Anna and the King of Siam

by Margaret Landon

  For a moment nothing stirred—the prostrate concubine, the motionless lashes, the women and children on their knees, nor the King, his face livid with rage, lips drawn back from teeth, veins distended. The pleading of the Siamese child, the revulsion of the English boy echoed through the hall. And from the deep pulse of maternity on the pavement rose a soundless tide of prayer that beat wave on wave against the heart of the King, entreating his pity.

  For a moment Anna thought that it might prevail. The King’s sagacity was not blinded by his passion. He measured instantly the danger in that challenge. He, the accuser, now stood accused by the instinctive protest of two children. If the thong fell again, it would strike deep into the sensitivities of every woman at his feet. Then anger surged up in him and he rejected reason and mercy. In a thick voice he shouted, “Remove the child and bind her!”

  It took the united strength of the two Amazons and a third woman to loosen Wani’s arms from her mother’s neck. She made no further sound. They dumped her down on the pavement and bound her hands and feet. Anna was close enough to see her face. The child looked steadily at the monster who lived in the form of her father, and all her faith in him and love for him were shattered. Her god was dead. Anna thought for a moment she had actually heard the thin sharp crack of the child’s heart breaking.

  Then there was no sound at all but the thud of the lash.

  It was weeks before Anna could persuade the little girl to come back to school. Anna tried a thousand ways to divert the princess from the depressed state into which she had withdrawn, but the child looked at her vacantly and did not respond. The more Anna thought about it the more important it seemed to her to find Mae Noi if possible. Wani had nothing to hope from her father, nor from her mother, who was again in prison.

  One aspect of the affair had puzzled Anna as soon as she began to think about it. Obviously, if Wani’s mother had been gambling, she had not been gambling alone. Furthermore, she had lost Wani’s slaves to someone, who was as guilty as she. But Khun Chom Kaeo alone had been publicly whipped. Why? There could be only one reason. The other party to the disreputable transaction was not to be punished. Then she was some woman high enough in the King’s favor to have her peccadillos overlooked. In all probability she was not a concubine, unless she was a recent favorite. The most likely possibility was that she was a princess, perhaps a sister of the King, or a niece.

  No one would tell Anna who had won Mae Noi, and this confirmed her suspicion that Mae Noi’s present owner was a great lady. The whole transaction and everyone concerned in it except Wani’s mother was being kept a profound secret. This could be only because some important person was to be shielded at all cost. Then, by a happy accident, she overheard a scrap of conversation, hardly more than the name of Mae Noi and the name of one of the princesses in the same sentence.

  Acting on the chance that she had discovered Mae Noi’s new owner, Anna called on the princess immediately, and asked her to restore Mae Noi to Wani. The princess did not deny her ownership of the slave, After a great deal of argument, coaxing, threatening, and pleading, Anna reached an agreement with her. She was to buy Mae Noi, and to pay for her freedom by a monthly installment of ten ticals, at that time six American dollars. At the end of one year the debt would be paid off. The princess agreed to free Mae Noi on that very day, however, and to bind Anna debtor in the slave’s place. The paper was drawn and Anna signed it gladly. Mae Noi was now her property. There was humor in the thought that she, who hated the whole institution of slavery, owned a slave. And she intended to keep on owning her, for if she were to give the papers of transfer to little Wani it was likely that Khun Chom Kaeo would once more gamble the slave away.

  Mae Noi was summoned by the princess and handed over to Anna. She threw up her arms and invoked the blessings of heaven on the Englishwoman. She kissed Anna’s hands and feet passionately, and wept tears of joy. Then the two set off for Wani’s house. The joy in the child’s unbelieving eyes, the wordless rush with which she threw herself into the arms of the only person on earth who could be depended upon to love her, stayed with Anna as long as she lived.

  29

  L’AFFAIRE FRANÇAISE

  All over the world 1864 and 1865 were troubled and uncertain years. In the United States the tide of the Civil War turned when Grant took over the Armies of the North in March of 1864. But ahead lay the final effort for victory, and still to come were the assassination of Lincoln and the long misery of reconstruction.

  In May of 1864 Maximilian and Carlotta arrived in a sullen Mexico where Juarez’s guerrillas would organize to bleed the French cause to death. Resentment against Napoleon was very deep in the United States. All through the years until 1867, when Maximilian was killed, there was talk of war with France. Napoleon was rumored to have solicited England’s help in the event that war came.

