French Foreign Legion

by Douglas Porch

  The Pacification of Upper Tonkin

  The role of the Legion in Indochina was far from over, however. “Now that France has Tonkin,” observed one British diplomat, “all she has to do is conquer it.”82 This would not prove an easy task for several reasons, the first, of course, being the obstinate refusal of the enemy to concede defeat. Although the Chinese regular forces had withdrawn, the Black Flags still lurked beyond the delta in the Tonkinese highlands, where they were to pose the major, and persistent, military problem that the French were to face in Indochina into the twentieth century. Unfortunately, de Négrier's example of indiscipline made the French parliament deeply reluctant to vote funds for further action in Indochina. Therefore, the subsequent campaign was hampered by limited forces, and forces with limited means, as well as by colonial officials who often suspended operations, or limited their scope, to maintain the fiction for the benefit of French parliamentary and public opinion that Tonkin was pacified.83

  Jean Pfirmann got a shock when he arrived in Tonkin in 1888, to discover that

  the men there did not have the martial air common to legionnaires. Without their uniform, one easily would have taken them for brigands. Each one had a rifle without a bayonet or a sling. He possessed neither belt nor cartridge pouch, but carried six packets of bullets in the pockets of his tunic. We frowned to see such a penury of materiel and munitions. . . . We were not at ease. When you do not feel a bayonet at the end of the barrel of your rifle, you believe yourself half disarmed.84

  The French were also forced to adapt to new forms of warfare that would be quite unlike the set-piece clashes of forces, relatively familiar to French officers, that characterized the campaigns of 1883–85. Now began the slow work of pacification, small-unit actions against pirate redoubts planted deep in the tropical highlands.

  The inaccessibility of these pirate bases posed the second problem. “Try to fancy geraniums, fuchsias, and such like flowers, thirty feet high and with trunks twice the thickness of a man's body,” Martyn wrote of the forests in which the Legion operated.

  Imagine, multiplied a hundred thousand times, the scent of an old-fashioned flower garden thickly planted with stocks, wallflowers, pinks, mignonette, carnations, and any other sweet-smelling flowers that come into your mind. Picture gigantic flower-trees whose blossoms start the day a pure white and then change from this successively to the palest of pale pinks, and every other shade in the gradations of red until at sunset the flowers are a deep rich crimson. Palms, bananas, magnolias, frangipannis, shaddocks, and every other tropical tree that you can call to mind, with a great many others that you have never heard of, were to be found there, covered with ivy and climbing plants of all descriptions until the whole was one glorious tangle of scent and colour.85

  Legion Sergeant Louis Carpeaux found the expeditions through these forests, where the jungle canopy was filled with monkeys, where the sound of mountain cascades thundered in the distance and where one often emerged on rock outcroppings that presided over cloud-filled valleys, almost overpowering: “The pirate is indispensable to the savage poetry of this splendid nature,” he wrote.

  He binds the heart in a state of perpetual emotion which makes one better feel the beauty of the landscape. The effect was so impressive that the column, like an immense reptile, slithered noiselessly through the somber bamboo or above the sunlit clouds. Even the legionnaires, despite their skeptical nature, avoided speaking, conquered by the mysterious charm which enveloped them.

  He conceded, however, that as campaigning country it left much to be desired: “What creates the thrill in this land is that one can never see what is in front of him.”86

  Most of the remaining problems, logistical and tactical, would follow naturally from the very nature of the country. One solution, of course, was simply to leave the pirates alone in the sparsely occupied, inhospitable and fever-infested mountains. However, their devastating raids on villages in French-controlled areas ruled out that option. Therefore, columns had to be organized to ferret them out of their highland lairs, and here the problems began. The columns were usually made up of legionnaires or marines and tirailleurs tonkinois, and therefore were called “panachées” or “shandy” columns. This mix was justified tactically because it was thought to combine the solidity of white troops with the availability, mobility and adaptability of native levies. Not everyone was enthusiastic about this practice, however. Mixed expeditions were thought to lack cohesion, and commanders, because they held the Annamese in low esteem, reserved the tough fighting—and the high casualties—for the Europeans.87 Carpeaux attributed their elevated casualty rates to the pith helmet, believed essential protection against sunstroke east of Suez, but unpopular among legionnaires because it offered distinguishable targets to Chinese marksmen.88

