5 Liri Revolt against the French

Issued to mark the bicentennial of the Maltese uprising of September 2, 1798, when the islanders revolted against French occupation following Napoleon's seizure of Malta just months earlier. The French had stripped the island's churches of valuables to fund the Egyptian campaign, and it was the attempted auction of the Carmelite church contents in Mdina that finally triggered open rebellion. The French garrison, never large enough to hold the island against a determined population, was pushed back into Valletta and kept under siege for two years until surrendering to the British in 1800.