After investing Tuyen Quang with a belt of trenches anchored in several surrounding villages, the Black Flags assailed the French-held fort with intermittent mining, bombardment and direct assaults.
It was also a century ago that a mean little war took place in a distant and fetid place—called, by its own people, Vietnam.
By William F. Coffey
The men of the 1st Battalion of the 1st Regiment were excited. No more boring garrison duty at Sidi-bel¬Abbes, headquarters of the French Foreign Legion. They had been ordered to prepare for duty in Tonkin, some unknown land in the Far East. Action and adventure beck-med. The ceaseless drudgery of garrison life in North Africa vas over.
Since motorized vehicular transportation was unknown in 1883, the battalion, 600 strong, marched every step of the 60 lot dusty miles north to the Algerian port of Oran, each man heavily burdened with his equipment and his 9-pound, 1-ounce Gras rifle. As they tramped across the desert, they roared out their bawdy Legion songs. Morale was high, though these tough professional fighting men knew that many of them would die in the coming campaign. But that was part of the life of a legionnaire. There would be a strange and, exotic drink, even more exotic women! Vive la Legion!
In Oran, the battalion was joined by two battalions of Firailleurs Algèriens, the three battalions now forming a regiment de marche. On September 27, the legionnaires and Algerian riflemen sailed for the Far East and the land known o its own inhabitants as Vietnam.
Vietnam, like Laos and Cambodia to the west, was claimed by China as a protectorate. But no control was actually exercised, and no protection was extended. China was happy to receive any tribute that might be sent north by this turbulent country, where dynasty followed dynasty, as emperors came and went. These emperors, often puppets, seldom exercised any real control outside of the ancient Vietnamese capital of Hue, located in the province of Annam.
By the last quarter of the 19th century, the northernmost province, Tonkin, had fallen prey to roving armies of Chinese bandits and river pirates, known usually by the color of the banners they carried. The two most powerful were the Black Flags and the Yellow Flags, with the Black Flags ultimately destined to destroy the Yellow Flags and gain mastery of the province. Many smaller bandit groups were eventually destroyed or absorbed into the ranks of the Black Flags. Tonkin, as a result, was now at the mercy of ruffians who plundered and brutalized as they chose.
The leader of the Black Flags, Liu Yung-fu, also known as Liu Vinh-Phoc, was born in 1837 in Kwantung province, China, close to the Vietnamese frontier. His family was extremely poor, and when both of his parents died in 1853, 16¬year-old Liu was too poor to provide them with proper burial.
Liu eventually joined a bandit gang, as did many poor young Chinese men with no future. In a few short years, he worked his way up to the leadership of 200 men. In 1865, he asked his leader, Wu Ah-chung, for permission to take his men on a foraging expedition, since supplies for the gang were running low. Instead of returning to the main body, however, he crossed the frontier into Vietnam.
At first concealing his true ambitions, he obtained the blessing of the Vietnamese government by offering to fight against the Montagnard hill tribes. There were some clashes with these mountain tribesmen, but Liu Yung-fu mainly concentrated on building the strength of his band not only by absorbing other groups but also by attracting a steady stream of recruits from China. Eventually, he commanded an outlaw army so strong that the Vietnamese emperor decided to buy his somewhat shaky allegiance by making him a high-ranking mandarin.
If the Vietnamese government did not dare oppose this bandit warlord, however, in time there were others who did dare—the French of far-off Europe.
The first Frenchmen to penetrate this beautiful and tragic country had been Jesuit missionaries arriving in the 16th century. Their missions were established in Cochin China, the name for the southernmost province of Vietnam. Despite periods of savage persecution and suppression, the Christian communities continued to grow.
In later years, the missionaries were followed by French traders who attempted, with varying success, to establish trading posts along the coast. They, too, encountered periods of hostility—and were sometimes expelled completely.
In 1858, a French military expedition was sent to Cochin China to protect the Roman Catholic missionaries and their converts. Once established there militarily, the French did not leave. Five years later they spread their control to neighbouring Cambodia. With the French controlling Cochin China and the Black Flags controlling Tonkin, only the central province, Annam, retained any freedom.
