Emma's Maltese Cross

The Story of Emma’s Maltese Cross

by Lily Style, published in the The 1805 Club's Kedge Anchor magazine, autumn 2019

That Emma Hamilton was the first English woman to be awarded the Maltese cross for her valour in aiding the blockaded Maltese islanders may be old news to many readers. However, existing biographies are vague on detail, and pinning down the precise dates at which key events took place has been challenging. Here then is a succinct account of events; their immediate background and what the award meant to Emma.

Above: pointillist style copy of Schmidt’s 1800 portrait of Emma wearing her Maltese cross, Lily Style 2019, using a digital stylus

The Story of Emma’s Maltese Cross

In a phenomenal rise in fortune, the daughter of a Cheshire mine’s blacksmith had risen from poverty to become the fashion-setting muse of Europe, and closest confidante of the controller of Britain’s key Mediterranean ally in the Napoleonic wars: Maria Carolina, Queen of the Kingdom of Two Sicilies. Her bullish husband King Ferdinand was interested only in hunting and whoring, so had no interest in the boring matter of running the state. Emma was proud to have achieved the exalted role of queen’s confidante, but remained firmly patriotic towards Britain. She colluded with the queen to smuggle correspondence from Ferdinand’s brother, King Philip of Spain to the British government. Philip had decided to side with France and was urging Ferdinand to follow suit. The queen, whose own sister Marie Antoinette had been executed by the republicans in 1793, received reports of Napoleon’s land army encroaching further and further south down the Italian peninsular with a mixture of hatred and fear. Emma and her diplomat husband Sir William Hamilton had become close friends with Nelson, and were keen to support his efforts to defeat Napoleon’s forces. When French-inspired civic unrest reached Naples in December 1797, the Hamiltons helped the terrified royal family flee to Palermo in Sicily on Nelson’s ship Vanguard.

While the Neapolitan court remained safely holed up on Sicily, the population of the smaller island of Malta, one-hundred-and-twenty miles distant, had been caught under the ever-expanding republican yoke. The Maltese had initially welcomed the French, who landed in June seventeen-ninety-eight and overthrew the Knights Hospitaller of Order of St John of Jerusalem, who had held tyranny over the island for two-hundred-and-fifty-years. The victorious republicans had delighted the local populace by abolishing the feudal system, slavery, nobility and inquisition. This happy state was, however, short-lived, as the deeply religious Maltese were incensed when the French began to loot their churches. Approximately ten thousand irate islanders harried the occupying French into the fortified capital of Valetta. The French, now safe behind the city’s impenetrable walls, tucked into the island’s well-stocked corn silos and settled down for a siege. The ranks of frustrated Maltese were boosted by a squadron of Portuguese ships under the command of Domingos Xavier de Lima, who arrived in September.

The British were keen also to see off the French. Malta was of key strategic advantage as it enabled the possessor to attack Italy, Egypt and the Levant. British ships, veterans of the Battle of the Nile, quickly joined forces with the Portuguese to prevent French ships bringing supplies to their army besieged in Valetta. Nelson’s close friend Captain Alexander Ball, commanding HMS Alexander, was ordered to take command of the blockade in October 1798. An unfortunate effect of the sustained British and Portuguese blockade was that the native islanders, trapped outside Valetta, were being starved of food, while the French helped themselves to the capital’s grain silos. Their situation had become critical by January 1799.

Ball, deeply moved by their plight, dug into his own pockets to finance aid, but they were in need of more than he could provide. The Maltese, desperate for supplies, petitioned King Ferdinand, who had reclaimed Sicily’s historic sovereignty over Malta, but he did not reply, and ignored even Nelson’s petitions on the islander’s behalf. They next resorted to sending deputies to Sicily to request aid in person. Ball wrote to Emma on 23^rd February, “…We are anxiously waiting for the Maltese deputies from Palermo. The inhabitants are critically situated ; but, I hope, all will end well. Good news from you will determine it…” According to Emma, “the deputies have been lodged at my house; I have been their Ambassadress,” and (Pettigrew 1849) “in a few hours I sent off three ships, laden with corn, and got £7,000. from the Queen, and gave 500 ounces of my own to relieve them.” Cargo travel across the war-torn Mediterranean was painfully slow, and these supplies did not reach the famished Maltese until April.

Emma, having grown up poor, likely knew first-hand what severe hunger felt like. Ball –arguably the starving Maltese’s other key empathic benefactor– had also experienced the trauma of impoverishment in his youth. Despite having been born to the landed gentry, his family were plunged into poverty following his father’s defeat in a series legal battles. He died intestate in seventeen-sixty-three when Ball was five or six-years-old.

Emma’s role in supplying the starving Maltese has been contested by critics through the ages. John Cordy Jeaffresson, for example, writing in the late eighteen-eighties, opines:

“I have no doubt that the story of the [money she donated], which Pettigrew with such simple credulity accepted for truth on her 'she says' was either one of those egregious exaggerations or one of those mere fictions, of which Lady Hamilton was so often guilty in her later time, when talking about her services to ungrateful England.”

