Hospitaller Malta

Hospitaller Malta was the state that existed between 1530 and 1798, when the Mediterranean islands of Malta and Gozo were ruled by the Order of St John of Jerusalem — the Knights Hospitaller, who had been expelled from Rhodes by the Ottomans in 1522. Emperor Charles V granted the Order the islands, together with Tripoli in modern Libya, as a formal fief of the Kingdom of Sicily. The Order settled in the town of Birgu and made it their capital, rebuilding the ancient fortress of Castrum Maris as Fort Saint Angelo; Hospitaller Tripoli was lost to the Ottomans in 1551. In 1565 the Ottoman attempt to take Malta — the Great Siege — failed, and following it the Order decided to settle permanently: it began to construct a new capital city, Valletta, named after Grand Master Jean Parisot de Valette who had withstood the siege; it became the Order's headquarters in 1571. For the next two centuries Malta enjoyed a Golden Age of flourishing arts and architecture, and in the mid-17th century the Order was the de jure proprietor of some Caribbean islands, making it the smallest state to colonize the Americas. Weakened after the French Revolution, the Order was expelled when French forces under Napoleon invaded in 1798, beginning the French occupation of Malta.