  For legionnaires, the tirailleurs tonkinois appeared to be a military manifestation quite different from the exotic, but nevertheless recognizably virile, native military formations in North Africa. Indeed, most European newcomers found it difficult at first glance to distinguish the sex of the Vietnamese, so alike were they in dress, hairstyle, and in the fact that both men and women chewed or smoked. On their first night out in Hanoi, Martyn and his Russian friend “were waited on by a clean handy native, whose sex we could not agree upon. He, or she, had a rather pleasing face and wore a chignon, so Petrovski addressed it as ‘my dear’ and proceeded to chuck it under the chin on the sly, which seemed to amuse it very much.” However, they were alerted by the hilarity which their conduct provoked at a neighboring table that the waiter was, in fact, a male. “After that, Petrovski guarded against further mistakes by treating all Annamites as men until the contrary was proved.”89

  The apparently feminine appearance of the Vietnamese men caused legionnaires to nickname the tirailleurs tonkinois “young ladies,” no mere slur, according to Major Chabrol, who campaigned in Upper Tonkin, but a symptom of a fairly serious misapprehension, as on operations it created “a rapprochement favorable to immoral acts, because of the effeminate appearance of the Annamite.”90 Carpeaux's fellow legionnaires called the tirailleurs tonkinois “les bouzous”91—monkeys—a less flattering name, perhaps, but at least one calculated to cause fewer problems in the field between the Annamese soldiers and sex-starved legionnaires. However, on operation this condescension often turned to admiration at the ease with which the Annamese negotiated the jungle trails, so that Carpeaux's legionnaires began to refer to them as “centipedes.”92

  Martyn found the tirailleurs “all very companionable,” but nevertheless

  a very comical figure until one gets used to him. He wears a chignon, on the top of which is perched a lacquered hat very much like a dinner plate in shape. This is fastened on by red ribbons which pass round the top of the hat and under the chignon, the effect at first sight being very ludicrous indeed. It is beneath the dignity of these warriors to carry anything beyond their arms and ammunition, so our column presented the strange spectacle of natives of the country loafing along at their ease while we Europeans were loaded up like peddlers’ asses.

  Martyn rated those recruited from the upper Tonkin very highly indeed, but believed those from the delta to be “mere dummies, of no more military value than a Bengali baboo.”93 Silbermann complained that the tirailleurs always slept on guard duty and that it took them ten minutes to turn out for an alert.94 Lyautey observed in the 1890s that desertion was a real problem among the tirailleurs tonkinois, a phenomenon which he put down to the fact that the old Gras rifles with which they were armed were mere pop guns compared to the modern weaponry of the pirates.95

  These columns therefore presented a strange appearance to anyone educated to European warfare. A tirailleur usually served as a “point,” followed at fifty yards by a “cover point” of four tirailleurs and a corporal. However, the main job of the tirailleurs was to guard the coolies, no easy task as most had been recruited by force and sought the first opportunity to escape. Bon-Mat wrote that the coolies in his
column had to be “guarded like prisoners.” But still so many fled that the order was given to fire on any who attempted to escape: “This measure could, at a distance, seem barbarous, [but] it was justified by the circumstances and indispensable for the survival of the column,” he claimed.96 Half of the coolies in Carpeaux's column slipped away at night. Therefore, the captain demanded replacements from the headman of the nearest village, who gave them a number of women to carry the baggage.97

  Nor were coolies, who could carry a maximum load of about thirty-five pounds, particularly efficient, especially when compared with the mules used in North Africa but that proved less adaptable in the mountainous terrain of upper Tonkin. Sometimes the coolies could not carry that very effectively—A.-P. Maury reported that those wounded who were able preferred to walk because the coolies so frequently dropped the bamboo stretchers that carried casualties.98 The presence of so many human porters also made the column slow and difficult to control, and forfeited any element of surprise the French might hope to achieve.99 Pfirmann found the tendency of the coolies to bolt for the bush at the first report of a rifle a special nuisance as, after combat, the legionnaires were left without tools to bury the dead and to construct bamboo stretchers for the wounded, whom they had to carry themselves.100

