Officially, Garnier was asked by Dupré to extricate Dupuis from the complicated Hanoi scene. By the time Garnier reached Saigon, in August 1873, the risks of real conflict had grown greater. Dupuis was in touch with backers of the fallen Le dynasty, who now offered to help him. Adding further to the complexities of the situation was the presence of Bishop Puginier, a French missionary who proclaimed his devotion to spreading the gospel while less than secretly hoping for the advance of France into a region of Vietnam officially hostile to Christianity. While he insisted to the Vietnamese authorities that he could not play any part in their dispute with the beleaguered businessman, Puginier nevertheless hoped that the situation would end with French intervention in aid of Dupuis, to the benefit of the Church and France.
For Garnier's private ears, however, Dupré had a more important brief. The circumstances in Hanoi were ideal for a sudden initiative that could ensure France's assuming a position in northern Vietnam. It was an old refrain sung to a new tune. Establishing a position in Tonkin would assure France of control of a new route into China, by way of the Red River. In seeking this goal, Garnier was given carte blanche. He was also given instructions that scrupulously avoided identifying Dupré's real aims. If Garnier were to fail, he alone would bear public responsibility for aggression against a government with which France officially had no quarrel.
In the twentieth century there is, and need be, little admiration for Garnier's conduct. Even in his own time there were Frenchmen, including some friends, who were ready to argue the essential wrongness of his actions. Such judgments would not have made sense to Garnier. In setting forth for Hanoi he was embarked upon the adventure of his life. To be responsible for the seizure of new territory for France would be to match the thoughts he had so often held in the course of the slow journey up the Mekong. He felt no shame, only an overwhelming sense of excitement at the opportunity which was now his. Barely able to hide the true character of Dupré's instructions, his letters to Claire and to his friends and relatives in Europe were exultant. Writing to his brother Léon shortly before he left Saigon, Garnier's mood was clear: “As for instructions, carte blanche! The Admiral is relying on me! Forward then for our beloved France!”
He sailed from Saigon on October 11, at the head of a force of one hundred soldiers. He had hoped to have his old companion Delaporte associated in the venture, but at the last moment Delaporte was dispatched on a mission to Cambodia. The written instructions Garnier had received form Dupré had spoken of the need to ensure Dupuis' prompt departure from Hanoi; beyond this he was to negotiate the freedom of the Red River to international commerce. Writing to Dupuis ahead of his arrival, Garnier had a different message. The French businessman should not be surprised if, at the start, Garnier did not have close contacts with him. This would not look well. But, he continued, “I can assure you in the most positive fashion that the Admiral does not mean to give up any of the commercial agreements already undertaken. … I wall soon be in Hanoi and together we can discuss the political situation in the country.”
When Garnier reached Hanoi, on November 5, the Vietnamese authorities acted exactly as he would have wished. They received him with ill grace, offered him unsatisfactory quarters, and made clear their view that only one point was open to discussion: the early departure of Dupuis. Ranged against Garnier in the negotiations was Marshal Nguyen Tri Phuong, an old adversary of the French who saw no reason to make concessions to the young naval officer he now faced. The situation had a familiar air for an imperialist in the nineteenth-century world. Garnier, at the head of a combined force of about four hundred men — his own soldiers plus those of Dupuis, not all of whom were fighting men — was ready to risk attack by the much more numerous Vietnamese. The flash point was near.
By November 18 Garnier was ready to proclaim his intentions as “a great mandarin” of France to open the Red River to commerce and to declare that the Vietnamese Government no longer had the right to levy customs duties in Tonkin. The next day he issued an ultimatum. The Vietnamese forces were to render up the Hanoi citadel to his troops. There could be no turning back. The longer he waited, the greater was the chance that his plans might go awry. He and Dupuis were at one in their aims, and Garnier had found in his compatriot a man “full of good sense and patriotism” who would “defer to all my suggestions.” Late in the evening of November 19 he wrote to his family in France:
The die is cast! That is to say, the orders are given! I attack tomorrow at the break of day, one hundred and eighty men against the seven thousand behind the walls. If this letter comes to you without a signature, that is without any further addition from me, it is because I have been killed or seriously wounded. In such a case I recommend Claire and my daughter to you. May my friends work together to gain them a suitable pension.
