764 



the crimes of his father, but took warning from 

 the successes of English arms in tfie opium war. 

 In 1847 Commodore Lapierre arrived in Tu- 

 ron with two war- vessels, to demand the re- 

 ligious freedom from the Anamite monarch 

 which the Emperor of China had recently 

 granted by treaty. The French commander 

 was warned during the negotiations of an in- 

 tended massacre, and prepared for combat. 

 Anamite armed craft collected in the harbor, 

 and, when they did not depart upon Lapierre's 

 warning, he opened fire and annihilated the 

 whole fleet. A few months later Thieutri's 

 son succeeded him, under the name of Tuduc. 

 On the pretext that the Christian priests in- 

 trigued with one of the imperial princes, he 

 ordered his officers to throw into the water 

 every missionary who fell into their hands. 

 In 1851 and 1852 many were executed. After 

 the termination of the Crimean War, another 

 French vessel of war brought a written mes- 

 sage, which the Emperor refused to receive. 

 The commander thereupon bombarded the port 

 and landed troops. Yet after long procrasti- 

 nation the French force sailed away without 

 obtaining any definite terms. This embold- 

 ened Tuduc to persist in his persecutions. 

 One of the missionaries, Bishop Pellerin, at 

 last moved Napoleon III to dispatch another 

 expedition, which, under the command of Ad- 

 miral Rigault de Genouilly, arrived at Turon 

 in August, 1858. The French took the town 

 by assault, and proceeded to fortify it, but by 

 the unwholesome climate the force was soon 

 so reduced that it could not hold the place. 

 The troops therefore re-embarked, and in the 

 beginning of 1859 took Saigon, in Cambodia, 

 by storm. Admiral Rigault de Genouilly wa8 

 replaced by Admiral Page. While the latter 

 was planning operations against Turon and 

 Hue, the former commander convinced Napo- 

 leon of the importance of Saigon and its dis- 

 trict. The consequence was, that in the follow- 

 ing years the French continued the conquest of 

 Cambodia, fortified and garrisoned Saigon, and 

 repelled the Anamites several times. On June 

 5, 1862, Tuduc was obliged to sign a treaty 

 which reduced his sovereign rights, and ac- 

 cepted French protection. He would not have 

 submitted to such terms if the Tonquinese had 

 not broken out in rebellion at that time. The 

 leader of the rebel army was Pedro Phuong, a 

 descendant of an ancient dynastic family and a 

 zealous Catholic. The French availed them- 

 selves of the difficulties between Anam and 

 Tonquin to encroach upon the powers of Tu- 

 duc until, in 1874, after the campaign of 1873, 

 in which Francois Gamier lost his life, they 

 extorted from him a treaty which reduced him 

 to vassalage. It admitted the French to three 

 ports of Anam, with the right of maintaining 

 a garrison, required the King of Anam to con- 

 form his foreign policy to the wishes of France, 

 and promised him assistance in preserving or- 

 der, suppressing piracy, and defending his land 

 against foreign attacks. 



Tuduc, instead of carrying out his part of the 

 compact, embraced the ancient feudatory rela- 

 tion to China, which the Peking Government 

 now hastened to reassert, in order to escape 

 the French protectorate. The French Govern- 

 ment made no attempt to enforce the treaty, 

 but postponed the matter year after year, un- 

 til the events in Egypt and the new impulses to 

 external activity spurred them to action. 



The absorption of Anam and Tonquin would 

 open the gates of China under as favorable con- 

 ditions as were enjoyed by English merchants in 

 Hong- Kong and Canton. The Alpine province 

 of Yunnan, inhabited by Chinese Mohamme- 

 dans and aboriginal Mino-tses, is bound by very 

 loose political ties to the Celestial Empire. 

 They held out many years against the Peking 

 Government before their rebellion was sup- 

 pressed in 1872. It was this rebellion which 

 suggested to the Indian Government, to which 

 the rebels appealed for assistance, the possibil- 

 ity of reopening the great commercial route of 

 antiquity through Burmali to the mouth of the 

 Irrawaddy. The British home authorities, re- 

 luctant to give any encouragement to the rebel 

 King, Suleiman, recalled the expedition of Maj. 

 Sladen. The second expedition, in 1874, was 

 driven back by the Chinese, after the in- 

 terpreter Margary had first been murdered. 

 The route has only recently been explored by 

 Mr. Colquhoun. The rebellion of Suleiman 

 first put, likewise, the Red river route into the 

 minds of the French, and was the occasion of 

 the last war in Tonquin. The French mer- 

 chant Dupuis was commissioned by the Gov- 

 ernor of Yunnan to explore the Red river 

 with reference to transporting materials of 

 war into the disturbed province. The Ton- 

 quin authorities forbade the transport of arms 

 and ammunition, Dupuis appealed to his gov- 

 ernment to punish the Tonquinese, and gallant 

 young French officers were eager for the ad- 

 venture. With an incredibly small force they 

 stormed citadels, routed armies of the worth- 

 less Anamese troops, and occupied the whole 

 country, meeting with no formidable resistance 

 until they encountered the Black Flags. 



The inaccessible regions in the interior of 

 China were the objective point of the aggres- 

 sive policy in Burmah of the late British Gov- 

 ernment. The Red river has every advantage 

 over the overland commercial route from Brit- 

 ish Burmah. It is an uninterrupted water 

 route ; the distance from the ocean is much 

 shorter ; and it passes through a country capa- 

 ble of a high material development. 



Controversy with China. The treaty was con- 

 cluded at Saigon, March 15, 1874, between 

 France and Tuduc. The text was communi- 

 cated to the Chinese Government on March 

 25, 1875. A protest was immediately (June 

 10th) returned by China, which declared that 

 it refused to recognize the treaty. In 1880 

 the Marquis Tseng interrogated M. de Freyci- 

 net with reference to a rumored French ex- 

 pedition to Tonquin, and was assured that no 





