Cochinchina Campaign - Tourane and Saigon

Tourane and Saigon

The allies expected an easy victory, but the war did not at first go as planned. The Vietnamese Christians did not rise in support of the French (as the missionaries had been confidently predicting they would), Vietnamese resistance was more stubborn than had been expected, and the French and Spanish found themselves besieged in Tourane by a Vietnamese army under the command of Nguyễn Tri Phương. The Siege of Tourane lasted for nearly three years, and although there was little fighting disease took a heavy toll of the allied expedition. The garrison of Tourane was reinforced from time to time, and occasionally mounted local attacks against the Vietnamese positions, but was unable to break the siege.

In October 1858, shortly after his capture of Tourane, Rigault de Genouilly cast around for somewhere else to strike the Vietnamese. Realising that the French garrison at Tourane was unlikely to achieve anything useful, he weighed up the possibility of action in either Tonkin or Cochinchina. He considered and rejected the possibility of an expedition to Tonkin, which would require a large-scale uprising by the Christians to have any chance of success, and in January 1859 proposed to the navy ministry an expedition against Saigon in Cochinchina, a city of considerable strategic significance as a source of food for the Vietnamese army.

The expedition was approved, and in early February, leaving capitaine de vaisseau Thoyon at Tourane with a small French garrison and two gunboats, Rigault de Genouilly sailed south for Saigon. On 17 February 1859, after forcing the river defences and destroying a series of forts and stockades along the Saigon river, the French and Spanish captured Saigon. French marine infantry stormed the enormous Citadel of Saigon, while Filipino troops under Spanish command threw back a Vietnamese counterattack. The allies were not strong enough to hold the citadel, and on 8 March 1859 blew it up and set fire to its rice magazines. In April, Rigault de Genouilly returned to Tourane with the bulk of his forces to reinforce Thoyon's hard-pressed garrison, leaving capitaine de frégate Bernard Jauréguiberry (the future French navy minister) at Saigon with a Franco-Spanish garrison of around 1,000 men.

The capture of Saigon proved to be as hollow a victory for the French and Spanish as their earlier capture of Tourane. Jauréguiberry's small force, which suffered substantial losses in a surprise attack on a Vietnamese fortification to the west of Saigon on 21 April 1859, was forced to remain behind its defences thereafter. Meanwhile, the French government was distracted from its Far Eastern ambitions by the outbreak of the Austro-Sardinian War, which tied down large numbers of French troops in Italy. In November 1859, Rigault de Genouilly was replaced by Admiral François Page, who was instructed to obtain a treaty protecting the Catholic faith in Vietnam but not to seek any territorial gains. Page opened negotiations on this basis in early November, but without result. The Vietnamese, aware of France's distraction in Italy, refused these moderate terms and spun out the negotiations in the hope that the allies would cut their losses and abandon the campaign altogether. On 18 November 1859 Page bombarded and captured the Kien Chan forts at Tourane, but this allied tactical victory failed to change the stance of the Vietnamese negotiators. The war continued into 1860.

During the second half of 1859 and throughout 1860, the French were unable to substantially reinforce the garrisons of Tourane and Saigon. Although the Austro-Sardinian War soon ended, by early 1860 the French were again at war with China, and Page had to divert most of his forces to support Admiral Léonard Charner's China expedition. In April 1860, Page left Cochinchina to join Charner at Canton. Meanwhile, in March 1860, a Vietnamese army around 4,000 strong began to besiege Saigon. The defence of Saigon was entrusted to capitaine de vaisseau d'Ariès. The Franco-Spanish force in Saigon, only 1,000 men strong, had to support a siege by greatly superior numbers from March 1860 to February 1861. Realising that they could not hold both Saigon and Tourane, the French evacuated the garrison of Tourane in March 1860, bringing the Siege of Tourane to an inglorious end.