To be fair, the problems of supply were immense. Originally, eight thousand coolies and eight hundred small horses had been collected to support the expedition. But even though the distance between Hanoi and Lang Son was only about eighty-five miles, the Mandarin Road was hardly a superhighway, and a coolie could carry an absolute maximum of sixty pounds. This in itself would have made resupply a ponderous process. However, it was further complicated by the fact that the coolies, who were forced labor, tended to desert at the first opportunity, en masse if possible, and could not be replaced. A report of March 18, 1885, complained that coolies were difficult to recruit and retain because of the sinister reputation of upper Tonkin, because they were badly treated by Europeans, and because the Chinese tended to massacre any coolies they captured.57 Ammunition was in short supply. But equally as bad, French rations, which usually amounted to little more than hardtack and macaroni, were distributed only every other day, while on the off day they dined on the rice and tea left behind by the Chinese.58 This could only increase the fatigue of the troops, who had already fought a series of battles: “After fifteen months of a campaign like this,” wrote Bôn-Mat, “I had just about had enough.” (Indeed, it was here that his congaï saved the day, and made a substantial profit, by frequent trips back to the delta for supplies.)59
Another reason for caution resided in the fact that, while the French had won the victories, Chinese tactics were improving: Bon-Mat found that, “over the past year, there has been a remarkable progress on the part of their commanders in the employment of their forces. Instead of a pure and simple defensive, they are beginning to know how to maneuver and, for the first time, at Dong Dang their fire forced our artillery to change positions.” The battle of Hoa Moc, though a French success, came perilously close to falling into the category of a Pyrrhic victory—it had been the most costly of the campaign so far, with 76 French killed and 408 wounded,60 many of whom did not survive the trip back to base. Of course, these numbers may seem trifling, especially when compared with the far greater losses inflicted upon the Chinese. But it created a steady rate of attrition, especially when combined with losses caused by disease and climate, which the French could make up only with difficulty. On the other hand, manpower was the least of the worries of Chinese commanders. Le Poer found the Chinese regulars from Kwangsi the most impressive he had met in Tonkin: “When the fight was going on we were surprised at the gallant manner in which our foes stood up against us,” he wrote. “After a time, when more than once we had hurled them back with the bayonet, we recognized that we were dealing with the most formidable force that we had yet encountered. They gave us bullet for bullet, thrust for thrust. They were good men, and when the bayonets crossed they fought quietly and earnestly, and died without a murmur, almost without a groan.” He believed that a real weakness of the Chinese soldier was a sort of fatalism that often caused him to give up at critical moments, especially when confronted by a bayonet charge. “But in the firing they more than held their own, they were more numerous, their ammunition was evidently plentiful, and, to tell the plain truth, in spite of our bayonet charges they fairly shot us off the field.”61
For all of these reasons, then, what happened next provides one of the most unexpected, and from the French point of view one of the most disastrous, episodes of the campaign. It is also one of the most puzzling because, in the words of British sinologist Henry McAleavy, “the usual French explanation of their retreat from Langson imposes in parts a severe strain on our credulity.”62 The first weeks of March on the frontier were fairly quiet. From the French post of Dong Dang, across a plain of rice paddies from the Gates of China, the Chinese could be observed fortifying two positions on their side of the border, beyond which it was reckoned that an army of forty thousand Chinese were encamped. Early on the morning of March 22, a Chinese force attempted to surprise Dong Dang, but was easily repulsed. Whether it was this attack that jolted de Négrier into action, or, as French historian Philippe Franchini believes, a wire from Ferry ordering him to “strike a blow” to get the negotiations with China off dead center,63 the general decided upon an offensive. He assembled three thousand men, including legionnaires, for an attack on the Chinese army, which was organizing a fortified camp at Bang Bo inside China itself.
