Napoleon took Malta from the Knights in three days in 1798, his flagship blew up with the island's treasure by legend, and Malta gave the Order part of its old fort back in 2001

The Knights of St John ruled Malta from 1530. On 9 June 1798 Napoleon's fleet, bound for Egypt, gathered off the island. Troops landed in the night of 10 June. Grand Master Ferdinand von Hompesch agreed an armistice on 11 June, and on 12 June Napoleon entered Valletta. The Order gave up sovereignty. France promised Hompesch a principality and 300,000 livres a year, and French knights pensions of 700 livres. Hompesch was allowed to take three relics. He left for Trieste on 18 June and died in Montpellier in 1805. On 27 October 1798 the knights who had fled to Russia elected Tsar Paul I Grand Master, though Hompesch still held the title. A persistent legend holds that the Order's treasure went aboard the French flagship L'Orient. At about 10:30 pm on 1 August 1798, at the Battle of the Nile, L'Orient caught fire and exploded. Napoleon's foundation calls the sinking of the Malta treasure a legend. Franck Goddio's divers later recovered gold coins from Malta, Venice, Spain, Portugal and the Ottoman Empire from the wreck and suggest they were part of it. The Order settled in Rome. On 5 December 1998 Malta signed an agreement giving it the use of the upper part of Fort St Angelo, its first headquarters on the island. Parliament ratified it on 13 March 2001. It runs 99 years, Malta's flag flies beside the Order's, and Maltese courts keep jurisdiction.