  Next in the column might come the artillery. Opinion upon the worth of artillery in upper Tonkin was divided. One of the great drawbacks of artillery was that its presence required yet more porters—forty per piece! The guns were lashed to frames made of two large pieces of bamboo tied together in an X. “Sooner or later the bamboos break, sooner or later the porters fall and roll with the piece over a precipice or into an arroyo,” wrote Carpeaux, who, while admitting that columns could sometimes be immobilized by artillery, still thought artillery useful because the pirates feared them.101 Le Poer disagreed: “[Guns] are worse than useless to small parties on the trail of the enemy or holding some out-of-the-way position which may have to be abandoned at a minute's notice.... We were quite confident that we could maintain our ground with the rifle alone.”102

  In a panachée column, the Legion might be given the rear guard. Martyn discovered that this position was often shared by the wives of the tirailleurs tonkinois, a length of bamboo over one shoulder balanced by an iron cooking pot on the front and the husband's kit dangling on the rear: “The ladies evidently preferred our company to their own, and no matter how much we hunted them on they would always drop back again until they were just in front of us,” he wrote. “When we addressed any remark to them they would smile and show their beautiful black teeth, throwing back some repartee that caused intense amusement to the other women, and would probably have amused us also if only we could have understood it.”103

  Not surprisingly, the French discovered that such columns did not work well. Poor or nonexistent intelligence meant that they wandered the jungle trails for days in sweat-soaked uniforms, fighting mosquitoes, passing the isolated graves of those who had preceded them and, usually in a state of advanced depression, camping at nightfall in an abandoned pagoda whose walls were covered with graffiti written in many of the languages of the Legion, all without locating an enemy. “Despite our marches and countermarches along the river or in the forest, the bandits continued to terrorize and pillage the poor natives in the region,” Pfirmann remembered. “And often, after many nights spent in the unhealthy and humid forest, we had to return to the fold without having seen the shadow of a Chinese.”104 Villages or pirate redoubts that the French did discover were often abandoned. When any action did occur, it was initiated by the pirates on their terms.

  The greatest danger was that the cumbersome, etiolated columns would be ambushed. Carpeaux's column was sent into one such trap by the same village headman who had given him the women porters. The captain, realizing that the headman was under threat, rejected demands that he be decapitated and only flogged him, perhaps a misplaced act of kindness as a guide later tipped off the pirates of a planned French attack.105 Fortunately for the French, these ambushes were seldom very costly because the pirates “limit themselves to firing from distances which are more or less murderous.”106 Nevertheless, these halfhearted skirmishes often created pandemonium, with coolies fleeing in all directions and soldiers firing wildly at puffs of smoke in the foliage or at straw hats, which the Chinese liked to attach to branches and move with strings. “I was shot at and I shot back at some smoke,” one of Flutsch's comrades answered when asked if he had fought in Tonkin. “The pirates aren't like Moroccans, you never see them. You know that they are around the place where we are sent to be seen. From time to time they fire on us, the column deploys and finds sweet bugger all.”107

  After 1891, the French altered their methods somewhat. Under the influence of Governor-General Antoine de Lanessan, four military territories were created along the frontier with China, each under the command of a colonel who began a slow, progressive conquest of his theater. This required the French to reduce the number of their troops committed to static defense in small posts, either by closing the posts down altogether or by turning them over to armed partisans.108 Colonel Joseph Gallieni, who arrived in Tonkin in October 1892 to take command of one of these territories, revived the old North African technique of columns converging simultaneously from different directions upon known pirate lairs. He enjoyed a certain success with this tactic, with one group fixing the fortress in front while a second flanked it. But the problems of coordinating movements with columns without liaison, over terrain so difficult that precise timing was difficult to achieve, with unreliable guides, while the pirates would often escape once their position was outflanked, requiring a vigorous pursuit, limited the benefit of this technique.109 Lyautey, who seconded Gallieni in these operations, also complained that plans were compromised by rivalries among French officers “haunted by the idea that everyone thought only of stealing the affair from the other, each manoeuvering to escape the control of the Colonel, to pull off a coup de main, and then cover himself with a fait accompli.”110

