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  Each brigade needed about half as many coolies to carry its rations and baggage as it had soldiers; these were conscripted by the mandarins, who routinely pocketed the generous pay the French offered, telling their people that this was a compulsory corvée. Tons of stores had to be broken down by the harassed commissariat into two-man pole-loads of about 70lb, while boxes and carrying-frames were knocked up on the spot by every carpenter who could be found. Army tinned meat and biscuit had to be supplemented with rice and fresh meat or fish, and in the procurement of these and other necessities the ever-efficient Chinese merchants proved of far more use than the few expatriate French businessmen.13

  At last all was ready, and 2nd Brigade – with its coolies, about 7,000 men – set off at first light on 6 March. The troops were to be shipped up the Thai Binh to its confluence with the Cau at Seven Pagodas in locally hired craft, and in the shallow-draft French Navy river gunboats that were such a valuable asset in all the colonial campaigns.14 On the 7th they passed through Seven Pagodas, then marched westwards across country north of the Rapids Canal; the plan was to rendezvous with 1st Brigade at the village of Chi, due south of Bac Ninh, and then to strike north together. Like many military plans, it did not long survive, but on this occasion because Négrier made better progress than expected; a sketch map by Captain Carteron shows 2nd Brigade not heading straight westwards for Chi but veering off increasingly to the north, in the direction of Bac Ninh.

  The 1st Brigade – 9,000 men all told – started its march eastward on 8 March. Avoiding the more direct route of the well-defended Mandarin Road, General Brière marched along south of the Rapids Canal, aiming to cross it and link up with Négrier at Chi. The 3-mile column had to keep to the dykes criss-crossing an enormous plain of paddy fields; some of the solid causeways between villages were several yards wide, but most dykes were mere field-boundaries so narrow that the men had to march in twos. Their thousands of boots soon tore up the soft surface, and since the dykes were only inches wider than the wheels of the artillery’s 80mm mountain guns the column was repeatedly delayed by guns slipping down the muddy slopes, to be retrieved only with backbreaking effort by gangs of coolies hauling on ropes while infantrymen slithered down to get their shoulders under the weight. Progress slowed to little more than half a mile an hour, and the mud-slathered troops were soon heavy-footed and staring, panting in the humidity and using their rifles as walking-sticks.

  While sympathetic, Dr Hocquard – forced to dawdle at the rear with his ambulance unit – was fascinated by the chance to survey the scene from 300 feet above. Just ahead of him in the column, towed along by gangs of blaspheming artillerymen, were two bobbing observation balloons, and since the brigade was often at a standstill the enthusiastic Lieutenant Julien of the division d’aérostiers was happy to take the doctor up for a bird’s-eye view.15 Spread out below him was the monotonous rectangular mosaic of reddish dykes dividing up the pale green of the winter-sown rice. At long intervals across the plain tall areca palms flagged the presence of little villages shaded by banana groves, and here and there a white pagoda glinted against the vast dark umbrella of an ancient, buttressed banyan tree, thrusting up from roots like anacondas and offering enough tempting shade for a whole company.

  At last the column got out of the paddies and began to make better speed across a plain planted with sugar cane and vegetables. The couriers and officers were able to remount their led horses and rush busily up and down the column; the big French horses that many officers had shipped out had quickly sickened as a result of the local climate and unfamiliar forage, so they were obliged to swallow their pride and employ Tonkinese ponies that made them look ridiculous. These were thickset, enduring, and as sure-footed as goats on the narrow dykes, but they stood only about 12 hands at the withers (chest-height on a man), attracting old jokes about mounting by standing with one’s legs apart and letting the pony walk between them. They could carry a European at least 25 miles in a day, were unfussy about their feed, and had only one unnerving habit: they could not trot – they had nothing in the gearbox between a walk and an all-out, bone-jarring gallop, and at the slightest encouragement they took off like a rocket. (When the elegant cavalryman Major Lyautey was introduced to them ten years later, he would write home: ‘It is neither a horse, nor a bicycle, it is a kind of machine on which you sit astride in defiance of all the rules, and which goes ahead under you like something mechanical, at a devil of a pace . . .’)16