Over the next few years, it became clear the Vietnamese government could not always protect the French and Christian peoples in Tonkin. There were several half-hearted French military moves, all ending in blunders. On May 19, 1883, Captain Henry Riviere and 49 other Frenchmen were killed in an ambush by the Black Flags. The heads of the victims were severed, pickled in brine and exhibited as trophies. This proved to be too much for the French government. Steps were taken to put together a strong military expedition.
At first, it seemed that this would be another case of bluster and blunder. Then the leadership was changed. Admiral Amedes-Anatole-Prosper Courbet was appointed overall commander, with Brig. Gen. Francois de Negrier as his second¬-in-command. Only a short time before, prior to his promotion to brigadier and assignment to the Far East, de Negrier had been commandant of the Foreign Legion. One of his first decisions now was to insist that Legion troops be sent to Tonkin.
Thus it was that on November 9, 1883, the 1st Battalion of the 1st Regiment of the Foreign Legion disembarked at Haiphong.
The legionnaires were spellbound. What a country! Especially after the harsh landscape of North Africa left behind. Here was color everywhere—the brilliant green of the foliage, the countless colors of flowering plants. There was rice wine to drink. And the women, ah, the women! Never had they seen anything like these delicate, graceful creatures.
Nor had the Vietnamese women ever seen anything like these swaggering, hard-bitten legionnaires in their blue jackets, red trousers, white gaiters, blue sashes and white, canvas-covered jungle helmets.
The legionnaires were not allowed to enjoy the delights of Haiphong for long. They were loaded into small boats and sent up the Red River. On November 18, they landed in Hanoi and went into barracks. They would not be there very long either.
The main Black Flag stronghold was at Sontay, 30 miles northwest of Hanoi. Although the fortress was known to be garrisoned by more than 25,000 Chinese bandits, many of them actually regular army troops sent down from Yunnan and Kwangsi provinces by the Chinese government, Admiral Courbet decided to capture it.
Half of the 5,500 men to be used in the campaign were to go by land under the command of General de Negrier, while Admiral Courbet himself led the remainder, ferried by a flotilla of boats, up the Red River. The land column was spearheaded by the Legion battalion and its Major Marc-Edmond Domine.
Now the new country did not appear so alluring after all. Day after day, the Legion men toiled through the swamps and rice paddies, at times waist-deep in stinking mud and water, and other times hacking their way through the nearly impenetrable jungle. Loathsome leeches found any unprotected parts of their bodies. Insects in numerous varieties and innumerable swarms hovered around their heads, crawling, biting, sucking. The temperature, hot and smotheringly oppressive with humidity, weighed down upon them, leaving them as wet when on dry land as when they were in the water. Monkeys and strange birds screeched from the treetops. At night their slumbers were disturbed by the screams of leopards, the coughing of tigers, and countless other mysterious and frightening jungle noises.
And there were the Black Flags, setting ambush after ambush along the way.
Adapting themselves to jungle warfare as best they could, however, the legionnaires brushed aside all attempts to stop them and plodded grimly onward. On December 15, they reached Sontay. The two parts of the little army were now reunited.
Sontay was built after the Chinese military fashion, with thick brick walls 16 feet high, pierced by heavy wooden gates. Surrounding the wall was a dry moat 10 feet wide and 15 feet deep, its edges studded with sharpened bamboo spikes. Closely woven bamboo hedges were on each side of the moat. On all sides of the fort, for a good 300 yards, there were open rice fields through which an assaulting column would have to move unprotected.
On the morning of December 16, the French artillery began to pound the fort but met with little success. At 1 p.m., the bugles sounded “Attack” and the Legion battalion moved forward, long bayonets gleaming in the sunlight. Immediately, the legionnaires came under heavy rifle and artillery fire but, ignoring their casualties, continued the advance.
At first they were held up by the bamboo hedges, but they eventually managed to hack their way through the first hedge and slide down into the moat. Clawing their way up the far side and over the sharpened spikes, they still had another hedge to force their way through.
Once through it, they rushed the wall, which they found intact, or the heavily barricaded gate. When the men had begun their assault, the French artillery ceased fire to avoid creating casualties among the legionnaires. Now, seeing the men huddled against the wall, unable to advance and assailed from above by the Black Flags, the artillerymen opened fire again, aiming their cannons toward the top part of the wall.
