Truong Dinh - French Invasion in 1859

French Invasion in 1859

The process of Vietnam’s colonisation began in September 1858 when a Franco-Spanish force landed at Da Nang in central Vietnam and attempted to proceed to the capital Huế. After becoming tied down, they sailed to the less-defended south. The French and Spanish quickly captured the imperial Citadel of Saigon in February 1859—the fortress’s commander committed suicide. The citadel was razed and the substantial supplies were confiscated. The leaderless and defeated imperial troops fled in disarray. The attacks were ordered by French Emperor Napoleon III. French diplomats, naval officers, merchants and missionaries had long advocated the expedition. The missionaries wanted the French administration to facilitate their work converting the Vietnamese to Roman Catholicism, while military and business figures saw commercial opportunities in Vietnam. Napoleon’s motivations were primarily imperial, strategic and commercial, but he found it convenient to cite “freedom of religion” as his justification for taking action. The Nguyen Dynasty was Confucianist and had restricted the activity of missionaries. The belief system of Christianity was incompatible with the Confucian belief that the monarch was the “son of heaven”.

In response to the razing of the Citadel of Saigon, Định organised his local levies into a guerrilla force that initially numbered between 500 and 1000 men, operating out of Thuan Kieu. They were armed with bladed spears, fire lances, knives, sabres, bamboo sticks and swords, trained and on call as necessary. As a local notable who was respected for his leadership and military ability, Định naturally assumed a lead role in the partisan movement that responded to Tu Duc’s appeals for popular resistance against European aggression. In the initial phase of the conflict, the local militias concentrated on evacuating the populace from areas that had been taken over by the French, while urging those who chose to stay to not cooperate with the Europeans. Snipers were deployed into French areas to assassinate isolated soldiers.

In 1861, Định moved his men to Tan Hoa sub-prefecture in the Go Cong area. Tan Hoa was an ideal location for a resistance base. It was close to newly formed resistance groups led by Nguyen Trung Truc, Tran Xuan Hoa and others in the Go Cong and My Tho area, yet was also close to Saigon. In February, the French attacked the citadel of Ky Hoa, seizing the fort after two days, along with a large quantity of weapons, artillery and food supplies. Having fought at Ky Hoa, Định incorporated soldiers from the defeated imperial army into his ranks, because its commander Vo Duy Ninh had committed suicide. In May 1861, Admiral Léonard Victor Joseph Charner ordered the dissolution of the đồn điền of Go Cong. He went about confiscating the land of those Vietnamese who remained loyal to the monarchy, giving it to his collaborators. French impositions against the trade of rice via nearby waterways caused a further backlash from the locals of Go Cong. In 1861, the resistance leaders in the Go Cong area delegated Dinh to travel to Bien Hoa to seek permission from Imperial Military Commissioner Nguyen Ba Nghi to "turn around the situation".

Appointed to the rank of lieutenant colonel, Dinh began to stockpile foodstuffs, manufacture weapons, and recruit forces from the populace with the help of officers from the imperial army. His forces grew to around 6,000 men by June 1861. The French began to report that junks from Singapore and Hong Kong had arrived in Go Cong with shipments of European-made weapons. Dinh's forces began inflicting substantial damage on the European troops, largely because of their intimate knowledge of the terrain, skill in hit-and-run guerrilla tactics, and support from the local villagers. Dinh's men focused on chasing French soldiers around the countryside and attacking military installations that were left undefended as a consequence of their guerrilla pursuit. Learning of Dinh's role in support of the Nguyen Dynasty's call for popular resistance, Tu Duc promoted him to the rank of lieutenant colonel for the Gia Dinh region. Later in 1861, the imperial regulars were defeated at Bien Hoa, and the commanding Vietnamese officers were ordered by the royal authorities to meet Dinh at Tan Hoa to develop a plan for retaking Bien Hoa. As a result, the number of troops under Dinh's direct authority grew. Early in 1862, the Nguyen court granted Dinh command of all the southern nghĩa quân (righteous soldiers), the term that Huế used for the partisans. Dinh continued to lead raids on enemy forces from his base in Go Cong. Friction developed between the regular army and Dinh's partisans as to whether to stage aggressive sorties from Tan Hoa, as was Dinh's strategy, or to bide their time and engage in military buildup.

Dinh's nghĩa quân quickly earned the respect of the opposing French naval officers. Leopold Pallu de la Barriere, who defended the posts at Go Cong from Dinh's attacks, was surprised by their ferocity. Unaware of their nationalist feelings, de la Barriere had expected the Vietnamese to live submissively under any ruler that would allow them to sow their crops. He wrote:

The attack on Go Cong by a group of armed, skillfully led men surprised everyone. We thought that the Annamites were still submerged in fear, that the masses were enslaved, cowardly, the dregs of empire ... incapable of any act of resistance.

He went on to recognise the popular nature of the partisans' efforts, stating that the "centre of resistance was everywhere, infinitely subdivided"; he regarded every peasant as a centre of resistance.