Pierre Jean Louis Ovide Doublet (25 August 1749[1] - 4 February 1824) was a French politician and writer who spent much of his life serving in the Knights of Malta.
Doublet, being in the Grand Master's direct service, was accused as a collaborator with the French and became caught in the political maneuvering by other members to depose Hompesch.
The Bailiff (Count) Fra’ Giulio Litta, was greatly involved in the creation of the Grand Priory of Russia, was by chance, also member of this same lodge, entirely under the benevolent indifference of the Grand-Master de Rohan (himself initiated in Modane in 1756).
His refusal angered Napoleon, who did not appreciate anyone denying his will, but the future emperor confided to Junot, his aide-de-camp, that this man had good qualities because he had substance.
On 10 November 1799 he became Commissioner to replace Regnaud de Saint Jean d'Angély who is recalled to France, a position that he remained until the surrender of Valletta on 5 September 1800.
Following the capture of Malta by the troops of Bonaparte and in the débacle of the Order which followed, Doublet was shown to have communicated to the French authorities the secret code that the Grand Masters Hompesch and, before him, Rohan used to safeguard their diplomatic mails.
In a similar case, the Proclamation of St Petersburg,[2] signed by former members of the Order in an effort to please the Czar, posited that Hompesch was incompetent and defeatist.
Indeed, Czar Paul I had been designated "Protector[usurped]" of the Order and, after its dissolution in Malta, he tried to reconstitute it within the framework of the recently established Priory of Russia.
Besides, Tzar Paul I managed to achieve his goal since after the abdication of von Hompesch[usurped], he is proclaimed Grand Master by some of the members of the Order in exile whom he had hastened to accommodate following their expulsion from Malta (the Grand Master was not recognised by the Pope because Tzar Paul I was married and of Russian Orthodox religion).
Thus was the case for Pierre Manchin, a native Frenchman of Troyes in the department of Aube, living in Malta since 1749, who married there, started a family and had integrated into the Maltese population.
After the Treaty of Amiens, Doublet once again believed he could settle in Malta; he returned a few times, but was exiled again when hostilities resumed between France and England.
He spent nine or ten years in Rome, living a precarious and penurious existence, while making brief sojourns to Malta, where he could not remain for long.
Pierre Jean Louis Ovide Doublet left a book, Mémoires Historiques sur l'Invasion et l'Occupation de Malte par une Armée Française, en 1798, in which he tells of his experience.