Soon a breach was created. And immediately, a giant Belgian, Corporal Minnaert, scampered up the newly created pile of debris and from there to the top of the wall. Seizing a huge, black-silk banner from a surprised standard-bearer, he quickly cleared that section of the wall of its Chinese defenders. Waving the captured banner aloft, he roared: “Long live Belgium! Long live the Legion!” His Legion comrades poured through the breach, their bayonets destroying the staying power of the Black Flags. After a brief fierce fight, the Chinese fled. The legionnaires now found themselves facing the 14-foot crenulated walls that protected the citadel itself.
The Legion had sustained 58 casualties, 10 killed and 48 wounded, in taking the outer wall of the fort, almost 10 percent of the battalion’s strength. Expecting an even tougher fight in taking the citadel, Courbet decided to rest his men and attack the next day.
The next morning, however, the French found a gate in the west wall of the citadel was open. A patrol was sent through the gate, only to return with the news that during the night the Black Flags had fled. Upward of 2,000 Chinese had been killed in the battle.
The legionnaires settled down for a short period of garrison duty at Sontay, a welcome respite after the forced march through the jungles and swamps. In February 1884, they were joined by the regiment’s 2nd Battalion, under Lt. Col. Jacques Duchesne. In addition to the 800 men of the 2nd Battalion, there were also 200 reinforcements for the 1st Battalion.
Meanwhile, back in Paris, interservice friction had caused Courbet to be replaced by General Charles Theodore Millot as commander of the land forces in Tonkin.
On March 8, General de Negrier led his reinforced column eastward toward Bac Ninh, the other major stronghold of the Black Flags. The 1st Battalion formed the advance guard, with the 2nd Battalion leading the main column. And as the men hacked their way again through the tangled jungles and waded waist-deep through the swamps and rice fields, swearing and sweating, more than one legionnaire longed for the firm footing and dry heat of the North African deserts.
Bac Ninh was garrisoned by more than 15,000 Black Flags and regulars, and was ringed by a number of small fortified outposts—the outposts were quickly destroyed by the advancing legionnaires, who were in no mood to be trifled with.
On March 12, the column reached Bac Ninh. The two battalions of the Legion formed up and moved to attack almost immediately, smashing through the outer defenses and storming the citadel itself. The fighting was vicious and hand-to-hand, but the bandits soon faded away before the Legion bayonets.
During the next few months, the Black Flags were driven from town after town, and French garrisons were left in each one. As a result, the French army was spread thinly across Tonkin—necessity had rendered the garrisons too small and too scattered. The troops, both in the field and in garrisons, suffered terribly that summer. The heat was stifling, and the humidity, increased by the monsoon season, was appalling. Heat exhaustion, malaria, dysentery, cholera and typhoid took their toll. More troops died from these causes than from enemy action.
In the meantime, in the north of Tonkin and in southern China, trouble was brewing. Urged on by the Chinese imperial government, Liu Yung-fu was preparing to reassert his control of Tonkin. From across northern Vietnam, he gathered his scattered Black Flag bands while awaiting reinforcements from China. In the latter part of 1884 they arrived, several thousand regulars armed with modern rifles, Nordenfeldt machine guns and Krupp field guns. With 20,000 men, Liu moved south along the Claire River. His first objective was Tuyen Quang, about 100 miles north of Hanoi.
Tuyen Quang also was a typical Chinese fort, square-shaped with 12-foot-high brick walls. Situated on high ground several hundred yards from the Claire, it was surrounded by thick jungle cut back for some distance to provide a clear field of fire. A blockhouse was located on a nearby small hill. Other hills ringed the fort at a distance of more than a mile.
The garrison, commanded by Major Marc-Edmond Domine, consisted of 390 men of the 1st and 2nd Companies of the 1st Battalion of the Legion, plus 200 colonial troops.
In December of 1884, scouting parties of the Black Flags began appearing in the vicinity of Tuyen Quang. The Chinese, realizing how vulnerable the fort was, began massing their troops as more and more of them came down the river. This build-up was observed by Legion patrols, and when it became evident that heavy fighting was ahead, Major Domine set his men to digging communication trenches to various points within the fort, along with protective dugouts. Fortunately, he had an excellent sapper, Sergeant Jules Bobillot, to direct this operation.
Since the garrison was well supplied with food and ammunition, there was no real worry from within the fort, or at French headquarters in Hanoi.
On January 26, 1885, the Black Flags launched two mass attacks upon the blockhouse, both beaten back with heavy losses. Realizing that the Legion defenders would eventually be overwhelmed, however, Domine withdrew his forces.
