sees as "a mere flock" liable to be mistreated by their masters. For Edward B. Stephens, the Basques were fighting at once for their own sources of legitimacy, their practical freedom, for the rights of their sovereign, and their own constitutional foundations. The excellence of the Basque home rule and its republican character is also highlighted by other authors, such as Wentworth Webster. A deeper insight into the Basques and their relation to the Spanish during this period is offered by Sidney Crocker and Bligh Barker (1839), stating that: the Vasques, or as they term themselves, the Escaldunes, do not consider themselves Spaniards, and differ widely from them, in character and language. The interests of the Basque liberals were divided. On the one side, fluent cross-Pyrenean trade with other Basque districts and France was highly valued, as well as unrestricted overseas transactions. The former had been strong up to the French Revolution, especially in Navarre, but the new French national arrangement (1790) had abolished the separate legal and fiscal status of the French Basque districts. Despite difficulties, on-off trade continued during the period of uncertainty prevailing under the French Convention, the War of the Pyrenees (1793-1795), Manuel Godoy's tenure in office, and the Peninsular War. Eventually, Napoleonic defeat left cross-border commercial activity struggling to take off after 1813. Overseas commerce was badly affected by the end of the Guipuzcoan Company of Caracas (1785), the French-Spanish defeat at the Battle of Trafalgar (1805), independence movements in Latin America, the destruction of San Sebastián (1813), and the eventual breakup of the Royal Philippine Company (1814). By 1826 all the grand Spanish (including the Basque) fleet of the late 18th century with its renowned Basque navigators was gone for the benefit of the British Empire, and with it, the Atlantic vocation of the Enlightened Spain. Notwithstanding the ideology of Basque liberals, overall supportive of home rule, the Basques were getting choked by the above circumstances and customs on the Ebro, on account of the high levies enforced on them by the successive Spanish governments after 1776. Many Basque liberals advocated in turn for the relocation of the Ebro customs to the Pyrenees, and the encouragement of a Spanish market. On Ferdinand VII's death in 1833, the minor Isabella II was proclaimed queen, with Maria Christina acting as regent. In November, a new Spanish institutional arrangement was designed by the incoming government in Madrid,