Malta i els cavallers hospitalers de l’orde militar de Sant Joan de Jerusalem durant la Guerra de Successió (1702-1714). Notícies extretes de la correspondència diplomàtica

Abstract

This paper deals with a hardly known topic: The involvement of Malta as a sovereign state and its aristocracy, the Knights Hospitallers of the Military Order of Saint-John of Jerusalem in the War of the Spanish Succession (1702-1714). Abundant unpublished diplomatic correspondence between Ramon de Perellòs I de Rocafull, Grand Master of the Malta Order and his ambassadors and prominent agents in the courts of Louis XIV in Paris and Carlos III, Archduke of Austria in Barcelona was examined. The letters are kept in the Malta National Library and in the Archives of the Crown of Aragon in Barcelona. The main findings are the following ones: cases of espionage; movement of capital between Barcelona-Genoa-Malta through English middlemen; the doubtful partiality of the Grand Master Perellòs with respect to the two Bourbon kings; the decided complicity in favor of the allied powers from the leaders of the Gran Priorato de Catalunya and Aragon and the Order of Saint-John, occupied by distinguished members of the pro-Austrian Catalan nobility (Sentmenat, Saiol and Vilallonga), although a pro-Bourbonic division between Catalan Knights Hospitallers can be observed; war accounts; and finally, the negotiations of the grand Master Perellòs with Queen Anne of England and the allied powers during the conversations prior to the Utrecht Treaty of 1713. The pro-Austrian Court of Barcelona became Malta’s de facto embassy for the anti-Bourbonic forces in Spain.