Figueras is a little town situated in the midst of the fertile plain of Ampurdan, eighteen miles from the French frontier. Some centuries ago it was burned, and its castle razed, by the Count of Ampurias, in his war with Jayme I. of Aragon; but in the last century, Ferdinand VI. erected there one of the finest fortifications in Europe, which he called, after his canonized namesake and predecessor, the Castle of St. Fernando. It is an irregular pentagon, the site of which has been so well chosen upon the solid and bare rock, that it is scarcely possible to open trenches against it on any side; and it commands the plain, serving as an entrenched camp for 16,000 men. As a fortress it is a masterpiece of art; no cost was spared upon it, and the whole was finished in that character of magnificence which the public works of Spain continued to exhibit in the worst ages of the Spanish monarchy. But an English traveller made this prophetic remark ♦TOWNSEND’S TRAVELS, 1. P. 81. 3RD EDITION.♦ when he visited Figueras in the year 1786: “Every such fortress requires an army to defend it, and when the moment of trial comes, the whole may depend on the weakness or treachery of a commander, and instead of being a defence to the country, may afford a lodgement to the enemy.” Nowhere has that apprehension been more fully verified than in the place where it was excited. Figueras was surrendered to France in the revolutionary war, by corruption or by treason, more likely than by cowardice; for the governor had behaved bravely at Toulon. After the peace he returned to Spain, was delivered over to trial, and condemned to lose his head: but the punishment was commuted for perpetual exile. When the place was restored, after the treaty of Basle, some ink spots still remained upon the wall, where an officer, in honourable indignation, had dashed his pen, either determining not to sign the capitulation, or in despair for having borne a part in that act of infamy. And now Figueras served as a stronghold for the invaders, having been one of the four fortresses which Godoy delivered into their hands as the keys of Spain, before Buonaparte avowed his profligate design of usurping the kingdom.