The Battle of Maida on July 4, 1806, is a battle between the British expeditionary force and a First French Empire division outside the town of Maida in Calabria, Italy during the Napoleonic Wars.

John Stuart leads fifty-two hundred British troops to victory over about fifty-four hundred French soldiers under Jean Reynier, inflicting significant losses while incurring relatively few casualties.

Maida is located in the toe of Italy, about thirty kilometers (nineteen miles) west of Catanzaro.

In early 1806, the French invade and overrun the Kingdom of Naples, forcing King Ferdinand I of the Two Sicilies and his government to flee to Sicily.

The Calabrians revolt against their new conquerors and Stuart's expeditionary force tries to exploit the unrest by raiding the coast.

While ashore, the British encounter  Reynier's division and the two sides engage in battle.

The nineteenth-century historians will present  the action as a typical fight between French columns and British lines.

This view of the battle will be called into doubt by at least one modern historian who will argue that the French deployed into lines.

Nobody questions the result, which is a one-sided British tactical victory.

After the battle, Stuart captures some isolated garrisons in Calabria and is transported back to Sicily by the Royal Navy.

Two weeks after the battle, the city of Gaeta falls to the French after a long siege.

While Stuart succeeds in preventing a French invasion of Sicily and sustains the revolt in Calabria, he misses an opportunity to assist the defenders of Gaeta.