<P> In 1714 the Catalan and Aragonese specific laws and self - government were violently suppressed . The Aragonese count of Robres, one strongly opposing the abolition, put it down to Castilian centralism, stating that the royal prime minister, the Count - Duke of Olivares, had at last a free rein "for the kings of Spain to be independent of all laws save those of their own conscience ." </P> <P> The Basques managed to retain their specific status for a few years after 1714, as they had supported the claimant who became Philip V of Spain, a king hailing from the lineage of Henry III of Navarre . However, they could not escape the king's attempts (using military force) at centralization (1719--1723). In the run - up to the Napoleonic Wars, the relations between the absolutist Spanish Crown and the Basque governing institutions were at breaking point . By the beginning of the War of the Pyrenees, Manuel Godoy took office as Prime Minister in Spain, and went on to take a tough approach on the Basque self - government and specific laws . Both fear and anger spread among the Basques at his uncompromising stance . </P> <P> The 1789 Revolution brought the rise of the Jacobin nation state--also referred to in a Spanish context as "unitarism", unrelated to the religious view of similar name . Whereas the French Ancien Régime recognized the regional specific laws, the new order did not allow for such autonomy . The jigsaw puzzle of fiefs was divided into départements, based on administrative and ideological concerns, not tradition . In the French Basque Country, what little remained of self - government was suppressed in 1790 during the French Revolution and the new administrative arrangement, and was followed by the interruption of the customary cross-border trade between the Basque districts (holding minor internal customs or duties), the mass deportation to the Landes of thousands of residents in the bordering villages of Labourd--Sara, Itxassou, Ascain--, including the imposition (fleetingly) of alien names to villages and towns--period of the National Convention and War of the Pyrenees (1793--1795). </P> <P> Some Basques saw a way forward in the 1808 Bayonne Statute and Dominique - Joseph Garat's project, initially approved by Napoleon, to create a separate Basque state, but the French invasive attitude on the ground and the deadlock of the self - government project led the Basques to find help elsewhere, i.e. local liberal or moderate commanders and public figures supportive of the fueros, or the conservative Ferdinand VII . The 1812 Spanish Constitution of Cadiz received no Basque input, ignored the Basque self - government, and was accepted begrudgingly by the Basques, overwhelmed by war events . For example, the 1812 Constitution was signed by Gipuzkoan representatives to a general Castaños wielding menacingly a sword, and tellingly the San Sebastián council representatives took an oath to the 1812 Constitution with the smell of smoke still wafting and surrounded by rubble . </P>

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