e the responsibility
of firing on the besiegers. Finally, a party of citizens interviewed
Von Hompesch and threatened to surrender the town if he refused to
capitulate.

At this point a mutiny broke out in the garrison, and the Grand Master
and his Council, seeing the hopelessness of the situation, sent for an
armistice preliminary to surrender. The armistice was concluded on the
11th, and on the 12th Napoleon entered Valetta, full of amazement at
the might of the fortress he had so easily captured. On the 12th the
capitulation was drawn up, of which the main clauses were:

1. The Knights surrendered Malta and its
sovereignty to the French army.

2. The French Republic would try to secure
to the Grand Master an equivalent principality
and would meanwhile pay him an annual pension
of 300,000 livres.

3. The French would use their influence with
the different Powers assembled at Rastadt to
allow the Knights who were their subjects to
control the property of their respective langues.

4. French Knights were allowed to return to
France.

5. French Knights in Malta were to receive a
pension from the French Government of 700
livres per annum; if over sixty years old, 1,000
livres.

Such was the end of the Order at Malta. Napoleon treated the Knights
and the Grand Master with extreme harshness. Most of them were
required to leave within three days, and some even within twenty-four
hours.

On June 18, Von Hompesch, taking with him the three most venerable
relics of the Order--all that the conqueror allowed him from the
treasures at Valetta--left for Trieste, whence he withdrew to
Montpellier, dying there in obscurity in 1805. Most of the homeless
Knights proceeded to Russia, where, on October 27, 1798, Paul I. was
elected Grand Master, though Von Hompesch still held the post.

But on the Tsar's death in 1801 the Order lost the one man who might
have been powerful enough to bring about a restoration, and the
survival of some scattered relics could not conceal the fact that
vanished for ever was the Order of the Hospital of St. John of
Jerusalem.

APPENDIX I

SOVEREIGNTY OF THE ORDER

There can be no doubt whatever that, after 1530, the Order was no
longer independent and sovereign, and that L'Isle Adam, despite all
his efforts, had become a feudatory, though the service demanded was
very slight. The Act of Donation of Malta put them definitely into the
position of feu