Responsive Menu
Add more content here...
Skip to main content
Flag

THE MALTESE INSURRECTION AGAINST THE FRENCH (1798–1800) IN COTTONERA

By November 17, 2025Anglu Story

THE MALTESE INSURRECTION AGAINST THE FRENCH (1798–1800) IN COTTONERA

On the 9th of June in 1798, residents in the harbour towns of Cottonera and Valletta watched with curiosity and alarm as French flags crowded the horizon. Aboard his flagship L’Orient, Napoleon sent word to Grand Master Hompesch that the French fleet, carrying 40,000 soldiers, merely wanted to take on some water. However, only three days later, the general’s true intentions were made clear when he assumed governship of Malta. Betrayed by some of his knights, Hompesch was forced to capitulate and thus ended over two illustrious centuries of the Order’s rule.

‘Prise de Malte,’ in France Militaire. Histoire des armées françaises de terre et de mer de 1792 a 1837. Published in Paris by Delloye, 1838. Collection of MUŻA-Mużew Nazzjonali tal-Arti, Valletta

At first, the new colonisers were welcomed as liberators from the yoke of the ancien régime. In Birgu, the Inquisition was done away with, and the palace was transformed into the residence of the French Commander for the Cottonera district. The French spoke of liberty, equality, and fraternity, abolished feudal privileges and slavery, reorganised the courts, and set up a modern education system. But their reforms came with a heavy price.

They stripped churches of silver and gold, seized property from religious orders, and abolished centuries-old institutions. Taxes and interest rates soared. Pensions, bread rations, and promised wages went unpaid. Homes were lost when leases were changed, officers moved into private houses, and Sicily’s quarantine starved the island and destroyed the cotton trade, leaving families without work. For the deeply Catholic Maltese, it felt as though their faith, livelihood, and dignity were under attack.

Anger reached a boiling point on 2 September. When the French officials tried to auction off church property in Rabat and despoil the church of Our Lady of Mount Carmel in Mdina, the crowd erupted, and Captain Lazare Masson, the French commander at Mdina, was hurled from a balcony to his death. The next day, Maltese fighters seized Mdina’s armoury and the gunpowder magazine in Cottonera. News that Napoleon’s navy had been crushed at Aboukir Bay in Egypt spread like lightning. With the enemy cut off from reinforcements, villages rose in rebellion. Malta was thrown into a bitter civil war — rebels and their British allies against the French and local Jacobins.

By 4 September, French forces had withdrawn behind the walls of Valletta, Manoel Island, Tigné, and the massive Cottonera Lines surrounding the Three Cities. Fort St Angelo in Vittoriosa, Fort St Michael in Senglea, and Fort Ricasoli at Kalkara became their strongholds. The Maltese set up entrenched camps from Corradino Heights, overlooking Grand Harbour, all the way around Cottonera to Ta’ Grazia Tower. From these positions, they could fire on the French and watch every movement in the harbour. Żabbar, just outside Cottonera, became a key forward base. The rebels communicated via a system of flags and petards.

On 5 September, insurgents from Żejtun, Għaxaq, and Żurrieq launched a determined assault on Cottonera’s walls. They were beaten back, but days later, they captured St Thomas Tower in Marsascala. On 7 September, General Vaubois, the French commander, declared a state of siege for Valletta and the Three Cities. By the end of the month, he began forcing civilians out — thousands from Cottonera were sent to rural villages to save food for his troops and to prevent rebellion within the walls.

October brought bloodshed. On the 5th, French soldiers attempted a raid on Żabbar, hoping to plunder supplies, but the villagers, warned in time, ambushed them and drove them back with heavy losses. For the rest of the month, the French in Cottonera bombarded Maltese positions at Tas-Samra and Corradino. In December, Maltese batteries returned fire, damaging homes in the harbour towns.

General Vaubois

A watercolour by Scolaro shows the gun battery at Tal-Borg, near present-day Paola, built to lay siege to the French garrison in Cottonera. Most of these batteries were designed by Michele Cachia of Żejtun, a Maltese patriot of 1798.

The siege dragged on into 1799. On 15 February, the Maltese tried a daring night-time assault on Bormla, crossing the harbour from Marsa in boats, aiming to break into St Paul’s Gate. The attack failed, and the French held firm. Inside Cottonera and Valletta, however, conditions were worsening. The Maltese had cut the Wignacourt Aqueduct, forcing the French to rely on cistern water, much of it contaminated. Dysentery, typhoid, and scurvy began to spread.

Notary Emmanuele Vitale

Vincenzo Borg

Outside the walls, leaders like Vincenzo Borg ‘Brared’ at Żabbar, notary Emmanuele Vitale at Corradino, and Canon Francesco Saverio Caruana coordinated the siege, organised supplies, and kept morale alive. Civilians ferried food and ammunition, carried messages under fire, and manned the batteries. Several Maltese medical practitioners stood alongside their compatriots in the fight, tending to the sick and wounded while also taking up arms. Among them was Antonio Muscat, a physician and surgeon from Cospicua and a former naval surgeon of the Order, who served as second-in-command at Ta’ Samra.

British involvement grew after Admiral Nelson’s triumph at the Nile, soon joined by Portuguese and Neapolitan forces in the blockade. In October 1798, Captain Alexander Ball arrived, winning the trust of the Maltese, thanks to Brared’s support. British ships bombarded French positions at Fort Ricasoli and kept the harbour entrance under constant threat.

By 1799, the French garrison and remaining civilians in Cottonera faced starvation. Horses, dogs, cats, and even rats became part of the diet. Citrus fruit, needed to fight scurvy, was almost impossible to find. Night blindness, rheumatism, and worm infestations spread. Over 10,000 civilians had been expelled from the Three Cities, leaving streets empty except for soldiers.

The final months of the siege were grim. French attempts to break the blockade failed, and every incoming ship was turned away or captured. Disease and hunger eroded what little strength the garrison had left. In the summer of 1800, with supplies gone and no hope of relief, General Vaubois opened surrender talks. On 4 September, after two years of bombardment, deprivation, and resistance, the French marched out of Cottonera and Valletta, handing over their positions to the British. A bronze bust of Grand Master Nicolas Cotoner, which once stood high above the Notre Dame Gate — known locally as Bieb is-Sultan — the main entrance to the Cottonera fortifications and a key lookout point during the blockade, was discovered just in time, about to be taken away aboard the French galley Athenienne.

Bieb is-Sultan

Sir Alexander Ball

The brief French occupation and ensuing rebellion had exposed the Maltese to Republican ideals and given them their first taste of nationhood.  Those who were opposed to French rule set out to draft a constitution aimed at establishing a congress (parliament) with representatives from villages across Malta. Yet the capitulation was signed without a single Maltese voice at the table. An estimated 17,000–20,000 Maltese had perished during the insurrection — more than in the Great Siege of 1565 and the Second World War combined.  Despite this sacrifice, it was the British who reaped the rewards. Sir Alexander Ball, once seen as a friend, turned his back on Vincenzo ‘Brared’ Borg, making his life a misery. The dream of nationhood crumbled as Malta passed from one coloniser’s grip to another. True independence would not come until 1964 — a full 164 years later.

Written with reference to:

Close Menu