  ON 11 MARCH, THE NAVAL INFANTRY and turcos of 1st Brigade turned north to cross the Rapids Canal. General Brière knew that 2nd Brigade on the north bank had been veering right, away from the planned rendezvous at Chi but closer to Bac Ninh. For three days now the Legion had been bundling half-hearted Guangxi soldiers out of forts and off hills, and by that night Négrier was impatiently awaiting the arrival of 1st Brigade on his left. They faced a belt of forts defending the eastern approaches to Bac Ninh in an arc, from Trong Son hill on their left to the Cau river on their right. On the morning of the 12th, Brière’s binoculars clearly showed Chinese forts on hills about 3 miles to his north, bedecked with forests of multicoloured flags. At around 11 am, 1st Brigade heard Négrier’s cannon off to their right front, fighting through villages 4 miles away on the Dap Cau road. He had hooked right and was pushing towards Bac Ninh from the north-east – and the troops in the forts facing 1st Brigade to the south could also hear the gunfire, from the direction that was their way home to China.

  French infantry tactics of the 1880s stressed the importance of the aggressive attack even against a well dug-in enemy, but these tactics were not simply a question of ‘heads up, keep going and damn the casualties’. Négrier was a commander who was known for disdaining the mindless attack-at-all-costs, preferring tactics calculated to save his men’s lives whenever he could, but on this occasion the Chinese refusal to fight in the open left him no option .17 Attacks were made in line – that is, by companies or battalions strung out side by side across an extended front – to the sound of drums and bugle-calls. During the advance the men were halted to fire volleys before moving forward again, and did not charge with the bayonet until the last moment. The importance of artillery to silence the enemy’s guns and to thin and demoralize his riflemen before the attack was well understood, as was the distinction between using some infantry units to deliver ‘preparatory fires’ of massed volleys to clear the enemy parapets, and others to make the shock assault. If the terrain forced a unit to close up and advance in a narrower, deeper formation, then large numbers of sharpshooters were sent skirmishing ahead to soften up the enemy by heavy sniping. (The desirability of putting in simultaneous flank attacks to divide the enemy’s fire was, of course, second nature.)

  Brière’s brigade advanced northwards on Bac Ninh across a plain of paddy fields studded with indifferently fortified hills; when they got within range the artillery pounded the forts, and the infantry shook out into lines and waded across the flooded paddies. The forts wreathed themselves in gunsmoke, but not for long; as soon as the muddy French infantry began to climb the slopes the garrisons pulled out, and by 4.30pm Brière had infantry on top of Trong Son hill. His 1st Brigade halted to camp for the night, but General de Négrier did not; at 9.30am the next morning a courier brought Brière word that 2nd Brigade had occupied the town the night before.

  When the Chinese in Bac Ninh had seen tricolours appearing one by one on hilltops along the whole arc from the south to the north-east, they had panicked. By 6pm the Legion’s 1st Battalion were facing the north-east gatehouse across the usual moat bridge; it did not seem to be held in any strength, and Négrier ordered an immediate attack. Artillery blasted the huge leaves of the gate; by 6.30pm légionnaires were tearing the splintered timber aside, and once again the now-Corporal Minnaert pushed through first (though he was jostled for the honour by Sergeant Christophel, who wanted a Military Medal of his own).18 There seems to have been hardly any infantry fighting; the Legion lost only 2 killed and 12 wounded, and w
hen they got inside they found the town mostly abandoned and scattered with the debris of hasty flight. The Chinese had run for the north with as much loot as they could carry. All the corpses wore the uniforms of Guangxi regulars; the Black Flags, watching from the hills west of the town, had quietly slipped away, and were already cruelly ravaging the countryside on their way back to their base at Hung Hoa.