Others, such as Sugden (2014), credit Nelson instead:

“…the Maltese petitioned Ferdinand for relief. When no one responded, Nelson personally appealed on 2 February and within twenty-four hours obtained a promise of six thousand ‘salms’ of corn…”

Sugden, however, goes on to quote Ball, writing to Nelson in January 1800, “I am convinced that but for [the Hamilton’s] influence with their Sicilian Majesties and his ministers the poor Maltese would have been starved, and my head would have been sacrificed in their moment of despair.” Tsar Paul of Russia certainly believed Emma had played an important role. Forty-four-years-old with chivalric ideals, by April 1799 he had been Emperor of Russia for two years, and Grand Master of the Knights Hospitaller for six months. He wrote to Emma in French on 21^st December of that year:

Having learned with particular satisfaction the active part that you have taken in maintaining tranquility and good order among the inhabitants of Malta, we have kindly given you a proof of our benevolence by decorating you with the small Cross of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem, which you will find attached. Upon this we pray to God Milady Hamilton, that he may keep you in his holy and worthy guard.

While Emma was awarded the small cross of the Order, Ball was awarded the grand cross, thus endowing them as Dame and Knight of Malta respectively. Ball referred to Emma as his sister from then on. She had not previously held a title in her own right. The title of Lady was attached to her husband’s surname, making her Emma, Lady Hamilton (not Lady Emma Hamilton, as some, such as David Austin Roses have mis-titled her).

She wrote to her former paramour Charles Greville from Palermo on 25^th February 1800, “I have had a letter from the Emperor of Russia, with the Cross of Malta… Ball has it also, but I am the first Englishwoman that ever had it. Sir W is pleased, so I am happy.”

Her Maltese cross is described as ‘fine enamelled’ by biographer Flora Fraser, and, in her own words, as, ‘gold’ which "the Q--n [Maria Carolina] is having the order set in diamonds for me.”

Conscious that her cross, and the title of Dame it bestowed, was off no worth in England if King George III did not grant her permission to wear it, she confided to Greville, “William has sent his Imperial Majesty's letter to Lord Grenville, to get me permission to wear it… If the King will give me leave to wear it abroad, it is of use to me.” She went on to note, “We are coming home […] We have sworn to be back in six months.”

The Hamiltons and Nelson set forth on their homeward journey overland across Europe to England on 8^th June 1800. Every town they passed through was thronged with cheering crowds. Humbly-born Dame Emma Hamilton was at the peak success. It was during their triumphal homebound trek that the only portrait of her wearing her Maltese cross was produced. The artwork, a copy of which illustrates this essay, was painted by Johann Heinrich Schmidt in Dresden.

Emma’s reception in England was distinctly frosty.Queen Charlotte refused to accept her, and her husband George III did not grant her permission to wear the Maltese cross. Emma’s rank of Dame of Malta was not, however, forgotten. Nelson hung Schmidt’s portrait pride of place in his cabin aboard Victory. Further, the College of Arms awarded Emma her own arms on 19^th November 1806, one year after Nelson’s death at Trafalgar. The design is of three lions rampant surmounted by the cross of Malta.

References

Sugden J., “Nelson: The Sword of Albion”, Random House. Pp. 149-150

Hore P. ‘Nelson’s Band of Brothers’. Seaforth Publishing in association with The 1805 Club (2015). P. 5

Sugden J., “Nelson: The Sword of Albion”, Random House. P. 305

Ibid. P. 202

Williams K., “England’s Mistress”, Hutchinson (2006). P. 234

Robinson S. K., “In Defence of Emma”, CPI Books, Croydon (2016). P. 196

Ibid. P. 225

Pettigrew T. J., “Memoirs of the life of Vice-Admiral Lord Viscount Nelson” Volume 1, T. and W. Boone, London (1849). P. 329

Williams K., “England’s Mistress”, Hutchinson (2006). P. 380, citation #249

Hore P. ‘Nelson’s Band of Brothers’. Seaforth Publishing in association with The 1805 Club (2015). P. 4

Jeaffresson J. C., “Lady Hamilton and Lord Nelson”, Hurst and Blackett, Limited, London (1888). P. 134

Sugden J., “Nelson: The Sword of Albion”, Random House (2014) P. 202

Ibid. P. 305

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_I_of_Russia

Pettigrew T. J., “Memoirs of the life of Vice-Admiral Lord Viscount Nelson” Volume 1, T. and W. Boone, London (1849). P. 328. Translated from French.

Fraser F, “Beloved Emma”, Weidenfield and Nicolson (1986). P. 259

David Austin Roses registered “Lady Emma Hamilton” as the name of a new hybrid rose in 2005 to commemorate the 200^th anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar.

Robinson S. K., “In Defence of Emma”, CPI Books, Croydon (2016). P. 225

Fraser F, “Beloved Emma”, Weidenfield and Nicolson (1986). P. 259

Robinson S. K., “In Defence of Emma”, CPI Books, Croydon (2016). P. 225