Retreat From Lang Son - The Retreat

The Retreat

Upon assuming command of the brigade, Herbinger panicked. Despite the evidence that the Chinese had been decisively defeated and were in full retreat towards the Chinese frontier, he convinced himself that they were preparing to encircle Lang Son and cut his supply line. Disregarding the appalled protests of some of his officers, he ordered the 2nd Brigade to abandon Lang Son on the evening of 28 March and retreat to Chu. The retreat was initially conducted in two columns. Herbinger led the line battalions to Thanh Moy, while Schoeffer led the two Legion battalions to Dong Song. Fearing that Martin's towed artillery battery would slow down the retreat, Herbinger ordered Martin to dump his guns and limbers in the Song Ki Cong river, where they were later recovered by the Chinese. The brigade's treasure chest was also thrown into the river. Before the retreat commenced Herbinger cabled Brière de l'Isle in Hanoi, claiming that he did not have enough ammunition to fight a second battle for Lang Son (a claim later shown to be untrue) and announcing his decision to retreat. He then had the telegraph cable cut, denying Brière de l'Isle the opportunity to intervene. During the night of 28 March, after winning the most complete victory of the Tonkin campaign, the bewildered soldiers of the 2nd Brigade marched out of Lang Son. The retreat to Thanh Moy and Dong Song was conducted without loss and without interference from the Chinese, but both Herbinger and Schoeffer set an unnecessarily punishing pace, and both halves of the brigade were exhausted by the time they reached their destinations.

Brière de l'Isle was stunned at Herbinger's decision to abandon Lang Son. His immediate reaction, on the evening of 28 March, was to despatch a pessimistic cable back to Paris which would have momentous political consequences two days later. By the following day he had recovered his usual sang froid. He spent most of the day establishing what had happened, and on the evening of 29 March sent a furious cable to Herbinger at Thanh Moy, ordering the 2nd Brigade to hold its positions at Thanh Moy and Dong Song. Herbinger was aghast at this order, believing that it played straight into the enemy's hands, but had no choice but to obey it.

On 30 March the French threw up field defences at Thanh Moy and Dong Song and prepared to meet the advancing Chinese, while Herbinger sent out cavalry patrols to determine the exact positions of the Guangxi Army. The patrols observed small Chinese scouting parties near Cut on the Mandarin Road and at Pho Bu, just to the south of Lang Son, and duly reported their presence. Herbinger wildly exaggerated the significance of these reports, and warned Brière de l'Isle that, in his opinion, the brigade faced catastrophic encirclement. While waiting for Brière's response, he ordered his men to prepare for a last-ditch defence with the bayonet. As the evening wore on Herbinger became increasingly hysterical. He went to bed at 8 p.m., convinced that he and his men would be surrounded and massacred on the following morning. At around 9 p.m. there was an outburst of firing from the sentries in the French outposts, who thought they had seen movement around their positions. It turned out to be a false alarm, and an officer woke Herbinger up to report what had happened. Herbinger's reply was illuminating: 'I'm sick, and the column is just as sick as me! Leave me alone!'

An hour later, salvation arrived. At 10 p.m. on the evening of 30 March, having receiving a stream of anguished cables from Herbinger and with no means of independently controlling the acting brigade commander's assessment of the situation, Brière de l'Isle reluctantly gave Herbinger permission to fall back to Chu 'if the situation demanded'. Herbinger clutched at this straw and issued orders for an immediate retreat by both halves of the column to Chu. 'I will take advantage of the night and the moon to retire, in conformity with your instructions,' he replied. His lassitude vanished, and he fired off a stream of orders for the retreat to his staff. 'No more hesitations, we're leaving at once!' he cried.

During the night of 30 March Herbinger's column left Thanh Moy and marched across Deo Quao to Dong Song, to link up with Schoeffer's men. A half-hearted attack on Schoeffer's positions was made just after midnight by a small force of Chinese skirmishers, and was easily repelled. Shortly before dawn the reunited 2nd Brigade marched out of Dong Song and headed south for Chu. Determined to jettison anything that might slow down the next stage of the retreat, Herbinger decided to sacrifice another artillery battery, and gave orders for the guns of Roussel's battery to be spiked and abandoned. On this occasion he was disobeyed by his officers, and Roussel's battery arrived safely at Chu without slowing down the column. Shortly after dawn on 31 March Chinese skirmishers caught up with the French column near the small village of Pho Cam. Herbinger had by now been reinforced by Brière de l'Isle with a squadron of spahi cavalry, and the French infantry waited eagerly for him to order the spahis to charge and scatter the Chinese skirmishers. Instead, Herbinger ordered the retreat to continue, by echelons of infantry battalions. It was the most shameful moment of the entire retreat. 'We retired in echelons like this for ten kilometres,' Captain Lecomte later wrote, '3,000 Frenchmen running away from 40 Chinese!'

Had Herbinger but known it, his decision to abandon Lang Son had been entirely unnecessary. On 29 March, while the French were retreating southwards, the demoralised Chinese were streaming back towards Zhennanguan, heading for the shelter of their entrenched camps at Bang Bo and Yen Cua Ai. Vietnamese sympathisers caught up with the Chinese near Cua Ai on the evening of 29 March, bringing the astonishing news that the French had abandoned Lang Son and were in full retreat. The Chinese general Pan Dingxin promptly turned his battered army around and reoccupied Lang Son on 30 March. Pan sent small forces of skirmishers on from Lang Son to observe the French retreat, and it was these units which had made contact with the French on 30 March at Dong Song and on 31 March at Pho Cam. The main body of the Guangxi Army was in no condition to pursue the French to Chu, and Pan contented himself with a limited advance to Dong Song and Bac Le. This advance brought the Chinese back to the positions they were occupying before the Lang Son campaign. Herbinger's decision to retreat threw away the hard-won French gains of the February campaign.

When the 2nd Brigade eventually rallied at Chu, on 1 April, its soldiers were exhausted and demoralised. Brière de l'Isle, who had responded to Herbinger's cable of 28 March by transferring the bulk of Giovanninelli's 1st Brigade from Hung Hoa to Chu, appointed Colonel Gustave Borgnis-Desbordes to the command of the 2nd Brigade. Borgnis-Desbordes soon effaced the memory of Herbinger's dismal leadership and imposed his own strong personality upon the brigade, issuing the following order of the day on 2 April:

Appelé, en raison de la grave blessure du général de Négrier, à prendre le commandement provisoire de la brigade, J'arrive ici avec des troupes nouvelles et des munitions. J'ai reçu du général l'ordre d'arrêter avec vous, et coûte que coûte, tout mouvement rétrograde. C'est ce que nous ferons.

(In view of General de Négrier’s serious wound, I have been asked to take provisional command of the brigade. I have arrived with fresh troops and ammunition. I have been told by the general-in-chief that there is to be no further retreat. We are to remain here at all costs. And that is precisely what we shall do.)

On 5 April Brière de l'Isle arrived at Chu. He immediately ordered Borgnis-Desbordes to reoccupy the mountains of Deo Van and Deo Quan. He also considered attacking the Chinese at Dong Song, but the 2nd Brigade's corps of Vietnamese porters had scattered during the retreat, temporarily immobilising the brigade. Brière de l'Isle was still considering how to get at the Chinese when news of the conclusion of preliminaries of peace reached him on 14 April.