Britain and France were the principal opponents in the French revolutionary and Napoleonic wars. From the French Revolution emerged an ideology which, during the first half of the nineteenth century at least, was to fire political debate and action in Europe. Britain, in turn, was the home of the pamphleteer who was to produce the most potent counter-revolutionary ideology, Edmund Burke. Yet while they were opponents, in broad areas, the Revolution and the war produced similar experiences and developments in the two countries: the Revolution both excited political debate and prompted checks on this debate – the new intensity and style of war reinforced these developments; revolution and war required, and fostered, mass participation and as ruling groups and their opponents struggled for the hearts and minds of the respective populations so intolerance towards heterodoxy worsened; revolution and war engendered a new style of militaristic nationalism in both countries. Moreover, action by one state necessitated a reaction by the other; in the processes of ideological, organisational and nationalist development the two warring states fed off each other. The British state emerged essentially unscathed from the experience of war and the fear and threat of revolution; but while the Revolution brought dramatic changes to the French state, it will be argued here that the pressures and strains of war during the 1790s fostered the recreation of a centralised system which differed from its predecessor largely inasmuch as it was far more competent.