The next morning, in less than an hour, Garnier's small but well-equipped forces gained control of the citadel. As the Vietnamese troops fled into the countryside, leaving the gravely wounded Marshal Nguyen in French hands, Garnier and his curiously mixed band of French soldiers and Dupuis' Chinese auxiliaries extended their presence into the strongholds about Hanoi. Within two weeks he could claim, however temporarily, to be in control of the Red River delta. Continuing to style himself the “great mandarin of France,” he issued proclamations promising such mixed blessings as the opening of the Red River to commerce and the removal of the Vietnamese Government's “tyrannical” rule.
It was a fantasy world in which Garnier now worked, though he gave no sign of recognizing the fact. He wrote to friends, instead, of being engaged in the “founding here of either a French protectorate or a new colony, depending on the degree of obstinacy shown by the government at Hue.” In his actions, his issuing of proclamations, and his insistence that the Red River should be open to commerce, Garnier proceeded as if his position was beyond challenge. As supporters of the Le, and Vietnamese Christians, spurred on by Puginier and his priests, came to testify to their approval of Garnier's coup, he seemed to have given little thought initially to the possibility of a Vietnamese counterattack. Yet, as he ranged away from Hanoi, directing developments here and there, leading an assault on Nam-Dinh in the southernmost section of the delta, a counterattack was already in preparation, one that was to put an end to this adventure in annexation.
While Garnier had been occupied with developments away from Hanoi, the Vietnamese Government's forces were massing to the west, in the town of Son-Tay, a further thirty miles upstream. Because of the relative ease with which they had established an embryonic French-controlled administration in the Red River delta, Garnier and Dupuis were far too ready to assume that the Vietnamese were incapable of renewing hostilities. By the end of the first week of December, this assumption was very much in question. Not only had the Vietnamese authorities started to mass troops at Son-Tay, but in addition there was the more ominous news that the Vietnamese commander, Hoang Ke Vien, had succeeded in joining to his own forces those of the Black Flag bandits, led by the redoubtable Liu Yung-fu, a battle-tried veteran of the Taiping period. As the days of early December slipped by, the scattered French outposts about Hanoi came under pressure. There were ambushes and brief fire-fights, with neither side gaining a decisive advantage. By mid-December, however, the existence of a real threat to the French position was apparent, and Garnier hurried back to Hanoi to meet it. On December 18 he was in the citadel once more.
His appreciation of the situation was exactly what might have been expected. The attack should be carried to Son-Tay. The next day an unexpected development brought a sudden halt to his plans. The Vietnamese court sent ambassadors to treat with Garnier. It seemed that his goals could be accomplished peacefully. There was agreement that negotiations should open two days later, on Sunday, December 21.
Ever since Garnier's arrival in Hanoi the weather had been ideal for campaigning. The months of November and December are the most attractive of the northern Vietnamese year, fresh, even cold at night, seldom marred b
y rain during the day. This pattern was maintained on the day the negotiations were to begin; the weather, as one of the participants remarked, was “splendid.” Garnier and his officers heard mass celebrated by Bishop Puginier before returning to their duties. With peace seemingly certain, the French soldiers were dismissed after a rifle inspection just before ten o'clock. Only a light guard was posted, as Garnier walked to begin negotiations with the Vietnamese ambassadors.
