Page:A History of the Knights of Malta, or the Order of St. John of Jerusalem.djvu/699

Rh treachery of those under him, had done all that Bonaparte could have desired, and it must have been with feelings of no little exultation, that on the 13th June he penned the despatch to the directory, in which he announced his victory. As soon as that despatch was received in Paris, the following state paper was issued, addressed to the council, wherein are shewn the grounds upon which the republic intended to justify this wanton aggression in the eyes of Europe:—

“Cithens Representatives,

“The government of Malta has for a long time past dared to manifest the most hostile intentions towards France; it has boldly received and greatly favoured not only the emigrants who have retired to Malta, but also those amongst the knights who have actually served in the army of Condé.

“The nature of its constitution demands the strictest neutrality, but at the very moment when it publicly professed to preserve it, permission was granted to Spain, while at war with us, to recruit sailors in Malta, and the same permission has since been given to England, though it has constantly been refused to France in the most offensive manner.

“Whenever any Maltese or French residing in Malta appeared attached to the French cause, they were cruelly persecuted, imprisoned, and treated like the vilest criminals. The hatred of an inconsiderable state towards the French republic could not well be carried to greater lengths, yet the Grand-Master has declared, in his manifesto of the 10th October, 1793, that the king of Naples having notified to him his situation in regard to the war, he eagerly embraced the opportunity of shutting his ports against all French vessels. lie even went still farther, and declared, in the same manifesto, that the French agent then residing in Malta should in future be entirely regarded as a chargé d’affaires from the king of France, and concluded by saying that having understood there was a new envoy on his way to Malta, he would neither receive nor admit into his dominions such a person, nor indeed any other as a.gent from the pretended French republic which the Grand-Master (his own words) neither ought, could, nor would acknowledge.