Malta in 1798 went into shock. The once overlords of the island principality were overrun by General Bonaparte and his troops. Be it through treason, through sheer force, through the intervention of an intellectual middle class, or maybe a sprinkling of all three, the Directory in France unfurled the tricolore above the ramparts of Malta. To the sound of a marching band, General Bonaparte marched from the marina of Valletta to the Palace. He had acquired for France an impregnable fortress. In a few days, he made deep changes to the administration of the island by installing a puppet government composed of ex-Order of St John knights, Maltese Jacobins, and a number of influential merchants, all of whom believed in the new ideals of Republican France. He introduced modern laws such as freedom of the press, while also instructing for the wholesale plunder of relics and treasures belonging to the Order of St John and the local Church, to finance the revolution and the payment of his troops; a practice he had so earnestly put into play during his fabled Italian campaign.
