The provisions of Amiens were substantially similar to the preliminary treaty, with Britain promising to leave Malta and declare it a free port within three months of ratification, returning the island to the Knights of St John, and to cede its control over Pondicherry, and France regaining her colonies for the price of evacuating Naples, Taranto and those parts of the Papal States such as Ancona that were not in the Italian Republic. Yet Amiens was almost as important for what it left unsaid as for what it actually stipulated. There was no mention of commerce, and although the treaty provided
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