Though Russia had not made peace with Napoleon, the European Coalition was at an end. Now, as in 1801, the defeat of the Austrian armies left the Neapolitan Monarchy to settle its account with the conqueror. Naples had struck no blow; but it was only through the delays of the Allies that the Neapolitan army had not united with an English and a Russian force in an attack upon Lombardy. What had been pardoned in 1801 was now avenged upon the Bourbon despot of Naples and his Austrian Queen, who from the first had shown such bitter enmity to France. Assuming the character of a judge over the sovereigns of Europe, Napoleon pronounced from Vienna that the House of Naples had ceased to reign (Dec. 27, 1805). The sentence was immediately carried into execution. Ferdinand fled, as he had fled in 1798, to place himself under the protection of the navy of Great Britain. The vacant throne was given by Napoleon to his own brother, Joseph Bonaparte. Ferdinand, with the help of the English fleet, maintained himself in Sicily. A thread of sea two miles broad was sufficient barrier against the Power which had subdued half the Continent; and no attempt was made either by Napoleon or his brother to gain a footing beyond the Straits of Messina. In Southern Italy the same fanatical movements took place among the peasantry as in the previous period of French occupation. When the armies of Austria and Russia were crushed, and the continent lay at the mercy of France, Great Britain imagined that it could effect something against Napoleon in a corner of Italy, with the help of some ferocious villagers. A British force, landing near Maida, on the Calabrian coast, in the summer of 1806, had the satisfaction of defeating the French at the point of the bayonet, of exciting a horde of priests and brigands to fruitless barbarities, and of abandoning them to their well-merited chastisement. [Battle of Maida, July 6, 1806.] [The Empire. Napoleonic dynasty and titles.]