That’s right. The Knights of St John never defended Valletta. They built it.

Ferdinand von Hompesch fled when the French arrived, leaving a pile of unpaid debts

In his objections to a statue showing knights in full armour at the entrance to Valletta, Planning Authority board member Timothy Gambin made a point that has nothing to do with aesthetics or Renzo Piano’s intentions. And he’s right about it.

Commemorative statues are not purely decorative, so aside from the aesthetic objections you have to look at whether there is any call for a statue in that spirit in the first place.

The Knights of St John never defended Valletta, he said, so there is absolutely no reason for a statue which presents them as defenders of the city (rather than as those by whose order the city was built). The sole defenders of Valletta, Dr Gambin said, were those who defended the city in World War II.

He is completely correct.

In the two centuries after Valletta was built, it never had to be defended against anything except the usual pirates – and the Order of St John left the Maltese population largely undefended against those raids, which is why the population of entire villages was taken away into slavery.

The first chance the Order of St John had to defend Valletta, almost 250 years after laying the first stone, they packed their personal belongings, got into their ships and fled as Napoleon’s men approached. The fleeing grandmaster, Ferdinand von Hompech, did not even honour his debts before he left and did not honour them afterwards. He had borrowed massive sums of money from his Maltese associates so as to fund his way of life – what today would be called his ‘lifestyle’ – and left them almost bankrupt in the process.