In retrospect, de Négrier's decision to launch an offensive into mainland China, against a force that outnumbered his own by at least twelve to one, appears suicidal. What is more, he seriously miscalculated the effect of his invasion on the Chinese army, whose soldiers were incensed and who swore a solemn oath to drive the foreigners from their sacred soil or die in the attempt.64 Nor do the political risks of failure appear to have been taken into account, for they could easily have strengthened the Chinese hand at the peace negotiations as well as shatter the fragile support for the war in Paris. Nevertheless, de Negrier argued that the Chinese buildup across the border, far from requiring caution, obliged him to attack; otherwise he would face a repeat of the siege of Tuyen Quang with the difference that, at Lang Son, a successful rescue might be written out of the script.
In his deposition of April 1885, de Negrier admitted that he had full knowledge of the Chinese buildup across the frontier: “The cavalry patrols and the reconnaissances of officers who continually covered the country reported from 15 March a progressive augmentation of Chinese forces,” he reported.65 Indeed, that is precisely why he decided to attack. (In fact, de Negrier makes no mention of a wire from Ferry ordering him to undertake some spectacular action to jolt the Chinese into ceding Tonkin.) “The Chinese tactic consisted lately of maintaining close contact, to construct as closely as possible to the adversary, a fortified camp in front, then to act against the lines of communication, by pushing gradually one or several corps which would dig in as they advanced,” Négrier continued. “The necessity to distance the enemy from the line of communication linking Langson with the rear obliged the occupation of Dong Dang.”
However, when the Chinese began building two forts in front of Dong Dang, “the command confronted an alternative—either evacuate Dong Dang immediately or to give this post a little air. To evacuate Dong Dang would bring the enemy directly to Langson, and, from then ... [the Chinese] could act against the line of communications, and compromise the supply of Langson. Given the small number of forces at our command, a passive defense, which obliged us to guard a number of points, must be ruled out. One would, in effect, have been obliged to cover consecutively Langson and the line of communications to Dong Sung. It seemed preferable to unite all the available forces in one mass and to attempt to punch through the enemy line by attacking one of the points in this line.” When the Chinese attacked Dong Dang on the night of March 21-22, “the genberal resolved immediately to profit from the moral effect produced by this defeat, to attack Bang Bo [the Chinese camp] with all his forces.” 66
This offensive looked at first to offer a repeat of the other successful French actions—after an attack up the steep slopes against one of the two forts that dominated the valley by two French battalions and one of tirailleurs tonkinois stalled, the Legion assaulted it head on and succeeded. After a brief artillery bombardment, the Chinese abandoned the second fort. The French filed through the Gates of China into Kwangsi province. A second line of fortresses was taken, yet in the distance a third fortified line was clearly visible. A large Chinese force appeared and attempted to envelop the French right wing, but were driven off by artillery. Night fell, and the French camped on their positions, fairly content, one suspects, with the day's work.
When, around eleven o'clock on the morning of March 24, the fog cleared, they could look out over a landscape of rocky peaks and narrow valleys, in which Chinese fortifications figured prominently. The French began their usual, now almost routine, business of fortress-taking, hampered somewhat by the poor distribution of artillery munitions, when, about three o'clock in the afternoon, they were counterattacked by a Chinese force that Bon-Mat put at between twenty-five and thirty tho
usand men. The first inkling that legionnaire A.-P. Maury had that the tide of battle had turned against him was when his company noticed the battalion of the 143rd Regiment leap out of a captured Chinese fort and run down the hill. “Our captain looked on the other side of the mountain to find out the cause of this retreat and to assess our position,” he wrote. The reasons were immediately clear: “Clouds of Chinese sprang up from all sides. They were ten meters from the summit which we occupied. ‘Fire! Fire!’ cried the captain. ‘They are there, three feet away!’ ”67 The great retreat had begun.
