This diatribe was not the first occasion on which the conqueror had proved that he was no gentleman.  In his brutal letter of January 2nd, 1805, to Queen Caroline, he told her that, if she was the cause of another war, she and her children would beg their bread all through Europe.  That and similar outbursts afford some excuse for the conduct of the Bourbons in the autumn of 1805.  They infringed the neutrality which their ambassador had engaged to observe:  but it is to be remembered that Napoleon’s invasion of the Neapolitan States in 1803 was a gross violation of international law, which the French Foreign Office sought to cloak by fabricating two secret articles of the Treaty of Amiens.[66] And though troth should doubtless be kept, even with a law-breaker, yet its violation becomes venial when the latter adopts the tone of a bully.  For the present he triumphed.  Joseph Bonaparte invaded Naples in force, and on January 13th the King, Queen, and Court set sail for Palermo.  The Anglo-Russian divisions re-embarked and sailed away for Malta and Corfu.  One of the Neapolitan strongholds, Gaeta, held out till the middle of July.  Elsewhere the Bourbon troops gave little trouble.

The conquest of Naples enabled Napoleon to extend his experiment of a federation of Bonapartist Kings.  He announced to Miot de Melito, now appointed one of Joseph’s administrators, his intentions in an interview at the Tuileries on January 28th.  Joseph was to be King of Naples, if he accepted the honour quickly.  If not, the Emperor would adopt a son, as in the case of Eugene, and make him King.—­“I don’t need a wife to have an heir.  It is by my pen that I get children.”—­But Joseph must also show himself worthy of the honour.  Let him despise fatigue, get wounded, break a leg.

“Look at me.  The recent campaign, agitation, and movement have made me fat.  I believe that if all the kings coalesced against me, I should get a quite ridiculous stomach....  You have heard my words.  I can no longer have relatives in obscurity.  Those who will not rise with me, shall no longer be of my family.  I am making a family of kings attached to my federative system."[67]

The threat having had its effect, Joseph was proclaimed King of Naples by a decree of Napoleon.  “Keep a firm hand:  I only ask one thing of you:  be entirely the master there."[68] Such was the advice given to his amiable brother, who after enjoying a military promenade southwards was charged to undertake the conquest of Sicily.  It mattered little that the overthrow of the Neapolitan Bourbons offended the Czar, who had undertaken the protection of that House.