Francis Garnier - Commemoration

Commemoration

In 1883, nine years after Francis Garnier's death, the French naval officer Henri Rivière was also killed by the Black Flags in Tonkin, in remarkably similar circumstances.

Garnier and Rivière were honoured during the French colonial period as the two pre-eminent French martyrs of the conquest of Tonkin. In 1884, during the Sino-French War, two gunboats of the Tonkin Flotilla were named after the two men.

During the siege of Tuyen Quang (November 1884–March 1885), Liu Yung-fu's Black Flags, who formed part of the besieging Chinese army, taunted the men of the French garrison by chanting the names of their two most famous victims: 'Garnier! Rivière! Garnier! Rivière!'

In 1943, French Indochina issued a postage stamp commemorating Garnier.