How Did Edmund Burke View The French Revolution

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William Ottenjohn The Portable Edmund Burke Edmund burke was a quintessential forerunner of the revolution. All though he was only a forerunner in thought he helped to set the stage for how the rest of Europe would view the French revolution. Burke did not initially condemn the French Revolution. In many of his letters he wrote how England was gazing with astonishment at a French struggle for Liberty and not knowing whether it would be for the better of the content of if it would be disastrous for everyone involved. Then events on 5–6 October 1789, in which a mob of Parisian women marched on Versailles and took King Louis XVI turn to Paris, turned Burke against the entire movement because it became to radical. This lead to him giving jabs towards the revolution every time he got chance to speak out about it. The Revolution…show more content…
Burke was dismayed that some Whigs, instead of reaffirming the principles of the Whig party he laid out in the Reflections, had rejected them in favor of "French principles" and criticized Burke for abandoning Whig principles. Burke wanted to demonstrate his fidelity to Whig principles. Therefore on 3 August 1791 Burke published his Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs, in which he renewed his criticism of the radical revolutionary programmers inspired by the French Revolution and attacked the Whigs who supported them as holding principles contrary to those traditionally held by the Whig party. Burke supported the war against revolutionary France, seeing Britain as fighting on the side of the royalists and émigres in a civil war, rather than fighting against the whole nation of France. Burke also supported the royalist uprising in La Vendee. Supporting the émigrés was smart to do so that Brittan would have more support and funding for its army to fight the French. On 20 June 1794 Burke received a vote of thanks from the Commons for his services in the Hastings trial and

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