Can Vuong - French Military Intervention From Tonkin

French Military Intervention From Tonkin

The French were slow to respond to the Cần Vương, and for several weeks did not believe the gruesome rumours emanating from Annam. Eventually the scale of the massacres of Christians became clear, and the French belatedly responded. Incursions into Annam were made by troops of the Tonkin Expeditionary Corps, which had been reinforced in June 1885 to 35,000 men. Initially forbidden by the French government to launch a full-scale invasion of Annam, General de Courcy landed troops along the vulnerable coastline of central Vietnam to seize a number of strategic points and to protect the embattled Vietnamese Christian communities in the wake of the massacres at Quảng Ngãi and Bình Định. In early August 1885 Lieutenant-Colonel Chaumont led a battalion of marine infantry on a march through the provinces of Hà Tĩnh and Nghệ An to occupy the citadel of Vinh.

In southern Annam, 7000 Christian survivors of the Bình Định massacre took refuge in the small French concession in Qui Nhơn. In late August 1885 a column of 600 French and Tonkinese soldiers under the command of General Léon Prud'homme sailed from Huế aboard the warships La Cocheterie, Brandon, Lutin and Comète, and landed at Qui Nhơn. After raising the siege Prud'homme marched on Bình Định. On 1 September, Vietnamese insurgents attempted to block his advance. Armed only with lances and antiquated firearms and deployed in unwieldy masses which made perfect targets for the French artillery, the Cần Vương fighters were no match for Prud'homme's veterans. They were swept aside, and on 3 September the French entered Bình Định. Three Vietnamese mandarins were tried and executed for complicity in the massacre of Bình Định's Christians. In November 1885 a so-called 'Annam column' under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel Mignot set off from Ninh Binh in southern Tonkin and marched down the narrow spine of Vietnam as far as Huế, scattering any insurgent bands in its way.