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Home , Maltese Carnival, Maltese folklore, Treaty of Amiens, Treaty of Paris (1814)

NEW LIGHT ON DURING THE PEACE OF , 1801-1803

D. F. ALLEN

SIR Charles William Pasley (1780-1861) is remembered today as a general in the British Army who earned distinction as a military engineer, writing manuals about field fortification, telegraphy, sapping, mining, pontooning, and how best to explode gunpowder under water for the salvage of wrecks. Pasley's distinction was recognized beyond the army by his election in 1816 as a Fellow of the Royal Society, by his appointment in 1841 as Inspector General of Railways and by the award in 1844 of an honorary D.C.L. by the University of Oxford. Less well known are the sympathetic impressions of Malta which he had formed between 1801 and 1804, when he was far from being a pillar of the Establishment but merely a twenty-one-year-old lieutenant from Minorca, recently posted to the Malta garrison. Lieutenant Pasley's unpublished journal and letters from Malta are buried in his personal papers which were bequeathed to the British Museum in the 1930s by his descendants. Pasley's comments on Malta now merit rehearsal for two reasons above all. First because they relate to that uneasy period of the Peace of Amiens, by which Britain had promised to hand back the Maltese islands to the Order of St John, expelled by Bonaparte in 1798. Young Pasley's journal and letters from Malta are interesting secondly because at that stage in his career he enjoyed few social advantages and was correspondingly open to the customs of the Maltese. Pasley had been born a bastard in Scotland, from where the Dumfries schoolmaster and his own energy and ability as well as the patronage of his better born Malcolm cousins had propelled him into the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich. In short, Pasley was a philosophical and literary Scottish soldier, curious about the distinctive history and of Malta. And his professional interest in mihtary fortification took renewed inspiration from the bastions of . Pasley arrived at Malta in November 1801, one month after Lord Hawkesbury in Downing Street had signed the preliminary treaty of peace between Great Britain and , which was to be signed definitively at Amiens the following March. The fourth article of this preliminary treaty promised the evacuation of British troops from Malta and the island's restoration to the Order of St John of Jerusalem. This same article proposed that Malta should be rendered completely independent of either France or Great Britain by being placed under the protection of a 'third Power to be agreed upon in the definitive treaty'.^ The hostility of Maltese public opinion to these preliminary 174 Fig. I. C. W. Pasley in 1810. Add. MS. 41766, f. 135 (detail)