The alarm was given by Bishop Puginier. Alerted by one of his Vietnamese followers, he rushed to inform Garnier. With the Black Flags forming the advance guard, the Vietnamese army based at Son-Tay was marching on the Hanoi citadel. There was an immediate call to arms, and Garnier deployed his small garrison. For the moment the situation was not desperate. Despite the overwhelming numerical superiority of the forces ranged against them, the French were armed with modern weapons and were solidly protected as long as they remained within the citadel. When Garnier mounted to the western rampart, he and his companions could see that Puginier's informant had been correct. Above the men they could see in the distance, waved, with sinister promise, the great black war flags of the Chinese bandits. There seemed to be five or six hundred men grouped about the flags, with a further two thousand ranged in another force behind them. The presence of an elephant and parasols of office signified to the Frenchmen that a senior Vietnamese was in general charge.
The Black Flags began their attack, moving forward over the broken ground in front of the citadel walls, sheltering behind the clumps of bamboos before dashing forward to fire at the ramparts. In less than twenty minutes the bandit forces were withdrawing, slowly and with discipline, but withdrawing nonetheless. They do not seem to have reckoned on the presence within the citadel of French light artillery, which Garnier used to telling effect.
The initial French success was not a decisive victory, and Garnier was the first to recognize the fact. If the Black Flags and the Vietnamese troops chose to besiege the citadel, the position of those within would soon become perilous. Even more immediately dangerous was the possibility of a concerted attack on all sides of the citadel. Given the small number of men within, such an attack could well succeed. The Black Flags, moreover, had already shown their capacity to fight with discipline. As Garnier saw the matter, there was little choice before him or his men. “The enemy now attacking us,” he told his officers, speaking of the Black Flags, “is the only one I fear in Tonkin. We must make a sortie; we cannot leave such an enemy a thousand yards away.” Neither he nor the others present seem to have considered the dangerous possibilities of such a decision.
Garnier took command of one of the small bands that set off in pursuit of the Black Flags. He had only a dozen men to accompany him, but with their light field artillery piece they had no reason to doubt that they could better the enemy. Less than half a mile from the citadel, Garnier split his party into two, leaving the artillery piece on a path while he and nine others continued their pursuit across the rice fields. They were nearing the enemy when Garnier further deployed his small group into units of three so they could better engage the Chinese bandits hidden behind the scattered clumps of bamboo.
Perhaps, as a naval officer, he had no sense of the dangers in such an infantry tactic. Possibly there is no better explanation for his decision than his courageous but foolhardy character. Whatever the case, this manner of using his small force was Garnier's fatal error. By the time he was three-quarters of a mile from the citadel, accompanied by only three French sailors, he had reached the area where the Black Flags were waiting in ambush. As he ran to scale a small dike, calling on his men to follow him with fixed bayonets, his foot caught in a depression and he fell — with all the shots in his revolver expended. The sailor nearest to him was killed at almost the same moment as a bullet struck him in the chest, while the remaining two Frenchmen fell back. With Garnier lying helpless, the Black Flags launched themselves at him, hacking and stabbing with swords and lances. In minutes he was dead, his body left on the ground as the bandits bore away his head as a trophy.
While the Black Flags continued to withdraw, the French rallied to collect their dead. Four others had been killed besides Garnier, but for the moment only two of the other bodies were found, to be borne back with the leader's headless corpse. Dupuis' description of Garnier's body lying within the citadel mixed nineteenth-century sentiment with the horror felt in the French ranks at the outcome of the engagement.
…I went in to see Garnier s body. He lay between the two sailors. Nothing is more dreadful than these bodies without heads. There they were, stretched out on the straw, just as they had been carried in the evening before. Garnier s right arm was stretched out, his left lay alongside his body. His right foot was still in its boot, the other was clad only in a white sock. His clothing was in tatters, his body covered with the wounds made by the swords and lances. His stomach was open, his heart had been torn out … his two hands were clenched. … I grasped his hand for the last time, holding his poor, cold right hand tightly as I swore vengeance.
