ABSTRACT
Edmund Burke, the British conservative politician and polemicist, however, had been at war against the French Revolution since the autumn of 1790, when he had written and published his hugely successful Reflections on the Revolution in France. This chapter explains how his hatred of the Revolution shaped his views on the war against Revolutionary France. Burke's view of the French Revolution was fundamental to his reasons for insisting that Britain and indeed Europe should make war upon France. Britain was not involved in 'a common political war with an old recognized member of the commonwealth of Christian Europe'. The intensity of Burke's writing on the Revolution and the war was a result of the fact that his views were not merely part of his public, professional persona, but a heavy and deeply felt personal burden.
