Back

On this day in 1815, The Second Treaty of Paris was signed and followed the second abdication of Napoleon Bonaparte.

‘This treaty was the official end of the Napoleonic wars, and it came at the time my 4x great grandfather William Samuel, who was born in Portsmouth, was twelve years old and just about to begin his life as an adult, still a child though, he would have had no real idea about the awful consequences of these wars.

He would not know that the loss of life numbered between five and seven million, of which ninety-two thousand were members of the Royal Navy. He would not have known the monetary cost to the country was more than 1.5 million pounds in taxes and loans. Because of this, the country was faced with an economic slump, and high levels of unemployment, exacerbated by returning soldiers flooding the labour market and responsible, in part, for the Peterloo Massare in the north of the country four years later.’

The above is an extract from my ancestors’s life story.