Strength, Organisation and Orders of Battle
Although the Tonkin expeditionary corps eventually reached a strength of 35,000 men, it was never able to put more than a fraction of its troops into the field against the Chinese armies. Most of its men were tied down in garrison duty and in sweeps against concentrations of Vietnamese resistance fighters ('bandits' or 'pirates', as the French called them). Courbet fielded 9,000 troops during the Son Tay Campaign, and Millot 12,000 troops in the Bac Ninh campaign. De Négrier commanded slightly fewer than 3,000 men during the Kep Campaign of October 1884, and Brière de l’Isle was only with difficulty able to put 7,200 men into the field in the February 1885 Lang Son Campaign. De Courcy, using a sledgehammer to crack a nut, concentrated 6,000 infantry, seven artillery batteries and three squadrons of cavalry for the October 1885 Thanh May campaign.
Read more about this topic: Tonkin Expeditionary Corps
Famous quotes containing the words organisation, orders and/or battle:
“It is because the body is a machine that education is possible. Education is the formation of habits, a superinducing of an artificial organisation upon the natural organisation of the body.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895)
“There is nothing on earth more exquisite than a bonny book, with well-placed columns of rich black writing in beautiful borders, and illuminated pictures cunningly inset. But nowadays, instead of looking at books, people read them. A book might as well be one of those orders for bacon and bran.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“Oh, who will now be able to relate how Pantagruel behaved in face of these three hundred giants! Oh my muse, my Calliope, my Thalie, inspire me now, restore my spirits, because here is the ass’s bridge of logic, here is the pitfall, here is the difficulty of being able to describe the horrible battle undertaken.”
—François Rabelais (1494–1553)