  The enthusiastic looting of Bac Ninh by the porter-coolies, carrying burning torches after dark, became worrying when it was realized that the alleyways and shacks were strewn with abandoned munitions; next day Dr Hocquard found a house where loose gunpowder lay ankle-deep. The strongly fortified brick citadel could have forced the Legion to pay a bloody price if it had been defended stoutly. In its courtyard the soldiers proudly arranged their main trophies: an unused battery of Krupp guns, a Nordenfeldt machine gun and a large number of flags, including two splendid generals’ banners of richly coloured silks (which in time would find their way back to Sidi bel Abbès).19

  The consensus was that the Black Flags had been much tougher adversaries than these Chinese regulars, who had failed to exploit their numbers or their firepower against French troops who were at the disadvantage of advancing deep into enemy-held territory. French officers argued that the Chinese could not ‘manoeuvre’ – their commanders seemed to lack the initiative and skill to bring them out of fixed defences and move them around. The essence of battle command was, after all, to attack after creating an advantage by movement and timing, in the manner of a wrestler picking his moment and his grip, but the Chinese had simply waited for the French to come to them. That might still have been a winning tactic – they could have inflicted heavy, perhaps decisive casualties if they had held their positions stubbornly and used their firepower to the full – but they did not. They had artillery, but seldom used it properly; when French shells started to hit the outlying forts the garrisons had abandoned them without attempting to hold the walls against the coming infantry assaults, in which the defenders should have had all the advantages. It was only the lack of French numbers to encircle them first that allowed the Chinese to escape in their thousands. As for the légionnaires, they simply concluded that these ‘Celestials’ did not dare to stand and fight them. They would learn in time that there was more than one kind of Chinese regular.20

  ONLY A FEW WEEKS AFTER the French had driven the Guangxi troops back into the hills south of Lang Son, General Millot led both his brigades from Son Tay towards Hung Hoa; the Yunnan troops also fell back before them, up the Red river corridor towards the border at Lao Cai. Accepting, furiously, that the Delta was lost to him for the time being, Liu Yung-fu blew up his magazine, burned down Hung Hoa and marched most of his Black Flags north-west after the regulars, driving thousands of wretched local slaves with him. On 12 April, it was the two Legion battalions that occupied the ashes of Hung Hoa, marching up from the lowlands into ever-steepening ranges of wooded hills. The Black Flags had completely depopulated the countryside, but as they passed the orchards of deserted villages the troops discovered for the first time the juicy delights of guavas and lychees.

  Their commanders were more interested in the abandoned fortifications: for miles around Hung Hoa the Yunnan regulars had prepared the terrain for defence with professional skill. Spider-webs of zigzag trenches converged on squat dugouts with rifle slits at ground level, their tree-trunk roofs concealed with turf; they were built in interlocking series, with communication trenches leading back to forts. These main positions were surrounded by cleared fields of fire sown thickly with sharpened panji-stakes and barred with chevaux-de-frise; concentric systems of inner trenches and palisades covered the approaches to low, thick redoubts of rammed earth, complete with embrasures and inner gun platforms. Some French officers were thoughtful, as they gazed up into the waves of forest canopy stretching away to the purple mountains in the north.21

  The légionnaires of Lieutenant-Colonel Duchesne’s II/LE were left at Hung Hoa in garrison. Donnier’s I/LE then made a voyage from Viet Tri – the node for river transport on the Clear, Red and Black rivers – as far north as the shallow upper reaches of the Clear, and an exhausting four-day march through forested hills took them to the old abandoned fort of Tuyen Quang, where 3rd and 4th Companies took up residence while the other half of the unit returned to Hanoi.

  THE LÉGIONNAIRES WERE TIRED OUT and anaemic; the sky was permanently sealed by oppressive grey clouds, and up in the highlands the eve of the May monsoon brought chill morning fog and occasional downpours. Back down in the Delta, however, the heat was building towards its summer peak; the humidity was staggering for Europeans who had only disembarked about three months previously and who had been sent on operations without a chance to become acclimatized. The hospitals were full, and Dr Hocquard put much of the blame on the unrealistic loads the men were obliged to carry; a few weeks on campaign left them so worn down that they were easy prey for fever. June temperatures of 96°F (35°C) and high humidity prevented skin evaporation; the sweat ran off a man’s fingertips as if from a dripping tap, and even raising an arm felt like lifting a weight. Food spoiled in hours – the market price of a freshly killed chicken fell from 80 centimes to 20 between 7am and 1pm. While the French troops were as yet surprisingly free from cholera, the deadly local water – in the words of a later chemist, ‘a broth of cultures’ – still made dysentery a constant fact of life despite precautionary orders. A parched man had no way to boil water when he snatched a chance to refill his bottle on the march, from a ditch filled with run-off from fields fertilized with human excrement. 22

