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The Battle of the Malta Convoy was a naval engagement of the French Revolutionary Wars fought on 18 February 1800 during the Siege of Malta. The French garrison at the city of Valletta in Malta had been under siege for eighteen months, blockaded on the landward side by a combined force of British, Portuguese and irregular Maltese forces and from the sea by a Royal Navy squadron under the overall command of Lord Nelson from his base at Palermo on Sicily. In February 1800, the Neapolitan government replaced the Portuguese troops with their own forces and the soldiers were convoyed to Malta by Nelson and Lord Keith, arriving on the 17 February. The French garrison was by early 1800 suffering from severe food shortages, and in a desperate effort to retain the garrison's effectiveness a convoy was arranged at Toulon, carrying food, armaments and reinforcements for Valletta under Contre-amiral Jean-Baptiste Perrée. On 17 February, the French convoy approached Malta from the southeast, hoping to pass along the shoreline and evade the British blockade squadron. On 18 February 1800 lookouts on the British ship HMS ''Alexander'' sighted the French and gave chase, followed by the rest of Nelson's squadron while Keith remained off Valletta. Although most of the French ships outdistanced the British pursuit, one transport was overhauled and forced to surrender, while Perrée's flagship ''Généreux'' was intercepted by the much smaller frigate HMS ''Success''. In the opening exchange of fire, ''Success'' was badly damaged but Perrée was mortally wounded. The delay caused by the engagement allowed the main body of the British squadron to catch up the French ship and, badly outnumbered, ''Généreux'' surrendered. Perrée died shortly after receiving his wound, and none of the supplies reached Malta, which held out for another seven months against increasing odds before surrendering on 4 September 1800. ==Background== In May 1798, during the French Revolutionary Wars, a French expeditionary force sailed from Toulon under General Napoleon Bonaparte. Crossing the Mediterranean, the force captured Malta in early June and continued southeastwards, making landfall in Egypt on 31 June.〔Bradford, p. 187〕 Landing near Alexandria, Bonaparte captured the city and advanced inland, completing the first stage of a projected campaign in Asia. The French fleet, under the command of Vice-Admiral François-Paul Brueys D'Aigalliers was directed to anchor in Aboukir Bay, northeast of Alexandria and support the army ashore.〔James, Vol. 2, p. 159〕 On 1 August, the anchored fleet was surprised and attacked by a British fleet under Rear-Admiral Sir Horatio Nelson. In the ensuing Battle of the Nile, eleven of the thirteen French ships of the line and two of the four frigates were captured or destroyed. Brueys was killed and the survivors of the French fleet struggled out of the bay on 2 August, splitting up near Crete.〔James, Vol. 2, p. 223〕 ''Généreux'' sailed north to Corfu, encountering and capturing the British fourth rate ship HMS ''Leander'' on route.〔Clowes, p. 515〕 The other ships, ''Guillaume Tell'' and two frigates under Contre-amirals Pierre-Charles Villeneuve and Denis Decrès, sailed westwards to Malta, arriving just as the island came under siege.〔Clowes, p. 374〕 On Malta, the dissolution of the Roman Catholic Church under French rule had been extremely unpopular among the native Maltese population. During an auction of church property on 2 September 1798, an armed uprising had begun that had forced the French garrison, commanded by General Claude-Henri Belgrand de Vaubois, to retreat into the capital Valletta by the end of the month.〔Gardiner, p. 67〕 The garrison, which numbered approximately 3,000 men, had limited food stocks, and efforts to bring supplies in by sea were restricted by a squadron of British and Portuguese ships stationed off the harbour. The blockade was under the command of Nelson, now Lord Nelson, based in Palermo on Sicily, and directly managed by Captain Alexander Ball on the ship of the line HMS ''Alexander''.〔James, Vol. 2, p. 189〕 During 1799 a number of factors, including inadequate food production on Malta, lack of resources and troops caused by commitments elsewhere in the Mediterranean and the appearance of a French fleet under Admiral Etienne Eustache Bruix in the Western Mediterranean all contributed to lapses in the blockade.〔 However, despite the trickle of supplies that reached the garrison, Vaubois' troops were beginning to suffer the effects of starvation and disease.〔Clowes, p. 418〕 Late in the year Ball went ashore assist the Maltese troops conducting the siege and was replaced in command of ''Alexander'' by his first lieutenant, William Harrington.〔 In January 1800, recognising that Valletta was in danger of surrendering if it could not be resupplied, the French Navy prepared a convoy at Toulon, consisting of ''Généreux'', under Captain Cyprien Renaudin,〔Fonds Marine, p.239〕 the 20-gun corvettes ''Badine'', ''Fauvette'' and 16-gun ''Sans Pareille'' and two or three transport ships.〔 The force was under the command of Contre-amiral Jean-Baptiste Perrée, recently exchanged under parole after being captured off Acre the previous year, and was instructed to approach Valletta along the Maltese coast from the southwest with the intention of passing between the blockade squadron and the shore and entering Malta before the British could discover and intercept them. The convoy sailed on 7 February. In addition to the supplies, the convoy carried nearly 3,000 French soldiers to reinforce the garrison, an unnecessary measure that would completely counteract the replenishment of the garrison's food stocks.〔Bradford, p. 245〕 While the French planned their reinforcement, the Royal Navy was preparing to replace the 500 Portuguese marines stationed on Malta with 1,200 Neapolitan troops supplied by King Ferdinand. Nelson, who had recently been neglecting his blockade duties in favour of the politics of the Neapolitan court and in particular Emma, Lady Hamilton, the wife of the British ambassador Sir William Hamilton, was instructed to accompany the Neapolitan convoy.〔Mostert, p. 365〕 The reinforcement effort was led by Vice-Admiral Lord Keith, Nelson's superior and overall Commander-in-Chief in the Mediterranean, in his flagship HMS ''Queen Charlotte''.〔Adkins, p. 66〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Battle of the Malta Convoy (1800)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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