Evaluation of fools dispatched to capture capital of Malta (10)
I believe the answer is:
assessment
'evaluation' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'fools dispatched to capture capital of malta' is the wordplay.
'fools' becomes 'asses' (ass is a kind of fool**).
'dispatched' becomes 'sent' (I've seen this before).
'to capture' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'capital of' says to take the initial letters.
The first letter of 'malta' is 'm'.
'sent' going around 'm' is 'sment'.
'asses'+'sment'='ASSESSMENT'
'of' is the link.
(Other definitions for assessment that I've seen before include "Review" , "amount to be paid" , "Judgement" , "Process of valuation" , "rating" .)