They were not armed, and were wearing their forage caps in place of shakos. They shouted good-humoured greetings at the Spanish soldiers as they passed by the drawbridge, and there was no reason to suspect that anything was amiss. After all, the French were allies and they had lived alongside the local people comfortably enough for the past few weeks. Their commander, General Mouton, had explained to the governor of Pamplona that his men were waiting for the worst of the winter to pass before they marched west to reinforce General Junot in Portugal. The French soldiers had not been unwelcome in Pamplona.They treated the locals in a sufficiently courteous manner and paid their way with gold and silver. Indeed, the inhabitants of Pamplona had come to embrace the custom they provided for the local sellers of food and wine.

While the officer in charge of the party entered the bakery to negotiate the sale of a bulk order of bread his men waited in the plaza. It had not snowed for a few days and the snow on the ground had become icy and hard to compress into a decent snowball. Nevertheless the Spanish sentries guarding the entrance to the citadel watched with amused curiosity as a handful of French soldiers spontaneously bent down and began to scrape up snow to throw at each other. Within moments others had joined in and soon the snowball fight was general. Little by little some of the soldiers came closer to the drawbridge and then one of the snowballs struck a Spanish soldier, bursting off his shoulder in a spray of white. For an instant the man glared at the foreigners, searching for his assailant.Then, slinging his musket across his back, he swooped down, scooped up a handful of snow, packed it tight and hurled it into the crowd of French soldiers. There was a shout of protest and then several missiles were thrown back at the sentries as the nearest Frenchmen turned on them and began to exchange a flurry of missiles with the Spaniards. Soon the men of the bread party were on the drawbridge itself, mingling with the outnumbered sentries as they hurled snow and ice at each other.

As the sounds of the shouting from the drawbridge increased in volume the officer emerged from the bakery and stared towards the entrance to the citadel, examining the scene carefully. Then he drew a whistle from his pocket, raised it to his lips and blew three sharp blasts.