their attitude changed; and in 1793 the execution of the French king and queen and the atrocities of the Reign of Terror united all but the radicals in support of the war against France in which England joined with the other European countries. During the twenty years of struggle that followed the portentous figure of Napoleon soon appeared, though only as Burke was dying, and to oppose and finally to suppress him became the duty of all Englishmen, a duty not only to their country but to humanity. At the outbreak of the Revolution Burke was already sixty, and the inevitable tendency of his mind was away from the enthusiastic liberalism which had so strongly moved him in behalf of the Americans and the Hindoos. At the very outset he viewed the Revolution with distrust, and this distrust soon changed to the most violent opposition. Of actual conditions in France he had no adequate understanding. He failed to realize that the French people were asserting their most elementary rights against an oppression a hundred times more intolerable than anything that the Americans had suffered; his imagination had long before been dazzled during a brief stay in Paris by the external glitter of the French Court; his own chivalrous sympathy was stirred by the sufferings of the queen; and most of all he saw in the Revolution the overthrow of what he held to be the only safe foundations of society--established government, law, social distinctions, and religion--by the untried abstract theories which he had always held in abhorrence. Moreover, the activity of the English supporters of the French revolutionists seriously threatened an outbreak of anarchy in England also. Burke, therefore, very soon began to oppose the whole movement with all his might. His 'Reflections on the Revolution in France,' published in 1790, though very one-sided, is a most powerful model of reasoned denunciation and brilliant eloquence; it had a wide influence and restored Burke to harmony with the great majority of his countrymen. His remaining years, however, were increasingly gloomy. His attitude caused a hopeless break with the liberal Whigs, including Fox; he gave up his seat in Parliament to his only son, whose death soon followed to prostrate him; and the successes of the French plunged him into feverish anxiety. After again pouring out a flood of passionate eloquence in four letters entitled 'Thoughts on the Prospect of a Regicide Peace' (with France) he died in 1797.