Page:A History of the Knights of Malta, or the Order of St. John of Jerusalem.djvu/714

678 dearth of intelligence from France, which, in those eventful times, must have been very trying; constant dread of bombardment, which was every now and again threatened by the besiegers, but never carried out; a series of summonses from the hostile admirals, invariably rejected with contempt, and at intervals the arrival of some small vessel, laden with corn, wine, oil, or brandy, which had evaded the blockading squadron.

The inhabitants of the town had not openly joined the insurrection; still, the bulk of them were naturally eager for the success of their compatriots, and were only kept from an open manifestation of their feelings by the superior French force in their midst. Amongst them a plot was hatched which at one time bid fair to curtail the tedious duration of the blockade, and to achieve at one blow that triumph which they had hitherto only hoped for from the effects of starvation. It was arranged that the chief conspirators were each to lead a body of some fifty or sixty men to the attack of the principal posts within the city, as it had been observed that the sentries were not very vigilant, and it was believed that they could be surprised and poniarded without raising an alarm. A Corsican, called Guglielmo, who had been a colonel in the Russian service, was at the head of the plot, and he undertook to surprise the Grand-Master’s palace, then the head-quarters of General Vaubois. An ex-officer of chasseurs under the late régime, named Peralta, was to seize on the Marina gate; Damato, a farrier in the Maltese regiment, was to lead a party against the Porta Reale, the principal entrance to Valetta; and a barber named Pulis, another, against the Marsa Muscetto gate. Other detachments were to seize St. Elmo and the auberge de Castile. The assaults were all to be made simultaneously on the 11th January, 1799, and were to be supported by a general attack from without on several points of the enceinte, so as to distract the attention of the garrison.

The discovery of the plot was purely accidental. On the morning of the appointed day a Genoese barque had entered the harbour, having eluded the blockading squadron, and had brought intelligence of important successes obtained by the French over the Sardinians and Neapolitans. General Vaubois ordered a salute to be fired in honour of the occasion from the