  Prussia had taken advantage of French involvement in Mexico to consolidate her position in central Europe by the Austro-Prussian and the Danish wars.

  In the East, China was only beginning to recover from the agony of the Taiping Rebellion, which had taken millions of lives and destroyed an incalculable amount of property. “Chinese” Gordon had finally dissolved his army in June, 1864.

  Repercussions from all these events were felt in Bangkok. French expansionism, particularly, was a constant worry to the King. The French were working swiftly to acquire colonies before the British could assume control of every weak nation in the Orient. India was lost to them, and Burma. Hongkong was already British and with it the cream of the south China trade. Malaya was fast being absorbed into the empire. But there remained Annam, as well as Siam and its tributaries.

  In 1843 M. Guizot, Minister of Foreign Affairs, had ordered Vice-Admiral Jean Cécille and M. Théodose de Lagrené to search in the East for a place where French commerce and, if necessary, the French Navy could find refuge. His instructions were specific: “It is not for France to be wanting in that part of the world, where already the other Nations of Europe are established. In case of shipwreck our vessels ought not to be without a place to repair, and ought not to be obliged to go to the Portuguese Colony of Macao, the English port of Hongkong, or the arsenal of Cavieto in the Spanish island of Luson.” The instructions gave preference to an island in a favorable situation away from hostile neighbors, where health conditions were good and revictualing possible. Admiral Cécille and M. de Lagrené followed their instructions with elementary simplicity. They looked around carefully and selected the Isle of Basilan, near Mindanao, at the southern end of the Sulu Archipelago. They landed a force and occupied it, and then obtained cession of it from the Sultan of Sulu. The Governor of the Philippines protested, arguing that it was Spanish territory, and he was backed up by the cabinet in Madrid. M. Guizot, who was engaged at the time with the delicate negotiations of the Spanish marriage, decided to drop the lesser question for the greater.

  Fifteen years later, in 1858, Admiral Rigault de Genouilly, who commanded the French naval station in China, was instructed to proceed to Annam and force King Tu-duc to desist from his persecution of French and Spanish priests and native Christians. The particular occasion was the death of Mgr. Diaz, Bishop of Tonkin, as the result of imprisonment and torture. There had been many Catholic priests in Siam and the countries of Indo-China for two centuries. In Siam their activities had been curtailed sharply by the government after the Siamese became convinced that they were the political agents of the French in the abortive effort of Louis XIV to acquire Siam by diplomacy near the end of the seventeenth century. Some few priests had remained throughout the eighteenth century, but they had been closely watched under constant suspicion of being spies. None of them had acquired political influence.

  But in Annam and Cambodia their activities had been less restricted. One of them, Pigneau de Béhaine, Bishop of Adran, had been instrumental in placing Tu-duc’s grandfather, the Emperor Gia Long, on the throne of Annam in 1790 in return for substantial promises to the French. Admiral d
e Genouilly’s advisers were Jesuit priests familiar with Indo-China from long residence. In Cambodia Mgr. Miche, Bishop of Dunsara, was involved in intrigues aimed at bringing that country under French control.

  Ostensibly Admiral de Genouilly’s expedition against Annam was punitive only. But several years later when it had been completed by one of his successors, the Revue des deux mondes of Paris commented: “By the force of circumstances (it is said in an official report) the end first proposed has been singularly overpast, and we have become conquerors when we only went to redress grievances.” The booty which the French secured from their treaty with Tu-duc in 1862 was three of the richest provinces of Annam and one island, taken by the force of French arms against a weak state in no way equipped to resist cannon and gunboats. These provinces were in the southern part of the peninsula around the city of Saigon, called by Europeans generally Cochin-China. They had belonged to the ancient kingdom of the Chams, which the Annamese had conquered less than two hundred years before.

  The American Consul at Bangkok had already informed the Secretary of State—“At Saigon the French have and are still collecting large quantities of naval and military stores. They have a fleet of about sixty vessels in and near that point, the magnitude of the force and preparations excite rumor everywhere in the East.” In July a private correspondent wrote: “You have doubtless heard that the French have recently made a treaty with Cochin-China by which the Cochin-Chinese have ceded three large rich provinces bordering on the Gulf of Siam and the China Sea to the French, and are to pay twelve millions of dollars as an indemnity for the expenses of the war. The indemnity goes to Spain for troops sent from Manila, and punishments inflicted by the Cochin-Chinese on Catholic priests. The French are making toward Bangkok, and many are of the opinion that in a few years all Siam will be under the French government.”

