order and the Godoy regime. First they sided with the French Bourbons to suppress the Jesuits, following the formidable changes in North America after the victory of the United States in the American Revolutionary War. Then Godoy sided with the British against the Basques in the War of the Pyrenees of 1793, and immediately afterwards with the French of Napoleon, also against the Basques. The British interest was to destroy, for as long as possible, Spanish commercial routes and power, which were mainly sustained by the Basque ports and merchant fleet. However, King Ferdinand VII found an important support base in the Basque Country. The 1812 Constitution of Cádiz had suppressed Basque home rule, and was couched in terms of a unified Spanish nation which rejected the existence of the Basque nation, so the new Spanish king garnered the endorsement of the Basques as long as he respected the Basque institutional and legal framework. Most foreign observers, including Charles F. Henningsen, Michael B. Honan, or Edward B. Stephens, English writers and first-hand witnesses of the First Carlist War, spent time in the Basque districts were highly sympathetic to the Carlists, which they regarded as representing the cause of Basque home rule. Probably the only exception was John Francis Bacon, a diplomat residing in Bilbao during the Carlist siege of (1835), who also praising Basque governance, could not hide his hostility towards the Carlists, whom he regarded as "savages." He went on to contest his compatriots' approach, denied a connection between the Carlist cause and the defense of the Basque liberties, and speculated that Carlos V would be quick to erode or suppress them if he took the Spanish throne. The privileges of the Basque provinces are odious to the Spanish nation, of which Charles is so well aware, that if he was king of Spain next year, he would quickly find excuses for infringing them, if not their total abolition. A representative government will endeavour to raise Spain to a level with the Basque provinces, – a despot, to whom the very name of freedom is odious, would strive to reduce the provinces to the same low level with the rest. Similar to what John Adams had pointed 60 years before, John F. Bacon (Six years in Biscay..., 1838) considers the Basques living to the north of the Ebro river as free citizens, as compared to the Spanish whom he