pt he returned home, but came back to the Mediterranean in 1805
among the troops sent to defend the island of Sicily. He accompanied the
expedition which landed in Calabria, and fought a successful battle
against the French at Maida on the 6th of July 1806. Church was present
on this occasion as captain of a recently raised company of Corsican
Rangers. His zeal attracted the notice of his superiors, and he had
begun to show his capacity for managing and drilling foreign levies. His
Corsicans formed part of the garrison of Capri from October 1806 till
the island was taken by an expedition directed against it by Murat, in
September 1808, at the very beginning of his reign as king of Naples.
Church, who had distinguished himself in the defence, returned to Malta
after the capitulation.

In the summer of 1809 he sailed with the expedition sent to occupy the
Ionian Islands. Here he increased the reputation he had already gained
by forming a Greek regiment in English pay. It included many of the men
who were afterwards among the leaders of the Greeks in the War of
Independence. Church commanded this regiment at the taking of Santa
Maura, on which occasion his left arm was shattered by a bullet. During
his slow recovery he travelled in northern Greece, and Macedonia, and to
Constantinople. In the years of the fall of Napoleon (1813 and 1814) he
was present as English military representative with the Austrian troops
until the campaign which terminated in the expulsion of Murat from
Naples. He drew up a report on the Ionian Islands for the congress of
Vienna, in which he argued in support, not only of the retention of the
islands under the British flag, but of the permanent occupation by Great
Britain of Parga and of other formerly Venetian coast towns on the
mainland, then in the possession of Ali Pasha of Iannina. The peace and
the disbanding of his Greek regiment left him without employment, though
his reputation was high at the war office, and his services were
recognized by the grant of a companionship of the Bath. In 1817 he
entered the service of King Ferdinand of Naples as lieutenant-general,
with a commission to suppress the brigandage then rampant in Apulia.
Ample powers were given him, and he attained a full measure of success.
In 1820 he was appointed governor of Palermo and commander-in-chief of
the troops in Sicily. The revolution which broke out in that year led to
the termination of his services in Naples. He esca