The Order of the Hospital by W.K.R. Bedford

Author:W.K.R. Bedford
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pronoun

CHAPTER VII.THE ENGLISH REVIVAL

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WHILE MALTA, THANKS TO THE patriotism of its native population and the generous disinterestedness of their English allies, was shaking off the yoke of the French invaders, those who so basely invited the aggression of the enemy were experiencing the disappointment which their treachery merited. Instead of the promised possessions and pecuniary bribes which had been dangled before them, the craven knights received only 250 francs apiece by way of indemnity, and were ignominiously expelled from their island. They dispersed in various directions. A few took service with the French army, and less than a score accompanied the fallen Grand Master to Trieste, whence some of them found their way to St. Petersburg.

Some kind of friendly negotiation had been in progress with the autocrat of Russia as long before this as 1782, when Grand Master de Rohan projected the foundation of his Anglo- Bavarian Langue.

He sought at that time the sanction of the English monarch to the use of the title of the Sixth Langue, and as he also proposed to unite with it the Grand Priory of Poland, he entered into correspondence with the Empress Catherine II. as to that portion of her subjects who adhered to the Greek Church. This led to a large migration of refugee knights to St. Petersburg, where Paul was now on the throne, and they were cordially welcomed by the Czar. With the tacit assent of the Grand Master this fragmentary section of the Order assembled in conclave at St. Petersburg on October 27th, 1798, and elected the Czar as Grand Master of the Order, though no formal resignation by Hompesch had yet taken place. Paul accepted the election on November 13th of the same year, and on the 10th December was privately invested. He appears, however, to have insisted upon a formal resignation by Hompesch, who shortly afterwards retired to Montpellier, where he joined one of the strictest fraternities of penitents, and died in complete obscurity in 1805.

Although Hompesch did not himself repair to St. Petersburg, he caused two of the most valued relics of the Order which he had brought from Malta to be presented to the Emperor Paul. One was the hand of St. John, the gift of Sultan Bajazet to Grand Master d’Aubusson, which had been kept in a gauntlet-shaped case of solid gold, richly bejewelled, in the church of St. John. It is said that Bonaparte took the great sapphire ring which lay in front of the case (the offering of a monarch in the fifteenth century) and put it on his own finger, desiring the case itself to be taken on board the flagship, and contemptuously adding, “You may keep the carrion.”

The other great relic now at St. Petersburg is the icon of Our Lady of Philermos, cherished by the Order at Rhodes as a kind of Palladium, and now in the chapel of the Imperial Winter Palace at St. Petersburg. This too was one of the treasures of St. John’s, and from its chapel the French took bullion of the value of £1,200.

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