The French began to fall back, the Legion holding the rear, from hill to hill toward the Gates of China, surrendering the hard-won forts to frontal assaults or Chinese threats against the single line of retreat. Even worse, ammunition was beginning to run low: “Our ranks are cut down, our bullets are running out,” Maury recorded. “I had only two ... I thought I would not escape alive from such a combat.... Of 90 men, only 27 were left.”68 “Shot at from the front and from the flanks, we took a murderous fire and high casualties,” wrote Bon-Mat. “... The wounded, those too tired to keep up were left behind never to be seen again.”69 “My one object at that time was to get away,” Le Poer wrote. “I had no desire to fall, wounded or unwounded, into my pursuers’ hands.”70 As night came, the French filed back through the Gates of China and rallied at Dong Dang. The Chinese did not pursue.71
The next day the French sat at Dong Dang. Strong parties were sent out to search the battlefield for missing soldiers: “We brought back a dozen, but far more numerous were those whom we found executed and odiously mutilated,” remembered Bôn-Mat.72 The 2nd Battalion of the Legion reported one captain and nine legionnaires killed, fifty-two wounded and two missing from the previous day,73 although the regimental history appears to understate the true number of casualties. De Négrier ordered his battered troops to fall back on Lang Son. When, at seven o'clock on the morning of March 28, a substantial column of Chinese festooned with banners marched down the Mandarin Road and assaulted Lang Son, the Legion had been strengthened by the arrival of almost 1,700 replacements. This added considerable strength to the defense, which was able repeatedly to repulse the Chinese attacks during a long day of fighting. At dusk, the Chinese fell back toward Dong Dang: “One must admit, however,” noted the Legion's diarist, “that the retreat was orderly and that the Chinese manoeuvred well.”74 But there was far worse news when the French came to count the day's casualties—General de Négrier had been gravely wounded in the chest around three-thirty in the afternoon. Command had passed to the commander of the régiment de marche d'infanterie de ligne, composed of three battalions of metropolitan infantry, Lieutenant Colonel Herbinger.
On the face of it, Herbinger's elevation to the command of the brigade should have caused few problems. A native of Alsace graduating first in his class from Saint-Cyr in 1861, Herbinger was considered one of the French army's coming officers. His record combined battlefield experience in Mexico, the Franco-Prussian War and the Commune with an academic knowledge that caused him to be named to the prestigious post of professor of tactics at the French war college, the Ecole Supérieure de Guerre. Herbinger was summoned in late afternoon from an outlying village that one of his battalion had been defending, informed of de Négrier's condition, and told that, as the next highest ranking (the two other battalion commanders were majors, and Negrier had undertaken the campaign without a colonel as second-in-command), he was now in charge. He called a conference of his officers, and announced that Lang Son was to be abandoned that very night, and that the force would fall back on the delta as quickly as possible. What could not be carried was to be destroyed, which was virtually everything.
This order produced indescribable confusion: “An unbelievable spectacle awaited us,” wrote Bôn-Mat as his legionnaires fell back through Lang Son. “Barrels of wine and tafia, cases of biscuits and meat, sacks of coffee, flour, open, gutted, overturned, lay over the floor.” Some of the legionnaires were unable to resist the opportunity for a free drink, so that
drunkenness would soon lay out several In the town, there was chaos, and it seemed that this decision to leave Langson had unsettled everyone. Here, one threw the artillery pieces into the water, as we had neither coolies or mules to transport them, despite the protestations, the supplications of the commander who promised to have his men drag them. Further on, the brigade chest, which contained perhaps as much as six hundred thousand francs which arrived two days ago, was also sacrificed. It would have been easy to save this money by giving a few pieces to each man. In the citadel, we opened the boxes of cartridges and threw them in the lakes.75
(This was all recovered in 1945, when the lakes were dragged for materiel thrown in after the Japanese takeover of Indochina in March of that year produced an almost identical panic.)
