In its 300-year history, Sai Gon witnessed the rise and fall of two citadels. Nguyen Anh retained two Frenchmen to design the Quy (Turtle) or Bat Quai Citadel, which was finished in 1790 and stood on a hill in Gia Dinh, now the site of four streets: Le Thanh Ton, Nam Ky Khoi Nghia, Nguyen Dinh Chieu, and Dinh Tien Hoang. This was the first Vietnamese citadel built in the Western style made famous by Vauban. Vietnamese mandarin Trinh Hoai Duc (1765-1825) wrote: "The Bat Quai Citadel looks like a lotus flower, with its eight gates and eight crisscrossing roads."
Laborers built the citadel's walls with that thon bricks seven decimeters long and with late rite tones, using a special mortar containing molasses. The citadel's walls were 6.3 meters high, and its e moat was 6.8 meters deep. In 1835, King Minh Mang crushed a rebellion in Gia Dinh. He had the e citadel demolished in 1836. King Minh Mang built another citadel called the Phung (phoenix) or Vuong (square) Citadel in the ) same general area, now the site of four streets: Nguyen Du, Mac Dinh Chi, Nguyen Dinh Chieu, and Nguyen Binh Khiem. The Royal Court decided the new citadel should be smaller than the one in the capital city of Hue; therefore, the new citadel was less than half the size of the previous one. Its walls were only 4.7 meters high, and its moat was only 3.1 meters deep.
The Royal Court's narrow thinking also led to a weaker defense of the citadel. On 17 February 1859, the French with assistance from Spanish troops used small boats to approach citadel. The Vietnamese fired but missed their targets. Using explosives, the invaders broke holes in the fortress while Frenchmen using ladders scaled the walls. After hand-to-hand fighting, the Vietnamese withdrew. The French feared they could not retain control. Using explosives, they destroyed the citadel's walls and turrets and then burned its houses and warehouses.
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