A Soldier of the Legion / An Englishman's Adventures Under the French Flag in Algeria and Tonquin

by George Manington

The Governor still refused, however, to authorise effective operations against the robbers; and it was not until several military convoys had been captured, and a good many officers and men slain, that M. de Lanessan finally agreed that the bandits were worthy of more serious attention than they had previously received. When the column actually commenced operations its work was considerably facilitated by the death of the famous chief Luu-Ky, from the effects of a wound received during the attack made on the convoy when Major Bonneau was killed; but, owing to the rugged nature of the country in which the operations took place, it was fully six weeks before the brigands were defeated and scattered. A good many of the bandits escaped into Kwang-si, and others fled to the mountainous regions in the north.

The telegrams and reports, coming in from the column, were of great interest to me, as my company was taking part in the battue. I happened to be on night duty one evening towards the end of September, when a wire was received stating that a detachment of my comrades had been caught in an ambuscade, among the rocky defiles of the Kai-Kinh, at a point not far from Cho-Trang, my former garrison. This despatch mentioned that Captain Watrin, our commander, was among the slain. Both Lipthay and myself were shocked at this news. We experienced, however, a certain relief on hearing next day that the body of our chief had not fallen into the hands of the enemy, though seven of the men were hit while carrying the corpse out of a narrow defile to a place of safety.

Several months later I met a man who had assisted at this engagement, and he informed me that the Legionaries went raving mad when they learned that this popular officer was killed, and, after rushing the position—to gain which they had to pass, one at a time, down a sort of narrow funnel, 50 feet long, swept by the enemy's fire—they slew every Chinaman found behind the improvised ramparts. Our losses were very heavy, owing to the strength of the position, but the men would not be denied, and took a terrible revenge for the death of their Captain. In October the rebel chief began to give trouble again. He made overtures for peace, and, profiting by the confidence thus inspired, and the absence of the majority of the troops from the region, he left his retreat in the forest, and captured and occupied a strongly-fortified village called Ban-Cuc, about 10 miles south of Nha-Nam. He established his headquarters there, and ravaged the surrounding district, until, a fortnight later, he was driven from his fastness by a column under Major Barr, and again escaped to the mountains with the majority of his men.

Notwithstanding the hard work we were having on the Brigade, time passed agreeably at Bac-Ninh, for there was plenty to see in the town when we were off duty—that is, for any one interested in studying the native industries and customs. Besides, to relieve the monotony of garrison life, the General had encouraged the French troops to organise a theatrical troupe, which gave some very amusing concerts and dramatic performances in a temporary theatre in the barracks, the Commandant of the Brigade and his staff never failing to attend. In October General Reste was recalled to France, and General Duchemin took over the supreme command of the troops in the colony, after which the animosity between the civilians and military subsided.

At this time I was often left in charge of the Intelligence Department, for Lieutenant Cassier and Lipthay were away three days in each week, making a new survey of the surrounding country. During one of these outings they were approached by the headman of a village, who begged them to come and slay a man-eating tiger that had established his headquarters in a cluster of trees inside the hamlet itself. The beast had been there three days already, and each morning had seized upon and devoured one of the unfortunate inhabitants, so that the remainder were afraid to leave their houses. The natives declared that they had employed every available means of driving the fierce brute away, but the beating of drums and gongs, the throwing of lances and lighted torches into the scrub, had only served to enrage their uninvited guest, and that very morning one of the villagers who had approached too near to the thicket, had been slain before the eyes of his comrades. The officer and my friend, taking with them their escort, consisting of ten native soldiers and a corporal, proceeded at once to the scene of the tragedy. The tirailleurs, instructed to shout and keep on firing off their rifles in the air from time to time, were told to advance upon the little clump of trees from three sides at once, while the lieutenant and Lipthay waited on the other. By these means they succeeded in driving the tiger out into the open, and he was despatched with a couple of well-aimed shots. I saw the beast when brought into Bac-Ninh; he was a fine specimen of his kind, measuring 9 feet 7 inches from the tip of the tail to the muzzle.

At this period of my service I was promoted to the post of archiviste, and thus was placed in charge of all the records of the Brigade. I should mention that at this time they were in a serious state of disorder, owing to the negligence of the secretary who had preceded me in this work; so that I was obliged to set to and sort the whole of them. It was somewhat weary work at first, wading through this mass of paper: the greater part consisting of musty, dust-covered dossiers, dating back, some of them, to the conquest of the country by the French. But there were documents of immense interest among this medley of yellow, evil-smelling and worm-eaten despatches; and the reconstruction, with the aid of all the original reports of the famous march of General de Négrier to Lang-son and the frontier of China, the subsequent retreat to Kep, and the enquiry prior to the court-martial held on the unfortunate Colonel Herbinger, who took over the command of the troops after the General was wounded at Ky-Lua, was a source of pure joy to me for several days.

In December General Voyron left Tonquin for France, and Colonel Gallieni, later a General and Governor of Madagascar, came down from Lang-son, where he was in command of the 1st Military Territory, and took over the service par interim. The Governor-General, who had already done away with the brigade at Son-Tay, thinking, no doubt, that this was a magnificent occasion to weaken still further the hand of the military party in the colony, decided to dispense with another brigadier, so he issued a decree abolishing the command at Bac-Ninh. Probably the fact that the announcement of this step would be hailed in France as another proof of the supposed pacification of the country was an inducement to the taking of this measure.

It is doubtful, from a military standpoint, if the change was a wise one; for, though it saved the colony about £4,800 a year—the salary of two generals—it was hardly possible for the Commander-in-Chief in Hanoï to deal directly with the commandants of the different regiments, military territories and garrisons in the Delta, who were scattered all over so vast a country. Indeed, the insufficiency of the new system was so evident that the authorities eventually returned to the original arrangement; and to-day, though the country is almost completely pacified, there exist two brigades in Tonquin and one in Cochin-China.

However, though M. de Lanessan planned this important change in the colony, the Colonial Ministry in Paris did not look at affairs in the same light. As soon as they learned that General Voyron was leaving, they sent out General Pernot to replace him, and the latter arrived in Indo-China to find that the post he had come out to fill, no longer existed.