Significance
The French defeat at Bang Bo on 24 March 1885 shook the nerve of several French politicians who had earlier supported France's war against China. More importantly, it convinced Lieutenant-Colonel Paul-Gustave Herbinger, de Négrier's second-in-command, that the 2nd Brigade was dangerously isolated at Lang Son. On 28 March de Négrier was seriously wounded in the battle of Ky Lua, in which the Tonkin Expeditionary Corps defeated an attack by the Guangxi Army on the defences of Lang Son. Herbinger assumed command of the 2nd Brigade, and immediately ordered a retreat to Kep and Chu. The battle of Bang Bo therefore paved the way for the Retreat from Lang Son and the collapse of Jules Ferry's administration on 30 March in the Tonkin Affair. The battle, before the war ended due to negotiations, made China appear seem to be almost victorious in the entire war in light of the French defeats at Zhennan and Langson
Read more about this topic: Battle Of Bang Bo (Zhennan Pass)
Famous quotes containing the word significance:
“Politics is not an end, but a means. It is not a product, but a process. It is the art of government. Like other values it has its counterfeits. So much emphasis has been placed upon the false that the significance of the true has been obscured and politics has come to convey the meaning of crafty and cunning selfishness, instead of candid and sincere service.”
—Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933)
“History is the interpretation of the significance that the past has for us.”
—Johan Huizinga (1872–1945)
“The hypothesis I wish to advance is that ... the language of morality is in ... grave disorder.... What we possess, if this is true, are the fragments of a conceptual scheme, parts of which now lack those contexts from which their significance derived. We possess indeed simulacra of morality, we continue to use many of the key expressions. But we have—very largely if not entirely—lost our comprehension, both theoretical and practical, of morality.”
—Alasdair Chalmers MacIntyre (b. 1929)