Heavy losses incurred during the blockhouse attacks convinced Liu Yung-fu to use different tactics. He placed his artillery on the nearby hills and began shelling the fort. Fortunately for the garrison, the Krupp guns were old and the shelling had little effect.
The regular Chinese army troops in Liu’s ranks included a number of sappers. He now set them to work digging tunnels toward the fort, with the idea of mining the walls and breaching them. Also, a series of trenches were dug for his riflemen.
Early on the morning of February 14 a mine was exploded, causing a corner section of a wall to collapse. Immediately, an assault column of Black Flags, trumpets blowing, gongs beating and flags waving, rushed for the breach. The Legion was ready, and a hail of 11mm bullets from the Gras rifles mowed down the attackers. What few reached the breached wall were dispatched with the bayonet.
In the next few days, more mines were exploded, dividing the wall in two places. Again the Chinese attacked, in wave after screaming wave, at last, by sheer numbers, forcing their way into the fort. Cries of “La Legion! La Legion!” competed with the Chinese war cries as the legionnaires, bayonets flashing, drove their attackers back beyond the wall.
On February 22, there were explosions that created two more breaks in one wall, one of them 15 yards wide. Among the men killed in these explosions was Captain Jean-Baptiste Moulinay, commander of the 1st Company. Again, mass attacks were thrown at the breaches, and again, Legion bullets and bayonets drove them back. The ground between the Black Flags’ trenches and the walls of the fort was thickly dotted with the dead.
The Chinese seemed undismayed by their heavy losses and continued their mining operations. In the meantime, they tried a new tactic, a surprise night attack. Moving quietly from their trenches in the dead of night, they stormed the breaches, forcing the sentries back and pouring in to gain a temporary foothold. Weary legionnaires, roused from deep sleep by the clamor of battle, grabbed bayoneted rifles and rushed to the aid of their comrades. In the light of the tropical moon, a bitter hand-to-hand, no-quarter battle was waged, Legion bayonets and gun butts against spears, swords and clubbed muskets, ending only when the last of the Chinese was dead or had fled.
February 26 was the most successful day for the Chinese sappers—six separate detonations were set off, practically demolishing one whole wall. Again the Black Flags rushed to the attack in overwhelming masses, their screaming competing with their trumpets and gongs, black-silk banners out in front. Dazed legionnaires, groping through the smoke, dust and debris from the wall, were in no condition to repel the enemy. Fortunately, from his command post, Sgt. Maj. Edmund Husband sized up the situation.
Limping from an earlier wound, the sergeant major hurried to meet the horde of Chinese flooding in through the broken walls. “A moi, la Legion!” he called out. “A moi, la Legion!” (To me, the Legion!)
Legionnaires from other parts of the fort rushed to Husband’s support. The Chinese recoiled from the 20 ½ -inch bayonets, then came on again. They were thrown back once more, and again attacked, climbing over the mounds of their own dead. Their fanatical courage, however, could not overcome the grim determination of the legionnaires. At last, after two hours of desperate fighting, the Black Flags retreated to their trenches.
That same day, a Vietnamese courier in the pay of the French slipped into the fort with a message for Major Domine. General Briere de l’Isle, who had replaced General Millot as land forces commander, was aware of how desperate the situation at Tuyen Quang had become and was sending a relief column under Colonel Ange-Laurent Giovaminelli.
That night, in order to throw the besieging Black Flags off guard, Captain de Borelli led a picked detail from his company in a sudden raid on the Chinese trenches. The Black Flags indeed were taken completely by surprise, and the legionnaires returned triumphantly to the fort, carrying with them two of the big black-silk banners, plus a number of captured weapons. A counterattack to recover the banners was beaten off.
On February 27, and again the next day, there were more mine explosions and two more mass assaults, both repulsed before they could reach the fort.
On March 2, the relief column reached Hoa Moc, seven miles south of Tuyen Quang. Here the Black Flags had thrown up earthworks, manned by a strong force that now fiercely resisted the French advance. It was only after an artillery bombardment that a bayonet charge was able to clear the way.
