Battle of Zhenhai - Aftermath

Aftermath

Preliminaries of peace between France and China were signed on 4 April 1885, but the French maintained their blockades of Zhenhai and the Yangzi River until a substantive peace treaty ending the Sino-French War (the Treaty of Tientsin) was signed on 9 June. On 11 June 1885 Admiral Courbet died of dysentery aboard his flagship Bayard in Makung harbour, where most of the Far East Squadron had been stationed since the end of the Pescadores Campaign (late March 1885). On 13 June Admiral Adrien-Barthélémy-Louis Rieunier, who was then stationed off Shanghai with the ironclad Turenne, officially notified the Chinese authorities at Shanghai of Courbet's death. He also sent word to the military commissioner Ouyang Lijian at Zhenhai. As France and China were now at peace, the Chinese lowered their flags to half-mast from the Zhenhai shore batteries, in accordance with international protocol. Only three months earlier, these same batteries had done their best to kill the French admiral.

Admiral Rieunier later heard that the French might have captured all seven Chinese ships without loss had they attacked the Zhenhai defences on 2 March 1885. The French admiral was told shortly after the end of the war by the British consul at Ningbo that Courbet’s arrival had created such alarm that the Chinese ship captains were ready to surrender if the French made a serious attack on the defences of Zhenhai. As the British were keen to preserve their neutrality, the consul had punctiliously refrained from conveying this valuable information to the French.