End of The War
On November 5, Dahomey sent a truce mission to the French, and the next day saw the French enter Cana. The peace mission failed, however, and on the 16th of November, the French army marched on Abomey. King Béhanzin, refusing to let the capital fall into enemy hands, burned and evacuated the city. He and the remnants of the Dahomey army fled north as the French entered the capital on November 17. The French tricolor was hoisted over the Singboji palace, which survived the fire and remains in modern Benin to this day.
The king of Dahomey fled to Atcheribé, thirty miles north of the capital. Attempts were initiated to rebuilt the army and its amazon corps until the French chose Béhanzin's brother, Goutchili, as the new king. King Béhanzin surrendered to the French on January 15, 1894 and was exiled to Martinique. The war had officially ended.
Read more about this topic: Second Franco-Dahomean War
Famous quotes containing the words the war and/or war:
“your dear face with its fifth hand,
doesn’t it know it’s the end of the war?”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)
“Come Vitus, are we men, or are we children? Of what use are all these melodramatic gestures? You say your soul was killed, and that you have been dead all these years. And what of me? Did we not both die here in Marmaros fifteen years ago? Are we any the less victims of the war than those whose bodies were torn asunder? Are we not both the living dead?”
—Peter Ruric, and Edgar G. Ulmer. Hjalmar Poelzig (Boris Karloff)