That night the Chinese army besieging Tuyen Quang quietly slipped away and retreated northward. Late the next day, March 3, 1885, the relief column arrived at the battered fort to receive the salute of its heroic garrison. The legionnaires had withstood a 36-day siege, throwing back numerous mass assaults. Daily they had been pounded by the artillery on the nearby hills, and hails of bullets from the Chinese trenches had constantly swept through the holes in the walls. Movement within the fort without the communication trenches would have been impossible. Supplies were running low, the heat was horrendous, and the stench from the decomposing bodies of the dead Chinese outside the fort was overpowering. Almost half of the legionnaires had been killed or wounded during the siege, but they had held the fort—and were still full of fight. Total casualties of the Black Flag troops was unknown.
In the meantime, the 3rd Battalion of the Legion had landed, just in time to become a part of a 3,500-man column that de Negrier was personally leading against the powerful fortress of Lang Son, close to the Chinese border. The 2nd Battalion was also a part of this column, and the Legion units, as usual, formed the vanguard.
Surprisingly, the Chinese retreated when the Legion assault columns stormed Lang Son. De Negrier, not satisfied with only capturing the fortress, led his men in pursuit of the retreating foe. He caught up with the Black Flags at Bang-bo, where they had entrenched themselves, waiting for the French to arrive and for reinforcements from the north. De Negrier did not hesitate. He sent the legionnaires in a flanking movement, and the Chinese were driven from their positions.
The column resumed its advance and on March 23 captured and blew up a frontier fort. A Legion detachment temporarily penetrated Chinese territory before withdrawing.
De Negrier now received reports that Black Flags and Chinese army regulars were gathering in huge numbers to attack his little army. He ordered his men to fall back toward Lang Son, with the Legion troops serving as the rear guard.
At Ki-Lua, just north of Lang Son, de Negrier decided to battle the Chinese on ground of his own choosing. And here a plain offered an excellent field of fire. He had his men dig in and placed a Legion battalion on each flank. His single battery of artillery was placed behind the center line. Four days later, March 29, the Chinese struck in massive numbers.
The French artillery rent the Chinese ranks again and again. The legionnaires and French and colonial riflemen poured in volley after volley. Finally the Chinese broke off their attack. Their losses in dead and wounded had been heavy.
During the attack, de Negrier was seriously wounded and was informed by the doctors that he must be evacuated at once and sent to the hospital in Hanoi. Reluctantly, he turned command of the column over to his second-in-command with the advice to retreat to Lang Son and hold it.
With the Legion troops again serving as the rear guard, the French column fell back on Lang Son. Here the new commander proved not to be cast from the same iron mould as General de Negrier. Even though all scouting reports indicated that the Chinese forces were retreating, he became convinced that it was a trick and that he was about to be overwhelmed. He panicked and ordered the destruction of the fortress and the retreat of his small army.
His men were amazed, but orders were orders. Barricades and breastworks were demolished, buildings were blown up, the artillery and most of the supplies were dumped into the river. Even the payroll, 600,000 freshly arrived silver francs, went into the water. But when it came to the wine, there was temporary Legion resistance. Before dumping the barrels, the legionnaires filled their water bottles with the brew, and some of them filled their bellies as well.
The column retreated southward, unopposed and unpursued. Several days later, six legionnaires, who had drunk to excess and had somehow been left behind, caught up with the column and reported that they had seen no Chinese anywhere.
A short time later, April 4, 1885, the Chinese imperial government and France signed the Treaty of Tientsin. In this treaty, China recognized French protection over Laos, Cambodia and the three Vietnamese provinces of Tonkin, Annam and Cochin China. The area was now to be known as French Indochina. France, on her part, agreed to withdraw an invasion force recently sent to the island of Formosa. This force included the 4th Battalion of the Foreign Legion.
All Chinese regular army troops were ordered home. Liu Yung-fu, foremost leader of the Black Flags, and most of his army, also returned to China. The bandit warlord and his men were treated as returning heroes.
Although all organized resistance had ended, the next few years gave the Legion battalions no rest. The bulk of the Black Flags had left, but the country still swarmed with bandits, river pirates and nationalist guerrillas. Divided into small, hard-hitting, highly mobile strike forces, the legionnaires set about running down and destroying these groups. It was not until 1891 that the country was officially declared pacified. Even so, there still were occasional outbreaks that put the Legion into the field. From the time the first Legion troops landed in Tonkin in November of 1883 until 1910, a total of 2,164 legionnaires of all ranks died in Indochina.