proposals soon impressed Pasley, as he was coming to terms with his new billet at Malta. His first thoughts were selfish ones of relief at leaving Minorca behind, where he had been 'a body without a soul', but he was still afraid of meeting his old critic. General Fox, who had transferred his H.Q, from Minorca to Malta, in preparation for Minorca's 175 reversion to Spain by the definitive in 1802.^ In the event Fox received Pasley kindly at the former Grand Master's palace in Valletta. Pasley's confidence grew amidst the local consensus that Malta was a better Mediterranean base for Britain than Minorca and could not possibly be handed back to the Order of St John, a French puppet which the native Maltese were begging the British to keep away. Pasley preferred the Maltese to the Minorcans, the former being 'a better informed, more sociable and spirited people than the Minorcans', though he did encounter some Maltese peasants near Dingli Cliffs (which reminded him of the Isle of Wight) who had never heard of Minorca but did recognize the name of its port. Port Mahdn. Minorcan women were more neatly dressed than their Maltese counterparts. The Maltese were dark like the Minorcans but were altogether unlike Europeans, except for their dress, since their guttural language, 'bawling and furious gestures', made them appear more like Arabs.^ Making such comparisons in favour of the Maltese, Pasley became indignant when he reflected how his Government in London had just undertaken to hand back his new acquaintances to the Order of St John, 'a phantom without a substance, represented by a set of men entirely devoted to French influence'. Pasley determined to live in the meantime 'as if we were today here for ever'.^ Because he could speak some Italian and tried to focus on the distinctive sounds of the , Pasley was able to communicate with the many Maltese he encountered.^ From them he heard horrid tales of pillage by the recent French occupiers and was welcomed as an English deliverer, though he was, of course, a Scot. He was told how plate had been seized from the Holy Infirmary at Valletta and everywhere 'golden and silver ornaments became a prey to their sacrilegious hands'. In the village church of Mqabba Pasley noted 'several armorial bearings defaced by the French, who must have had great industry in making enemies to descend to such minute details'. At Selmun Palace above St Paul's Bay, Pasley was shown round by a Maltese pilot, formerly employed in making signals, who had escaped being conscripted into the Maltese Legion which the French had taken with them to .^ Pasley had no doubt of Bonaparte's desire 'to make himself master of the whole Mediterranean. If we give up this island now, we may bid farewell to this sea for ever and we will not even have the satisfaction of saying we were deceived but we sign our downfall with our eyes open.'^ Living for the most part at his regimental mess in Valletta, Pasley made several sightseeing expeditions from the island's capital, often sleeping overnight in sheds or other humble accommodation provided by the parish priest (kapptllan) of the village he happened to be visiting. Pasley's companions on these tours of rural Malta sometimes included Mr Bonavia, a Maltese engineer formerly employed during the French occupation by Le Grange.^ Being an engineer himself, Pasley respected the French contribution to his science but considered that too much 'superstitious veneration' had been afforded Vauban at the expense of Newton. As for those works built at Malta by the French engineer Tigne in the early eighteenth century, he praised their ingenuity but thought they were 'good for a chest of drawers, not to resist gunpowder and canonballs'. Noting the scarcity of British writers on fortification, he was inspired by Malta's 176 Fig. 2. Valletta and the , i8oo. Add. MS. 43833 (detail) fortifications to think of creating those manuals for which he later became famous.^ Pasley had some admiration for the Knights of St John who had commanded Malta's defensive fortifications during the Ottoman siege of 1565. After visiting the vault of St John's conventual church, he at first wrote in his journal, 'Enthusiasm seizes my soul as I kneel at the grave of La Valette' but his Protestant second thoughts led him to cross this out and to record instead 'a remembrance I shall ever cherish'. In the former Grand Master's palace at Valletta, Pasley was impressed by paintings of the knights' naval victories - 'Everything must have served to awaken an enthusiasm and emulation that the degenerate modern ones were incapable of feeling.' Prompted by the kappillan of Gudja, who criticized to him Grand Master de Rohan (1775-97) hut praised the earlier Grand Masters Pinto (1741-73) and Vilhena (1722-36), Pasley described the Order of St John's former rule in Malta as having been 'without meaning', which was 'the character of all arbitrary governments'.^^ Pasley could not understand how the 'poor Knights' could ever return to Malta 'without the income of France and, above all, deprived of the spirit of religious enthusiasm'.^^ Here he alluded to the Revolution's confiscation of the Order of St John's properties in France and to the liberal, sometimes Masonic, spirit which had affected several French Knights who had welcomed Bonaparte's invasion of Malta in 1798 and had worsened thereby the hesitant stance of Grand Master Hompesch. In exile at Trieste and Montpellier, Hompesch had been mocked further by the decision of his Order's Russian Grand Priory to elect the Tsar Paul I as Grand Master. Paul had promised to re-establish the Order at Malta, St Petersburg serving meanwhile as the Order's conventual residence. ^^ His murder in March 1802 and the reluctance of his successor Alexander I to continue as Grand Master of the Order made a little easier the wording 177 of the tenth and Maltese article of the definitive Treaty of Amiens in March 1802. Even so this Maltese article of the treaty was, in Bonaparte's words, 'a romance which could not be executed', a sentiment with which Pasley found himself in agreement.'^ Article X of the treaty stipulated that the Order of St John should be restored to Malta after its Chapter-General had met in the island to elect a new Grand Master. It was understood tacitly by the contracting parties at Amiens that this new head of the Order would be neither Hompesch nor Alexander I. The Grand Master eventually chosen in February 1803 by Pius VII (and not by the assembled Knights in Malta) disappointed Pasley because the seventy-two-year-old Sienese bailli Giovanni Battista Tommasi enjoyed no standing with the Maltese, who wished to remain under British rule. Grand Master Tommasi had a similar reputation in Malta to that of in France, since he had allegedly once retorted to some Maltese petitioners who complained of the quality of their bread, that *they ought to be fed upon chopped straw like jackasses'. Pasley was alarmed by Grand Master Tommasi's impatience to leave his temporary court at Messina 'to take possession of his new principality' of Malta. He was similarly perturbed by the querulous embassy of the Grand Master's Minister-Plenipotentiary, the chevalier Buzi, who met in early March 1803 with Sir whose powers at Malta both as His Britannic Majesty's Civil Commissioner and Minister-Plenipotentiary to the Order of St John of Jerusalem were meant to expire upon the Grand Master's arrival at Malta. Ball showed his true character as a British Commissioner who wished to hang on to Malta rather than as a Minister-Plenipotentiary to the military Order to whose new Grand Master he was expected to cede the island, according to the Treaty of Amiens. Vainly Buzi reminded Ball that the British Government seemed to be contemplating violation of the treaty it had signed, of which article X had been unambiguous in its intended restoration of Malta to the Order of St John.^^ When Buzi was comforted by friendlier overtures from General Vial, the French Minister at Malta, Pasley became convinced that France and Naples were colluding to bring back Grand Master Tommasi to Malta as their own puppet.^'' Buzi was denounced by Pasley as 'a wretch who had not a will of his own nor a word to say, without previously consulting the Frenchman'. Pasley alleged that Buzi had to ask General Vial's permission before agreeing to dine with the British authorities on King George's birthday, 4 June 1803.^^ By then Great Britain and France were again at war. And in respect of Malta -'this celebrated island, interesting at all times but particularly so of late from the recent importance attached to it' - Pasley showed his true feelings in favour of a renewed war which would secure Malta as Britain's base in the Mediterranean rather than in favour of the Treaty of Amiens:

I felt no less forcibly the other points of our degrading system of concession. I began to fear as one indignity succeeded another that we should soon have reason to be ashamed of our country. And I will declare that the day I beheld Lord Nelson's flag entering this harbour and heard the welcome news of war was the happiest of my life, as that when the articles of the last peace were shown me was without exception one of the gloomiest.^'

178 Amidst such exciting events, Pasley found time to read Gibbon, where Rome's appeasement of her enemies struck a chord with his own observation of Malta during the Peace of Amiens: 'I have been sorry to observe in the course of that history so just a parallel between the general proceedings of the Romans and our own late measures.'^^ Despite his enthusiasm for a renewed war with France, Pasley warned Sir Alexander Ball about the delicacy of the British presence in Malta. It was useful for Britain that many Maltese 'overrate the strength and resources of the British nation'. It was also to be noted secretly that some of the same Maltese boasted 'that the British Garrison is here as it were by sufferance, and that they have it in their power to expel us as they did the French, should we ever render ourselves obnoxious to them.' Pasley assured Ball that he did not 'mean in the least to impeach the loyalty of the Maltese to His Majesty's authority represented by Your Excellency, which is I beheve unquestionable, but as they cannot consider us as countrymen, the possibility of a rupture at some future time must come under private speculation.'^^ Fortunately for Pasley no such rupture occurred during his stay in Malta, where he spent his time not just in soldiering, reading and sightseeing but also in participating in the . And it remains one further merit of retrieving his journal from its 190 years of neglect that his account of the Carnival of 1802 predates the better-known accounts of Carnival after Britain's possession of Malta had been confirmed by the Treaty of in 1814. These later accounts are often disfigured by Protestant incomprehension of Catholic Carnival such as, for example, that by the Reverend S. S. Wilson of the 1819 Carnival, whose Maltese characteristics were blurred by Wilson in his desire to copy Lady Morgan's account of the Carnival at Rome. Wilson was a bigoted Protestant missionary at Malta, angry in his incomprehension of 'papal superstition' everywhere in the island ruled by Britain,^^ whereas Pasley, also a Protestant, sympathized more with the of 1802. Under the Order of St John, Carnival had first been held in 1535 at , the seat of the Knights until the building of Valletta after the Great Siege of 1565. Later in Valletta lasted for the three days immediately preceding Ash Wednesday, the start of Lent. Carnival was usually ushered in by a sword-dance called parata, commemorating the defeat of the Turks in 1565. Without this parata, there could be no authentic Carnival.^^ Pasley failed to understand the significance of this dance, though he tried hard and clearly enjoyed its excitement. He mistook tht parata for a morris dance such as he knew in the British Isles, probably misled by the ribbons in the hats of the male dancers:

Twelve men with sticks in imitation of swords in their right hand and a gauntlet in the left form a ring, dance in this manner and in a number of figures, clashing their swords. But the strangest part of it is in their lifting up a little boy placed on a stool which they raise by their sticks whom they alternately raise and lower to the music. Pasley noted also the transvestite dressing of the male dancers in another and more lascivious entertainment he witnessed on the streets of Valletta during Carnival. There was much wriggling of buttocks and one man 'running about with a stick in imitation of a penis in his hand, was no less applauded.' Pasley was astonished that this 179 'buffoonery and gross brutality' found favour with all the local spectators, 'the gentlest people as well as the lowest'. For the benefit of British spectators, the participants included some English phrases in their Maltese presentation. Away from the streets and on the second evening of Carnival, Pasley was invited to a masked ball at the former Grand Master's palace which was hosted by the British general for 'the officers and gentry of Malta'. One guest assumed the character of an Irish priest but all heads were turned by the arrival of Cleopatra's Pillar, seventeen feet high and constantly moving, which was decorated with 'hieroglyphics', rhyming verses both in Italian (for the benefit of the Maltese) and English which extolled Nelson's victory in Egypt.^^ Although Pasley tried to understand , he remained astonished by the fervour of Catholic piety among the Maltese. Because he travelled beyond Valletta, his journal provides glimpses of that rural Malta during the Peace of Amiens which was ruled in effect by the kappillan, whosoever might happen to rule in Valletta, Grand Master Tommasi or Sir Alexander Ball. Pasley was impressed by the kappillan of Gudja, who possessed 'a couple of paintings representing two scenes out of Tasso, which introduced a conversation on poetry. He showed me Young's Night Thoughts translated into Italian.'^^ Pasley shared his breakfast with this old kappillan at the same time as 'about a dozen old women and children who came to have the Gospel read and said sopra la testa by him, who is reckoned a man of superior sanctity and interest with heaven.'^^ Pasley distinguished between this kappillan's charisma and the lurid representation in his church at Gudja of Christ's body being taken down from the Cross:

It is horrible to see in what a disgusting manner they represent his manacled body, covered with blood and frightful wounds. I have always turned away from such sights with aversion. A half- eaten skeleton could not be a more shocking spectacle and they seem to strive to outdo each other in such representations.^^ It should be emphasized here that Pasley had little or no eye for art, thinking that Caravaggio's celebrated 'Beheading of John the Baptist' in St John's was the work of Rubens."^^ Votive paintings throughout Malta were another of Pasley's blindspots and he would have been astonished by the subtle interpretations of them offered by modern anthropologists.^^ The votive pictures in the chapel of Our Lady's sanctuary at Mellieha caused him to laugh both because of'the style of drawing, which was generally uncouth' and the subject matter itself: There were numbers of galleys and ships in a storm; a man swimming for his life, dolphins playing around him, a Spanish Don attacked by bandits and a number of other like occurrences; several persons were represented in bed with a priest praying by their side. In every one the Virgin with her babe was represented in the air in token of heavenly aid.^^