  Saigon appeared to be a very promising port to the French who had just taken it, but it would be even more so if the hinterland were also in French hands. The next plum was obviously Cambodia. What did it matter that in 1856 the French Ambassador who negotiated the treaty with Siam, M. Charles Louis Nicolas Maximillien de Montigny, had told King Mongkut that the Emperor recognized Siam’s suzerainty over Cambodia, and had instructed M. de Montigny to request King Mongkut’s permission to make a commercial treaty with the vassal?

  Cambodia lay just north of the three new provinces, on the Mekong River, which the French confidently expected to develop as a rival to the Pearl River that emptied into the China Sea at Hongkong. Furthermore, there existed one of those situations which have made the paths of imperialism easy. The King of Cambodia had died in 1860, leaving several sons. For more than a century no one had thought to dispute the right of Siam to decide the succession. Several of the Cambodian kings had come to Bangkok for their coronation. It was true that Annam, aggressive and acquisitive, had pushed farther and farther south and west, and had demanded and secured tribute from Cambodia. But even the kings of Annam, some of whom had been refugees in Bangkok themselves, had not questioned the King of Siam’s right to regulate the succession. The late King of Cambodia had spent half his life in Bangkok, and his sons had all been raised there. King Mongkut appointed the oldest of them to succeed his father as King Norodom, but one of the younger sons rebelled against his brother. When King Norodom was compelled to flee from his capital, the Siamese sent an expedition which defeated the pretender and restored Norodom to the throne.

  The French, once they had decided to control Cambodia, used both guile and force. They suggested to Norodom that they would be willing to recognize him as independent of Siam, if he would request them to do so, and to ensure him against the encroachments of his brothers. All that they required in return was that he place himself under their protection and grant them certain trifling commercial privileges. It was comparatively easy to plant in Norodom’s mind the suspicion that, if he refused, the wily Europeans would throw the weight of their gunboats and army back of one of his more tractable brothers. Vice-Admiral Pierre de la Grandière, Governor and Commander-in-Chief of Cochin-China, prepared a secret treaty and took it with him on a visit to King Norodom in 1863. With the help of Mgr. Miche the treaty was signed on August 11. Norodom immediately wrote King Mongkut:

  I requested a postponement in order to report to Bangkok, but he would not agree to it. If I had refused to sign the treaty, hostilities would have ensued. Your Majesty had told me that the French would conclude any such treaty at Bangkok, but on this occasion Admiral de la Grandière, Commander-in-Chief of the French fleet at Saigon, compelled me to conclude the treaty in Cambodia … However, I am as loyal to Your Majesty as before. I should prefer to remain Your Majesty’s subject to the end of my life. My feelings in this matter have not changed.

  But the camel’s nose was in the tent. The French had acquired a protectorate over Cambodia, which instead of making Norodom independent was to make him a puppet. Under the Siamese he had been free to do as he liked so long as he fulfilled his feudal obligations. Under the French he was more and more restricted. The treaty specified that the consuls of no other countries were to be admitted to Cambodia without French consent, French goods were to be free of export and import duties, and the French Resident at the capital was to have the rank of Grand Mandarin.

  But before the extent of French determination and ambition had become clear King Norodom had signed a treaty with King Mongkut on December 1, 1863. Actually there was little that was new in the treaty. It merely defined what had been the relationship between Cambodia and Siam for centuries. It stated flatly that “Cambodia is a tributary State of Siam”; and that “the Cambodian rulers have been accustomed to receive their appointments from Bangkok.” It arranged for the extradition of criminals, the regular payment of tribute, and other matters relating to trade and government procedure. Not surprisingly the French took violent exception to it when it was published for the first time in the Straits Times of Singapore on August 20, 1864.