This was the end of a life and of a dream. When Garnier and his men fought their short battle on December 21 they did not know that Dupré, in Saigon, had already decided to undercut Garnier's initiative. Despite the bitter polemics that followed Garnier's death, the available records make two things clear. Dupré's initial inclination was to allow Garnier a free hand. Once he saw the difficulties resulting from the advantage Garnier had taken of this leeway, however, and particularly when his superiors in Paris made clear their unreadiness to give any formal approval to a French advance into Tonkin, Dupré was ready to disavow Garnier's actions. In deciding to send Lieutenant Paul Philastre to Hanoi as his agent, he signaled his readiness to withdraw from Tonkin. Philastre had already made known his opposition to Garnier's actions. There could be no expectation that he would compromise Dupré's instructions that French forces should withdraw from Hanoi.
This was a bitter business. Garnier's companions, with Dupuis and Bishop Puginier the most vociferous among them, were opposed to withdrawal, but in the end there was nothing they could do to prevent the course of action Philastre insisted was necessary. The grim reversal of circumstances led to criticism of Garnier's role even among his companions in Tonkin. One of them, Jules Harmand, later to be a French proconsul in the East, had been ecstatic as the tiny force had moved from success to success. With Garnier's death and the expedition's evident failure, Harmand allowed a harsh note to creep into his view of developments. Writing to his mother a week after the debacle outside the Hanoi citadel, he commented sharply on the dead leader's actions. The expedition's sorry position was the result of Garnier's determination to be its commander. “If, instead of sacrificing everything to his ambition … Garnier had asked for six hundred men, Tonkin would today be taken and almost pacified.” His leader's insistence on a force of only some one hundred men had been dictated, Harmand observed petulantly, by Garnier's awareness that a larger number would have required a more senior commander. Now France would conclude a treaty with the Vietnamese Government ensuring that no other power had the right to interfere in Vietnam's internal affairs, protecting Catholic missionaries from persecution, and opening Vietnamese ports to commerce; but the central hope of both Garnier and Dupuis was not met — a clause of the treaty explicitly stated that the Red River was closed to foreign navigation. In the eyes of the disappointed supporters of Garnier's efforts, the developments since his death seemed exemplified by the “odious proclamation” pasted up on the walls of Hanoi by Vietnamese officials:
A certain Garnier was sent to Tonkin for matters connected with commerce, but knowing nothing of business matters he spread disorder in the country and seized four citadels, the capitals of provinces; this is why the ambassador Nguyen and Philastre have come to re-establish the order which had been compromised.
In the long term the treaty Philastre negotiated was to form the basis for further French advance, but in early 1874 the immediate consequences see
med more important. The French, their martyrs unavenged, were to withdraw from Tonkin. Garnier was a hero to his men in Hanoi and in the scattered military posts elsewhere in the Red River delta. His death, in contrast, made him an embarrassment to Dupré. The report the latter sent to his minister called for Garnier's posthumous promotion, but it also strove to separate the dead man's actions from any intentions that Dupré might have held. The Governor was only “imperfectly informed” of developments after Garnier had seized the Hanoi citadel, he insisted. Garnier, he went on, had been imprudent, he had possibly made “mistakes,” but then he had paid the ultimate price in expiation. To Claire, Dupré was ready to write of Francis Garnier's “indomitable courage” and “ardent patriotism,” but this was a private rather than a public testimonial.
Worse was yet to come. The Government in Paris was unready to honor Garnier's memory as Dupré had suggested. The request that he should receive posthumous promotion to the rank of commander was rejected, as too was the request for authorization to open a national subscription that would raise funds for a statue in Garnier's honor. For the dead man's friends, increasingly angered by the readiness with which officialdom was prepared to forget or condemn Garnier's actions, the rewards accorded Philastre were, perhaps, the unkindest cut of all. When the promotions within the Legion of Honor were announced in August 1874, Philastre's name figured among them. He was named to be an officer of the order, “for exceptional services in Cochinchina and Tonkin.” Even Philastre's most vehement critics would not have denied his right to official recognition for services in Cochinchina, but to link his name with Tonkin was too much. It was only too easy to remember that this was a man who had always been ready to defend Vietnamese rights against those of France; indeed, he had gone even further and married a Vietnamese.
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