The sacristan of Mellieha, with whom Pasley conversed in Italian, caused further amusement by declaring that he had stopped shaving once he discovered that his beard kept him warm when he suffered a fever. Also the barber lived too far away. Pasley replied that Englishmen always shaved, to which the sacristan replied: 'Everyone had his 180 own art, I could never take to that of a barber. '^^ Leaving this Maltese with his ignorance of England as a nation of barbers, Pasley was impressed by the knowledge of mathematics being taught at the College in Valletta, which he identifies as the former Jesuit College, refounded as a University in 1769 by Grand Master Pinto.^'^ Although the French occupiers had stolen one of the College's globes, it remained for Pasley 'a most laudable institution, great for so small an island but circumscribed for want of instruments.' Pasley recognized the Jesuits' contribution both to the theory and the teaching of mathematics and noted how the College used a textbook on the properties of cycloids, written by a Jesuit author in 1690.^^ The 'infinite civility from everyone' at this College might stand as the leitmotiv of Pasley's journal during his stay in Malta. He was happy on the island because it was there that he began to come to terms with his personal limitations, as he admitted in a letter to his uncle, dated 25 May 1803: I was from my infancy actuated by a passion for reputation but since I entered the world and have had an opportunity of comparing myself with others, I have become convinced of the mediocrity of my own talents and losing all hopes of rising from the crowd, am resigned to the idea of living and dying in obscurity. ^^ Pasley overdid the humility of his self-analysis. When he finally left Malta in 1804 to join Nelson at Naples, his career in the British army was assuming its upward curve of distinction. Since Pasley was a Scot, it is instructive, finally, to compare his unpublished account of Malta during the Peace of Amiens with the later and better-known account of the island in 1831 by Sir Walter Scott. Pasley too had been sufficiently affected by the Gothic Revival to record these impressions of the 'Blue Grotto' at Malta, a popular tourist attraction of today: 'Nothing can be more solemn than the ideas of a hermit looking out from their peepholes upon the ocean.' He wished that the Maltese had possessed a finer imagination and placed the shipwrecked St Paul in this grotto 'instead of the hole they have given him' at Rabat, from where he was supposed to have issued forth to preach the Gospel.^^ Most often, however, Pasley's journal recorded the Malta of contemporary reality rather than the Malta of Gothic imagination. Unlike Sir Walter in 1831, Pasley had not prepared for his visit to Malta in 1801 by reading histories of the Knights of St John. And he had stayed longer and seen more of rural Malta than would be possible for the sick and dying Scott to see during his own brief visit. Pasley the engineer had understood Malta's defensive fortifications better than Sir Walter, who was to confess in his unfinished novel The how difficult it was to imagine the Knights' fortifications as they would have been in 1565 and to separate them from their later accretions.^'* In his Journal of 18 October 1831, Scott recorded that 'the time is gone of sages who travelled to collect wisdom as well as heroes to reap honour. '^^ Although Scott never knew Pasley, the latter's unpublished journal of his posting to Malta during the Peace of Amiens demonstrates that this younger Scot was an exception to Sir Walter's stricture.

