A good article, if a little brief on why Malta caused such a fuss in 1802-03.
What the Treaty of Amiens actually says:
X. The islands of Malta, Gozo, and Comino, shall be restored to the order of St. John of Jerusalem to be held on the same conditions, on which it possessed them before the war, and under the following stipulations.
1. The knights of the order whose Langues shall continue to subsist after the exchange of the ratification of the present treaty, are invited to return to Malta, as soon as the exchange shall have taken place. They shall there form a general chapter, and proceed to the election of a grand master, chosen from among the natives of those nations which are to preserve their Langues, unless that election has been already made since the exchange of the preliminaries.
And…
4. The forces of his Britannic majesty shall evacuate the island, and its dependencies, within three months from the exchange of the ratifications, or sooner if possible. At that epoch it shall be given up to the order in its present state, provided the grand master, or commissaries, fully authorized according to the statutes of the order, shall be in the island to take possession, and that the force which is to be provided by his Sicilian majesty, as is hereafter stipulated, shall have arrived there.
The French and British chapters ('langues') of the Hospitallers were disbanded under the Treaty of Amiens.
The first problem was actually getting the Knights to elect a new Grand Master. The only significant Langue left intact was that of Russia (actually catholic Poles). They unilaterally elected the Tsar of Russia as their new boss. This was not recognised by the Vatican (or anyone else) because the Order was supposed to be Catholic, and the Tsars of Russia were famously not. Russia was also known to be keen on gaining a strategic foothold in the Mediterranean to assist its territorial designs southward. The Mediterranean states were not so keen on having Russia's interminable wars with Turkey brought to their doorsteps.
The Pope countered the Russian gambit by dragging some Italian Knight (his name currently escapes me) out of retirement and appointing him Grand Master. This failed on two counts: first, he was not elected, as the Treaty demanded. Second, this particular Knight had been a senior member of the Order and had been notorious on Malta for his financial exactions. The Pope could not have found a less popular man for the job.
Which brings us to the second problem – many Maltese simply didn't want the Knights back. The French Knights had wholesale betrayed Malta to Bonaparte in 1798, with only a few honourable exceptions. In one case, Maltese troops had killed their French commander when he tried to surrender a key position without a fight. Malta paid a heavy price for this treason, with massive plunder and many Maltese kidnapped and forced into French service. This had not been forgotten a few years later, and British officers in the Malta Garrison were warned outright that the Maltese were prepared to revolt rather than have the Knights re-imposed.
It must be noted that the British were not particularly unhappy to find themselves with no validly elected Grand Master to hand Malta over to, and therefore no obligation to evacuate it. Malta made an excellent naval base and saved the Royal Navy the trouble of having to retake Minorca every time war broke out.
paints brigs for the British fleet.
