ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on two eyewitnesses who lived through the trauma of the agonizing last years of the Order of St John on Malta and whose correspondence constitutes a first-hand account of contemporary developments as they evolved or as they were seen to evolve. One is Antonio Miari, from Belluno, De Rohan’s secretary for Italian affairs and, since 1 February 1793, Resident Minister for the Venetian Republic at the magistral court in Valletta. The second eyewitness is Ottavio Benvenuti, from the Lombard city of Crema. At the beginning of 1796, Antonio Miari confessed to the Serenissima that the Order was endeavouring to curtail its expenses as far as it could, so as to balance them against its revenues that had shrunk considerably since the outbreak of the French Revolution.