  M. Aubaret had arrived in Bangkok in April of that year and undertook at once to secure the annulling of the treaty. He was irascible, unpleasant, ill-mannered. One of the local papers said of him:

  We fear from all accounts that M. Aubaret is a very unfit man in point of temperament to hold the post he has; and the French foreign minister could not have been aware of the discourtesies and almost bullying manner with which he discharged his function towards the government of Siam. French consuls and diplomats generally understand how to combine the SUAVITER IN MODO with the FORTITER IN RE, and had M. Aubaret been trained in the work in the proper school no doubt he could do so. The training of a man of war is certainly not suited to acquiring the necessary qualifications.

  In the course of a few months he was detested by everyone in Bangkok except a few of his compatriots who were as eager as he was to see the extension of French power in the East. His relations with the Siamese government were one long succession of quarrels. Sometimes when the King was more than ordinarily perturbed by the aggressive notes of M. Aubaret, he would send for Anna. He took for granted, since she was English, her sympathy for him and her hatred of the French. He would whisper to her that he wanted her to “consult Mr. Thomas George Knox.” He was too afraid of the French to write directly to London himself, even though he secretly longed for the intervention and protection of the English. When Anna would protest that Mr. Knox was too honorable to engage in an intrigue against a colleague even for the protection of British interests, he would rail at her indifference. He knew better than she did that Mr. Knox was constantly engaged with intrigues of one sort and another which concerned both Siam’s foreign and domestic relations.

  But he was not on the same friendly footing with Mr. Knox as he had been with Sir Robert Schomburgk, who had retired the year before. The King had not been pleased by the appointment of Mr. Knox as British Consul. Mr. Knox was too closely identified with the King’s brother, the Second King, to be acceptable to Mongkut. As in the case of M. Aubaret and the Fren
ch government, so in the case of Mr. Knox and the British government the King had not had the temerity to go so far as to explain that he was persona non grata. He had written a letter to Queen Victoria, however, commending Sir Robert Schomburgk, the retiring consul, very highly. He had also had a suggestion:

  We would beg your Majesty will be graciously pleased to direct Your Ministers to select a person of rank and possessing the like good qualities as Sir Robert Schomburgk to be appointed in the place of Sir Robert Schomburgk without delay. We also beg that the new Consul at Siam may be a person of intelligence and well acquainted with his duties. We would prefer a person sent direct from England, and whose good qualities and abilities the British Government is aware of from personal acquaintance.

  The British government had not seen fit to comply with these suggestions, and the King was without the support he believed he would have had from Sir Robert in the long quarrel with the French.

  Aubaret’s primary concern was to force the Siamese to recognize openly the de facto hold Admiral de la Grandière had established over Cambodia. He tried argument, threats, and intimidation, and at last on April 9, 1865, the French man-of-war Mitraille appeared in the port of Bangkok. It was the final effective argument. On April 14 under its frowning guns the Cambodian treaty with Siam was formally annulled by the Siamese government. On the same day a treaty was signed with France in which Siam renounced her rights in Cambodia and agreed to acknowledge the protectorate of the French there. Siam had lost the first of many large tracts of territory to France. In the end she succeeded in maintaining her sovereignty—although there were not many foreign residents of Bangkok in 1865 who would have thought that possible—but at the expense of more than 290,000 square miles of her territory.

  M. Aubaret was exultant. He immediately began another quarrel with the government, this time on behalf of a French priest, the Rev. John Martin, pastor of Conception Church in Bangkok. Fr. Martin had differed with one of his parishioners, a Siamese nobleman of venerable years but positive spirit, whose name was Phya Wiset. He was a high official in the military department of the government, and in addition he was the chief man among the Cambodian Catholics in Bangkok. M. Aubaret wrote to the King asking His Majesty to depose Phya Wiset and to replace him with a French officer, M. E. Lamache, who had been acting as drill master to the King’s troops, and who had the Siamese title of Luang Upathet Thuiyahan. The reasons that M. Aubaret advanced for the change were that Phya Wiset was known to be of bad character, and that the Emperor of France would be extremely gratified by the promotion of M. Lamache. The petition ended with the suggestion that the matter be consummated before the consul left for France at the beginning of September. It was not hard for the King to believe that both the consul and the Emperor would be glad to see a Frenchman in high military position in Siam. In time of crisis it might be of less benefit to His Majesty, however. He could hardly afford to place persons of doubtful loyalty in such strategically important posts. The request was presumptuous and the King decided to ignore it, since it was hardly likely that M. Aubaret would back up so relatively small a matter with a gunboat.