ABSTRACT
Taxation rose sharply as government income almost doubled between 1803 and 1815. The second phase of the French wars entailed far greater sacrifices for the British people than had the first. Ideological objections to a war with revolutionary France had been dissipated by Louis Napoleon's assumption of the title of emperor. The contrast with the 1790s was stark. When Charles James Fox finally returned to government in 1806 his desire to bring France to heel was scarcely less great than that of William Windham with whom he had now made his peace. By the time Wellington finally broke French resistance around Pamplona and entered south-west France in October 1813 the British government had begun to fashion a system of alliances against Napoleon to finish the job. France was not to be dismembered or humiliated, though Napoleon's impudence in skipping from Elba and inaugurating his 'Hundred Days' in the spring of 1815, earned it a temporary army of occupation.