181 1 Quoted by W. Hardman and J. Holland Rose, A Napoleonic Europe, see C. Toumanoff, UOrdre during the Period of the French de Make et PEmpire de Russie (Rome, 1979). and British Occupations, iyg8-i8i5 (London, 13 Quoted by W. Hardman and J. Holland Rose, 1909), p. 404. op. cit., p. 436. 2 Minorca had been occupied three times by the 14 Add. MS. 41961, f. 206; W. Hardman and J. British during the eighteenth century, during Holland Rose, op. cit., pp. 466-8. which time the local nobility and clergy had 15 For the machinations of King Ferdinand of the often been hostile and aloof The island had been Two Sicilies in the affairs of Malta at this time, difficult to retain without pinning down sub- see A. Menna, Storia delPisola e delPOrdine di stantial naval forces. The question: 'Minorca or Malta (Naples, 1978); E. Gentile, 'Corri- Malta}' was answered by the British in favour of spondenza di Giovan Battista Fardella da Malta', Malta. See D. Gregory, Minorca, the Illusory Archivio Storico di Malta, ix (1937-8), pp. Prize (London, 1990), pp. 179-217. 253-71- 3 BL, Add. MSS. 41961, f. 97V; 41972, ff. 4or, 16 Pasley had the measure of Vial, who was later 4ir, 63V. accredited by Talleyrand as France's Minister- 4 Add. MS. 41961, ff. 214, 199. For the French Plenipotentiary to the Grand Master's court at influence on the Order of St John in the late Messina, where Tommasi was to die in June seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, see D. F. 1805. See M. Pierredon, Histoire politique de Allen, 'Charles II, Louis XIV and the Order of POrdre souverain de -Jean de Jerusalem de Malta', European History Quarterly., xx (1990), ngS a igs5 (Paris, 1963), vol. ii, p. 65. pp. 323-40; J. Godechot, 'La France et Make 17 Add. MS. 41961, f. 214. au XVIIIe siecle'. Revue Historique, ccvi (1951), 18 Ibid., f. 215V. pp. 67-79. 19 Ibid., ff. 289-290. 5 The Semitic layer of the Maltese language is 20 S. S. Wilson, A Narrative of the Greek Mission, older than its Romance element. See D. A. or Sixteen Years in Malta and (London, Agius, 'Maltese: A Semitic and Romance 1839). PP- 37-43- Language', Al-^Arabiyya, xiii (1980), pp. 21 J. Cassar PuUicino, Studies in Maltese Folklore 14-27. (Malta, 1976), p. 22. 6 Add. MS. 41972, ff". 41V, 51V, 57V, 65r. Cf. M. 22 Add. MS. 41972, ff. 1^-11- Pasley's shorter E. S. Laws, 'The Maltese Legion in the French account of the 1803 Carnival (Add. MS. 41961, Service, 1798-99', Journal of the Royal United f. 203) merely describes the British celebrations: Service Institution (May 1955), pp. 267-71. 'The Carnival is now begun, we have 7 Add. MS. 41961, f 206. Masquerades two or three times a week, the 8 The French contribution in the eighteenth other nights are filled up with Operas, dances or century to the Order of St John's defensive card parties and once a fortnight is an English fortifications at Malta is analyzed by A. Hoppen, play got up by the officers of the Garrison.' The Fortification of Malta by the Order of St John 23 Edward Young's long poem. The Complaint, or /5JO-/795(Edinburgh, 1979), pp. 84-90, and by Night Thoughts on Life^ Death and Immortality D. de Lucca, 'French Military Engineers in had been published in nine books, 1742-5. Malta during the 17th and i8th Centuries', 24 Add. MS. 41972, f 69r. Melita Historica, viii (1980), pp. 2i~:i,2>. 25 Ibid. 9 Add. MSS. 41972, f 47r; 41961, f 265. During 26 Ibid., f 41V. his stay at Malta, Pasley ordered several books 27 The votive paintings at the sanctuary of Our from an English bookseller to be sent to the Lady of Graces at Zabbar have been analyzed by island, including Sir William Chambers's treatise Prof. A. H. J. Prins, In Peril On The Sea (Malta, on architecture and a description of the 1989). Bridgewater Canal. See Add. MS. 41961, f. 255. 28 Add. MS. 41972, f 58V. 10 Add. MS. 41972, flf.42r , 40V, 68v. 29 Ibid. 11 Ibid., f. 5ir. 30 Cf. A. P. Vella, The (Malta, 12 For this important Russian connection which, 1969). The Jesuits' College had dated from for all its paradoxes, at least maintained the 1593 and was transformed into a university of Order of St John's international profile in general studies by Grand Master Pinto after 182 he had expelled the Jesuits from Malta in 32 Add. MS. 41961, f. 212. 1768. 33 Add. MS. 41972, f. 67r. 31 Add. MS. 41972, f. 51V. Cf. S. Fiorini, 'The 34 See D. E. Sultana, The Siege of Malta Development of Mathematical Education in Rediscovered. An Account of Sir Walter Scott's Malta to 1798' in S. Fiorini and V. Mallia- Mediterranean Journey and his Last Novel Milanes (eds.), Malta, A Gase Study in In- (Edinburgh, 1977), p.43. ternational Gross-Gurrents (Malta, 1991), pp. 35 Quoted by Sultana, ibid., p. xii. 111-46.

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