Malta had been captured by a French expeditionary force during the Mediterranean campaign of 1798, and garrisoned with 3,000 soldiers under the command of Claude-Henri Belgrand de Vaubois.

The following month, the ship of the line Guillaume Tell set sail from Valletta to Toulon, laden with soldiers, but this too was intercepted and in a hard-fought battle was forced to surrender to a larger British squadron.

[4] Sailing southeast, the convoy collected additional transports from Italian ports and at 05:30 on 9 June arrived off Valletta, the heavily fortified port-city on the island of Malta.

[5] At this time, Malta and its neighbouring islands were ruled by the Knights of St. John, an old and influential feudal order weakened by the loss of most of their revenue during the French Revolution.

[7] On receiving this reply, Bonaparte immediately ordered his fleet to bombard Valletta and on 11 June General Louis Baraguey d'Hilliers directed an amphibious operation in which several thousand soldiers landed at seven strategic sites around the island.

Approximately 2,000 native Maltese militia resisted for 24 hours, retreating to Valletta once the city of Mdina fell to General Claude-Henri Belgrand de Vaubois.

[8] Although Valletta was strong enough to hold out against a lengthy siege, Bonaparte negotiated a surrender with Hompesch, who agreed to turn Malta and all of its resources over to the French in exchange for estates and pensions in France for himself and his knights.

[9] Bonaparte then established a French garrison on the islands, leaving 4,000 men under Vaubois while he and the rest of the expeditionary force sailed eastwards for Alexandria on 19 June.

[10] Bonaparte's convoy was pursued across the Mediterranean by a British fleet of 14 ships under Rear-Admiral Sir Horatio Nelson, who learned of the invasion of Malta while anchored off Sicily, and subsequently attempted to intercept the French on their passage to Egypt.

[11] Believing that the French must have had a different objective, Nelson turned northwards the following day to investigate the coast of Anatolia and missed Bonaparte's arrival on 30 June by less than 24 hours.

Church property was looted and seized to pay for the expedition to Egypt,[6] an act that generated considerable anger among the deeply religious Maltese population.

[16] On 2 September 1798, this anger erupted in a popular uprising during an auction of church property, and within days thousands of Maltese irregulars had driven the French garrison into Valletta.

[17] Valletta was surrounded by approximately 10,000 irregular Maltese soldiers led by Emmanuele Vitale and Canon Francesco Saverio Caruana.

[18] On the same day, Vaubois withdrew the last of his soldiers into the fortified new city of Valletta, accompanied by approximately 100 Maltese nationals who had joined the French forces.

[22] The blockade fleet, consisting of five British and four Portuguese ships, operated from St. Paul's Bay and Marsa Sirocco (now Marsaxlokk) on the island of Malta itself.

Major-General James St Clair-Erskine, commander of British Army forces in the Mediterranean, considered the ongoing War of the Second Coalition in Italy and the defence of Menorca to be higher priorities than Ball's siege, while the defeated Neapolitans continued to refuse assistance.

[23] In May, a major French expedition under Admiral Etienne Eustache Bruix entered the Western Mediterranean, forcing Nelson to recall his scattered fleet from across the region, temporarily raising the blockade of Malta.

[26] In December 1799, Erskine was replaced by Lieutenant-General Henry Edward Fox, who immediately redistributed 800 troops from the garrison at Messina to Malta under Brigadier-General Thomas Graham.

The arrival of an aviso in January 1800 with the news of the events of 18 Brumaire that made Bonaparte First Consul of France prompted a brief respite and a public statement from Vaubois that the city would never be surrendered, although conditions continued to deteriorate.

[23] At the beginning of February 1800, the Neapolitan government, reinstated in Naples after being expelled the year before, finally agreed to participate in the siege and 1,200 troops were embarked on a squadron led by Vice-Admiral Lord Keith's flagship HMS Queen Charlotte and landed on Malta.

[27] These vessels were a relief squadron, sent from Toulon with extensive food supplies and 3,000 additional troops under Contre-Admiral Jean-Baptiste Perrée in Généreux, one of the ships of the line that had escaped at the Nile two years earlier.

[34] Eventually the arrival of the powerful Foudroyant under Captain Sir Edward Berry proved too much for Decrés, but he continued fighting for another two hours before he was forced to surrender his battered and dismasted ship; in the engagement, he lost more than 200 men killed and wounded.

Nelson also detached Foudroyant and Alexander from the blockade, again in defiance of Keith's explicit orders, to assist the Neapolitan royal family in their passage to Livorno.

[41] The British blockade continued to prevent French efforts to resupply Valletta during the early summer of 1800, and by August the situation was desperate: no horses or pack animals, dogs, cats, fowls or rabbits still lived within the city, the cisterns had been emptied and even firewood was in short supply.

With defeat now inevitable, Vaubois gave orders that the frigates Diane and Justice were to attempt a breakout for Toulon, with minimal crews of approximately 115 men each.

[35] On 3 September, with his men dying of starvation and disease at the rate of more than 100 a day, Vaubois called a council of his officers at which they unanimously decided to surrender.

[44] The capture of Malta gave control of the central Mediterranean to Britain and was an important step in the invasion and liberation of Egypt from French rule in 1801.