As early as the 16th century, France founded its first naval school in Malta gleaning all it could from the wealth of experience the chivalric Order of the Knights of St John had established here after Rhodes.
The Order’s small fleet of galleys left an impression during the siege of Cyprus and the battle of Lepanto in the 16th century. The knights’ sense of organisation and discipline backed by their spiritual and moral character impressed Christian powers, foremost among them France.
Cardinal Richilieu embarked on re-organising the French fleet on the Maltese model. He sent Chevalier des Roches in 1620 to study the Order’s naval set-up in Malta. By 1640, the French fleet could already boast of 25 operational galleys. Naval politics required design, willpower, budgets and perseverance. Colbert vowed to make Louis XIV master of the Mediterranean. In ten years’ time Marseilles’ arsenal launched thirty new flamboyant galleys. In 1669 the king ordered his Maréchal de Vivonne to observe and learn from the navy of the Order.
The Order’s galleys were built in its arsenal – using Sicilian wood – in Italy or in France under strict control by the Order’s commissioners and finished in Vittoriosa. Slightly heavier and slower than their Venetian and Muslim counterparts, they were better armoured.
Exploiting sails to economise on manpower they proved to be the ideal craft for the sometimes stormy Mediterranean. Chroniclers of the time praised the Maltese galleys’ mastery of the waters. The Order recruited the best officers from Provence, Genova, Naples, Amalfi, Sicily, Greece and Catalonia. The Maltese were the best trained sailors in the world. Barras de la Penne from Provence explains how other navies would recruit leading rowers from Malta.
This association no doubt contributed to the fact that by the end of the 17th century the French fleet became the most powerful in the Mediterranean, busy protecting commercial routes. In 1684, the war vessel Le Bon alone defeated 36 Spanish galleys and in 1690, Admiral Tourville won a great naval victory against the British and Dutch navies in the Channel at the Bataille du Cap Béveziers or the Battle of Beachy Head. the At the time the royal fleet included 30 galleys, 120 vessels and 25 frigates, with the newly created galleys taking centre stage in the theatre of war.
Another remarkable French connection with Malta concerns the Order’s young aristocratic recruits from the Langues of Provence, Auvergne and France in Valletta. They founded the first French naval school in Malta’s Grand Harbour learning discipline, spiritual and physical endurance, mathematics, navigation and the art of combat.
In 1683 France followed with its own schools in Toulon, Brest and Rochefort. By the 1780s Malta’s university had established a school for mathematics and nautical sciences, later turned into an École Centrale by Bonaparte in 1798. In France Louis Philippe established a national school in Brest in 1830.
The fact that eighty per cent of captains in the French royal navy carried the title of Monsieur le Chevalier explains the third strong association with Malta. Though later on there were fewer knights on French naval ships, the most famous French admirals remain the Knights of Malta: Prégent de Bidoux in 1497; Count Grasse, victor of Chesapeake, preceding the American Independence; the great Bailli de Suffren, Chevalier Paul and Maréchal de Tourville. It is after such men that the Marine de France traditionally names its ships to this very day.
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