  By far the most widespread scourge, in both the Delta and the hills, was the endemic malaria, which ensured that an alarming proportion of any Legion company were always sick – sometimes dangerously so – for days on end. The literature was unhelpful, recommending that ‘men must not fall asleep without covering their stomachs with their sashes’ and that they cover their eyes when sleeping in the open air. Koch’s theoretical work on bacteria and the identification of the anopheline mosquito as the vector were still 10 to 15 years in the future, and even the modern-minded Dr Hocquard noted that it was unhealthy to sleep near reedbeds because of their ‘miasma’. Although quinine had been known for about 50 years, before the First World War its correct use and dosage were still matters of controversial guesswork. In the 1880s – 90s it was wrongly believed to be simply a curative rather than a preventative, so often was not given until symptoms appeared, by which time it was too late. Moreover, some doctors gave daily doses of only 200mg when five or six times that amount would have been more appropriate.

  Between 1884 and 1888 the death rate from malaria in Tonkin was 68 per 1,000 cases – a not apparently dramatic 7 per cent – but men who recovered continued to carry the parasites and suffered recurrent attacks thereafter, potentially multiplying that percentage each time. In heavily infested areas repeated reinfection left them particularly vulnerable to the much more dangerous blackwater fever. The first symptom of this, before the tell-tale dark urine and jaundiced skin became apparent, was a shivering chill and collapse; consequently there was a great deal of misdiagnosis as simple malaria, especially among troops who were days from the nearest doctor. Quinine was ineffective against blackwater fever, and continued dosing was actually harmful; the only possible treatments were complete rest, nursing care and a diet of fruit juices, broth or milk – none of which was readily available in a bamboo hut up-country. Fatalities from blackwater fever routinely ran at 20 per cent of cases, and often rose to 50 per cent.23 Just as lethal, and as basically untreatable, was scrub typhus, spread by rat mite larvae on the undergrowth and elephant grass; unlike other diseases this was more dangerous for older rather than younger soldiers, since it attacked the heart, lungs and circulation.

  IN BEIJING, THE DEFEATS of the spring of 1884 enraged the Dowager Empress, but a court faction led by a military realist, the Viceroy Li Hungchang, had increased their influence. On 11 May, at Tientsin, Li agreed draft peace
terms with a Captain Fournier; these allowed for a Chinese withdrawal from Tonkin (including both regulars and Black Flags) without an explicit surrender of suzerainty. Fatally, however, the timetable for the withdrawal – into Guangxi by 6 June, and into the more distant Yunnan by 26 June – was the subject of a later private conversation that was not written into the formal treaty, and Fournier was too eager to cable news of his success. He informed General Millot of those dates, and Prime Minister Ferry announced them to the National Assembly on 20 May.

  On 6 June, announcing that Chinese suzerainty had been signed away by Beijing, the French envoy Patenôtre imposed a further treaty on the Annamese king at Hué, insisting on the destruction of the ancient silver seal of fealty to the Dragon Throne. This was not King Hiep Hoa who had signed the Harmand treaty the previous August; the regents had done away with him in November, replacing him with yet another puppet, Kien Phuoc. This disposable figurehead would also die suddenly, on 31 July, and the regents enthroned the 14-year-old Ham Nghi – the fifth King of Annam since the previous July.

  Any hope of immediate peace was short-lived. Unaware that Li Hungchang had not dared to discuss the withdrawal dates with Beijing – whose orders to their troops were therefore simply to hold their present positions and await instructions – General Millot sent a battalion under Lieutenant-Colonel Dugenne north-east from Bac Ninh to occupy Lang Son, the strategic town just short of the Chinese border. On 23 June, after a march delayed by washed-out roads and monsoon weather, the column came upon a Chinese post north of Bac Le. When its commander asked for time to seek further instructions, Dugenne gave the Chinese officer an hour to pull out. His attempt to enforce this bad-tempered ultimatum cost him 22 men killed and 60 wounded, and a painful retreat from what the French ridiculously called ‘a treacherous ambush’.24