  However, the worst feature of these lengthy columns was the strain they placed upon the legionnaires who made up their main striking force. Despite efforts to reduce their enormous load to a tent half containing several essentials rolled and tied over the shoulder, a rifle and 144 bullets, “it's still too much,” Carpeaux insisted. After several days of slashing one's way through thick forests, wading rivers, climbing peaks, falling down, sleeping rough in wet clothes, “there were those who lay down, absolutely refusing to get up even when one spoke to them of pirates.... ‘I don't give a damn! Gottfordom!... Let them cut my head off! ... At least it will be finished!’ That was their response.” At first, columns would halt until the men could be persuaded to move on or be collected by coolies with bamboo stretchers. When one legionnaire collapsed motionless in Carpeaux's column, his feet were burned with matches in an effort to prod him into action, until it was realized that he was dead.111 But as this attention to the salvation of each fallen legionnaire slowed the columns, the officers eventually ordered them disarmed and left behind. “The Black Flags ... may get you if they like,” Le Poer's captain told him when he became too ill to march, “but they sha'nt have your arms or ammunition.”112 Not unnaturally, some legionnaires, even those close to complete collapse, still retained enough desire for survival that they threatened to kill anyone who attempted to deprive them of their weapons: “I worked by persuasion,” Carpeaux remembered. “I sat next to the poor exhausted legionnaire. We sighed, vomiting in chorus. Then, when he least expected it, I took his rifle and I gave it to my boy, who was furious at having to carry it.”113

  In the evening, the corporal often sent some men back to look for stragglers, but if they discovered anything at all, it was usually the mutilated, decapitated bodies of their comrades. “The worst thing about Tonkin,” Flutsch was told,

  was that the Legion organized light columns: nothing but a canteen, a haversack and some bullets. There were no wagons, so if there w
ere sick or wounded, it was awful. It was often in the worst spots where, if we left a chap, we would find him butchered by the pirates who came to play at cutting him up or to stick a pug up his ass until it came out his shoulder. Now, we didn't approve of that. So when there was one who was on his last legs, we gave him a drink of tafia and then we said: “Now it's your last mouthful.” We would stick the barrel in his mouth and pull the trigger. Then we could go off with a clear conscience.114

  Le Poer believed that his captain really had no option but to strip dying legionnaires of their weapons.115 Not only did it deny weapons to the enemy, but also the sight of the mutilated bodies or heads of these legionnaires, which his captain forced everyone to look at, served to discourage straggling and stoke a desire for revenge. Carpeaux believed that the pirates missed a trick by failing to capitalize on the excessive fatigue of the legionnaires: “If they had made war to fight, we were so exhausted that they could have massacred all of us,” he claimed. He also observed that of fifty legionnaires who set out on an operation, barely ten were in a fit state to fight when they reached the objective.116

  It was clear that the system of large columns sent on extended operations, quite apart from their vulnerability and the fact that they forfeited surprise, therefore allowing the pirates to escape, was extremely costly in manpower, especially Legion manpower. Major Chabrol was of the opinion that these large columns were “necessarily sterile if the instrument meant to carry them out is worn out after fifteen days.” Smaller columns shorn of all but a few coolies operating for five or six days, he argued, would be far more profitable, for the men could be pushed to the brink of endurance and “they can recuperate and eat better when they return [to base].”117 Carpeaux believed that this unacceptable attrition of legionnaires even before they could be brought into combat caused Galliéni to alter radically the French strategy in upper Tonkin.118 That was probably part of the motivation for his shift to the “tâche d'huile” techniques for which he became celebrated in colonial military circles—that is, the establishment of a series of small posts which, acting aggressively, would eventually spread to control the surrounding countryside like an “oil spot.” It was also apparent, as Bugeaud had discovered a half-century earlier in Algeria, that he needed to control the population if he was to deprive the pirates of a livelihood. Smaller columns offered the added advantage of transforming operations into small local affairs that escaped attention in Hanoi and allowed colonial administrators to perpetuate the fiction that Tonkin was pacified.