In his subsequent court-martial, Herbinger claimed that he had not distributed the money among the soldiers because they were already loaded with cartridges, and because it would have caused further disorders as so many of them were drunk: “Lieutenant colonel Herbinger cites the 2nd Battalion of the Legion as being particularly drunk.”76 Legion Major François Georges Diguet vehemently denied that any more than fifteen to twenty of his men were drunk, “and this because he had not been informed that the barrels of tafia had been abandoned by the intendence without taking the precaution of breaking them open, and because the sutlers gave the alcohol which they could not carry in the precipitious flight to the men.”77 Maury's group stayed sober enough to chop down the flagpole at the top of the citadel, and then helped themselves to bullets. “Then we opened the trunks. Those of the recently arrived officers were full of clothes, shoes, etc. We had to abandon almost everything... . We were upset. In the streets, on the road, where we marched quickly, we met several soldiers, lying on the ground, completely drunk. We disarmed them and abandoned them.” The officers were apparently furious at Herbinger's decision. One, Major Servière of the Bat’ d'Af, offered to hold Lang Son single-handed.78 “Let no one run away with the idea that we simple soldiers did not feel the sting of defeat,” wrote Le Poer of this retreat from Lang Son. “Indeed, we felt it, and sorely too.”79
The French retired back to the delta with no serious mishaps—the Chinese shadowed their retreat, but offered little more than harassing fire. Nevertheless, the strategic situation for the French was fairly desperate. The Chinese had their tails up, fully twenty thousand Annamese volunteers had flocked to the Chinese banner after de Négrier's defeat and the Kwangsi army had begun preparations to attack Bac Ninh. To the northwest, even after the relief of Tuyen Quang, the Yunnanese troops and Black Flags retained the strategic initiative, and Annamese were also streaming in from the country around Hung Hoa and Son Tay to join them. So while Chinese losses had been high, so were the numbers of their replacements. Faced with a renewed and vigorous revival of Chinese military fortunes, the French would find it virtually impossible to sustain a long and unpopular war in faraway Tonkin, especially after Ferry's Indochinese policy had been discredited and his government tumbled.80 However, despite their resounding success, on April 4 the Chinese signed a cease-fire, the preliminary step to the Treaty of Tientsin in June, which ended Chinese claims upon Tonkin once and for all. This apparently inexplicable Chinese surrender was due to a combination of factors, which included ignorance of the military situation in Tonkin, fear of a war with Japan over Korea, and an uprising in Chinese Turkestan.
However, the major fallout from the retreat from Lang Son was felt in Paris, not Tonkin. News of the retreat fell like a thunderclap on the Chamber of Deputies, where the president of the council of ministers, Jules Ferry, asked for two hundred million francs in extra credits to prosecute the war against China. The right abused him for sending troops with insufficient support, while the left, led by the fiery and intemperate Georges Clemenceau, accused him of nothing less than high treason. With those in the Chamber of Deputies shouting “Ferry Tonkin!” while the crowds without hurled less fl
attering denunciations, the Ferry government perished in a hostile vote of 308 to 161. The ex-prime minister escaped by a side door, his political career shattered. And for the first time in the history of the Third Republic, a government was toppled over its policy of colonial expansion.
Yet the story was not yet finished. The army in Tonkin required a scapegoat, someone to blame for the dramatic reversal of fortunes. Not surprisingly, the popularity of de Negrier and his glorious wound deflected the wrath of the officer corps from the general and his controversial order to invade China to the unfortunate Herbinger and his precipitous but far more logical decision to avoid entrapment in Lang Son. A court-martial, in a bizarre decision that seemed to foreshadow the “guilty, but with extenuating circumstances” verdict of Captain Dreyfus's 1899 trial, declared Herbinger incompetent to command, but recommended against his dismissal from the army. They need not have bothered, for he died a broken man in 1886.81
De Négrier's reputation survived his defeat at Bang Bo intact. The news of the Chinese sellout at Tientsin provoked a palace revolution in Hue. A conflict between French and Annamese forces caused the fourteen-year-old king to place his treasury on a white elephant and flee to the mountains to organize resistance against the French. The French merely named a replacement and split the Empire of Annam into three territories of Tonkin, Annam, and Cochinchina. Cambodia had been a French protectorate since 1863, and Laos was incorporated into French Indochina between 1893 and 1896.
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