"Czars, Knights and Republicans: The Malta question..." Topic

… in Paul's time.

"When Paul I came to the throne in 1796, Malta and Russia had long had a common enemy. It was the Ottoman Empire, its Muslim Turks, and its Barbary corsairs. Unlike Malta, a central Mediterranean archipelago with well-protected, deep-water harbours, Russia had been a largely landlocked country whose territorial expansion historically had tended to be across internal frontiers, from Kiev to Muscovy to Kazan. With the advent of Peter I, however, and especially after his declaration of war against Turkey and the acquisition of the Black Sea port of Azov in 1696, Russia began to nurture a naval and maritime policy. This policy was two-pronged: to the North in the struggle with Sweden for access to the Baltic; to the South in the long drawn out confrontations with the Turks in their extensive domains, hemming Russia in from the Mediterranean, and indeed from the Black Sea.
Paul I's keen interest in Malta and its Catholic, aristocratic order of chivalry, must be seen in the light of a string of earlier acquaintances, overtures and schemes of mutual interest between the Czars of Russia and the Knights of Malta, on the other. Two of his best known predecessors, Peter I (1672-1725) and Catherine II (1729-1796), already had set their sights on Malta, its knights and, not least, its famous fleet. Given the new-found commitment to naval and maritime undertakings, Petrine Russia now had an ideological as well as a strategic shared interest with the Mediterranean headquarters of the anti-Turkish, anti-Muslim crusaders.
From Russia's point of view, this interest was also technical and professional, in so far as the successful equipment, organization and the leadership of its own Russian fleet was concerned. This made sense, too, in the context of the Western expertise and support which both Peter and Catherine sought, coveted and to an extent emulated, as a matter of policy. Apart from their own intrinsic merits, development and advancement were needed for Russia if she was to compete meaningfully and to restrain any adversaries, be these Swedes, Turks or Poles.
The Grand Masters, no less than the Czars, had an interest in furthering this growing relationship, constrained though they were by an imposed Western European policy of ‘neutrality' in foreign affairs (except for fighting the Infidel), and generally by a statutory adherence to Roman Catholicism, the Pope being the Order of St John's spiritual head. But Russia was, of course, a Christian country, and an anti-Turkish one at that. Moreover it became increasingly, from Peter's time onwards, one of the ‘Great Powers' on the continental chess-board, a position further assured to it by Catherine II…"
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