knights to mark their strict neutrality, and their readiness to offer hospitality and assistance as well to the French as to the other powers whose fleets might approach their shores. On the 9th June the main portion of the expedition appeared, with the rest of the forces, the whole being under the command of General Bonaparte in person. The squadron thus united consisted of fourteen line-of-battle ships, thirty frigates, and 300 transports, the commander-in-chief being on board the flagship l’Orient.

On his arrival before Malta, Bonaparte at once despatched the French consul Caruson to the Grand-Master, demanding free entrance into the grand harbour for the whole fleet, and that his troops should be permitted to land. Such a request of itself proved the object which the French general had in view; to have yielded the required permission would have been simply