Siege of Đà Nẵng

Infobox Military Conflict
conflict=Siege of Đà Nẵng


caption=The French and the Spanish disembarking in Danang in 1858.
partof=the Cochinchina campaign
date=1 September, 1858 - 22 March 1860
place=Đà Nẵng, South Central Coast of Viet Nam
result=Vietnamese victory
combatant1=
combatant2=)
commander1=Charles Rigault de Genouilly
commander2=Nguyen Tri Phuong
strength1=1 50-gun frigate
2 12-gun corvettes
5 steam-gunboats
5 steam transports
1 despatch vessel
1,000 French marine infantry
1,000 Filipino "chasseurs Tagals"
strength2=unknown
casualties1=128 killed and wounded, several hundred deaths from cholera
casualties2=unknown
campaign=The Siege of Đà Nẵng (September 1858–March 1860) was a Vietnamese victory during the Cochinchina campaign, a punitive campaign against the Vietnamese launched by France and Spain in 1858. A joint Franco-Spanish expedition under the command of Admiral Charles Rigault de Genouilly captured Đà Nẵng (then known as Tourane) in September 1858, but was then besieged in the city by the Vietnamese and forced eventually to evacuate it in March 1860.

Background

In 1857 the Vietnamese emperor Tu Duc executed two Spanish Catholic missionaries. This was neither the first nor the last such incident, and on previous occasions the French government had overlooked such provocations. On this occasion Tu Duc’s timing was terrible. France and Britain had just despatched a joint military expedition to the Far East to chastise China, and the French had troops to hand with which to intervene in Vietnam. In November 1857 the French emperor Napoleon III authorised Admiral Charles Rigault de Genouilly to launch a punitive expedition to teach the Vietnamese a long-overdue lesson. In the following September, a joint French and Spanish expedition landed at Tourane.

Forces engaged

Rigault de Genouilly's flagship was the screw-powered 50-gun frigate "Némésis". He was accompanied by the screw-powered 12-gun corvettes "Primauguet" and "Phlégéton", the steam-gunboats "Alarme", "Avalanche", "Dragonne", "Fusée" and "Mitraille", and the steam transports "Durance", "Saône", "Gironde", "Dordogne" and "Meurthe". The Spanish navy was represented by the dispatch vessel "El Cano". The transports carried a landing force of 1,000 French marine infantry and 1,000 Filipino light infantry ("chasseurs Tagals") drawn from the Spanish garrison of the Philippines, [Thomazi, "La conquête de l'Indochine", 29] consisting of 450 native Filipino troops and 550 Spanish troops. ["China and Her Neighbours; France in Indo-China, Russia and China, India..." By R S Gundry Page 6 [http://books.google.com/books?id=OuK4czhDyLcC&pg=PA6&dq=N%C3%A9m%C3%A9sis+Genouilly&lr=&sig=ACfU3U1goQc-H9JK8FkgGMLkOCxPdnSb7Q] ]

Capture of Tourane

The French admiral summoned the garrison of Tourane to hand over the forts defending the town on 1 September 1858. The summons was rejected, and the landing companies of "Némésis", "Primauguet" and "Phlégéton" were immediately put ashore on the Tien Cha peninsula under the orders of "capitaine de vaisseau" Reynaud. French infantry went ashore after them. The attackers captured the forts defending the town, occupied Tourane, and dug in on the Tien Cha peninsula. [Thomazi, "La conquête de l'Indochine", 30–1]

Siege of Tourane

Admiral Rigault de Genouilly left Tourane with the bulk of his forces on 2 February 1859, to launch an attack on Saigon. The French left only a small garrison of soldiers and sailors at Tourane, under the command of "capitaine de vaisseau" Thoyon, and two gunboats. Meanwhile, the Tourane peninsula had been placed under siege by a Vietnamese army under the command of Nguyen Tri Phuong. The siege lasted for several months, though there was relatively little fighting. The Vietnamese adopted a scorched earth policy, laying waste the countryside around Tourane in the hope of starving the French and Spanish out. [Thomazi, "La conquête de l'Indochine", 38–9]

In April 1859, in the wake of his capture of Saigon on 17 February, Rigault de Genouilly returned to Tourane with the bulk of his forces to reinforce Thoyon's hard-pressed garrison. The French made two attacks on the Vietnamese positions later in the year. On 8 May Rigault de Genouilly personally led 1,500 French soldiers and sailors in a successful assault on the Vietnamese trenches. A number of Vietnamese earthworks were destroyed and several cannon were captured and brought back to the French lines. A second assault was made on 15 September, equally successfully. French casualties in these two attacks were 128 men killed and wounded. Nevertheless, the French were unable to break the siege. [Thomazi, "La conquête de l'Indochine", 39]

Meanwhile, disease was taking a heavy toll of the allied expedition. Cholera broke out both among the allied landing force and on the warships. Between 1 June and 20 June 1859, 200 French troops died from cholera in Tourane, and one battalion that joined the garrison at the end of April 1859 lost a third of its strength in two months. [Thomazi, "La conquête de l'Indochine", 38]

Eventually the French decided to evacuate Tourane and concentrate their efforts around Saigon. They disarmed and blew up the Vietnamese forts they had occupied and burned their barrack huts. The landing force re-embarked on 22 March 1860, without hindrance from the Vietnamese. [Thomazi, "La conquête de l'Indochine", 41]

Aftermath

The Tourane expedition had tied down French resources unprofitably and drained French manpower, and the eventual evacuation of Tourane was an embarrassing confession of failure. In the long run, however, the failure of the expedition made no difference to the course of the war. The military stalemate around Saigon was broken in 1860, when the ending of the war with China freed French military resources for action in Vietnam. The French powerfully reinforced their armies in Cochinchina, and the allies eventually began to gain the upper hand. Bien Hoa and My Tho fell to the French, and in 1862 Tu Duc sued for peace. By then the French were not in a merciful mood. What had begun as a minor punitive expedition had turned into a long, bitter and costly war. It was unthinkable that France should emerge from this struggle empty-handed, and Tu Duc was forced to cede the three southernmost provinces of Vietnam (Bien Hoa, Gia Dinh and Dinh Tuong) to France. Thus, casually, was born the French colony of Cochinchina, with its capital at Saigon.

ee also

* Bombardment of Đà Nẵng in 1847

Notes

References

* Thomazi, A., "La conquête de l'Indochine" (Paris, 1934)
* Thomazi, A., "Histoire militaire de l'Indochine français" (Hanoi, 1931)