[36] In _Nap. Corresp._, 13,588, will be found the orders to General D’Armagnac to get possession of the citadel by menaces if he can, but if he cannot, by the actual use of force. ‘S’il arrivait que le commandant-général de Navarre se refusât à rendre la citadelle, vous employeriez les troupes du Maréchal Moncey pour l’y forcer.’ A high-spirited prince would have declared war at once, whatever the odds against him, on receiving such an insulting blow. But this was not to be expected from persons like Godoy and Charles IV. Accordingly they exposed themselves to the continuation of these odious tricks. On February 29 General Lecchi, the officer commanding the French troops which were passing through Barcelona, ordered a review of his division before, as he said, its approaching departure for the south. After some evolutions he marched it through the city, and past the gate of the citadel; when this point was reached, he suddenly bade the leading company wheel to the left and enter the fortress. Before the Spaniards understood what was happening, several thousand of their allies were inside the place, and by the evening the rightful owners, who carried their opposition no further than noisy protestations, had been evicted. A few days later the two remaining frontier fortresses of Spain, San Sebastian, at the Atlantic end of the Pyrenees, and Figueras, at the great pass along the Mediterranean coast, suffered the same fate: the former place was surrendered by its governor when threatened with an actual assault, which orders from Madrid forbade him to resist [March 5]. Figueras, on the other hand, was seized by a _coup de main_, similar to that at Pampeluna; 200 French soldiers, having obtained entrance within the walls on a futile pretext, suddenly seized the gates and admitted a whole regiment, which turned out the Spanish garrison [March 18][37]. It would be hard, if not impossible, to find in the whole of modern history any incident approaching, in cynical effrontery and mean cunning, to these first hostile acts of the French on the territory of their allies. The net result was to leave the two chief fortresses, on each of the main entries into Spain from France, completely in the power of the Emperor. [37] It will hardly be believed that Napier, in his blind reverence for Napoleon, omits to give any details concerning the seizure of the fortresses, merely saying that they were ‘taken by various artifices’ (i. 13). It is the particulars which are scandalous as well as the mere fact.