Capture of Hưng Hóa

Capture of Hung Hoa
Part of Tonkin campaign
Black Flag entrenchments at Hung Hoa
Date 12 April 1884 Location Hung Hoa, Northern Vietnam Result French victory
Belligerents
France	Black Flag Army Vietnam
Commanders and leaders
Charles-Théodore Millot Louis Brière de l'Isle François de Négrier	Liu Yongfu Hoang Ke Viem
Strength
10,000 infantry several gunboats	around 3,000 Black Flag soldiers 6,000 Vietnamese soldiers
Casualties and losses
17 men drowned, no battle casualties	not known, certainly far higher than French casualties

The Capture of Hung Hoa (12 April 1884) was an important French victory in the Tonkin campaign (1883–86).

Background

Hung Hoa was captured by the French a month to the day after the capture of Bac Ninh. General Charles-Théodore Millot, the commander-in-chief of the Tonkin Expeditionary Corps, followed up his victory in the Bac Ninh campaign by mopping up scattered Chinese garrisons left behind by the Guangxi Army after the rout at Bac Ninh and by mounting a major campaign against Liu Yongfu's Black Flag Army, which had retreated to Hung Hoa. In April 1884 Millot advanced on Hung Hoa with both brigades of the Tonkin Expeditionary Corps.

March to Hung Hoa, 4–10 April 1884

French artillery crosses the Black River during the march to Hung Hoa, April 1884

The base for the Hung Hoa campaign was Son Tay. General Louis Brière de l'Isle's 1st Brigade set out from Hanoi on 5 April, after parading through the town in an imposing display of strength. General François de Négrier's 2nd Brigade, which was deployed around Bac Ninh and Phu Liang Giang, set off for Hanoi on 4 April. On 5 April the 2nd Brigade spent the entire day crossing the Red River, and on 6 April it also paraded through Hanoi on its way west to Son Tay. Marching overland from Hanoi past the battlefields of 1883, the two brigades reached Son Tay on 6 and 7 April respectively.

On 8 April both brigades left Son Tay and marched towards the Black River, so as to approach Hung Hoa from the south and the southeast respectively. Millot sent Colonel Belin’s marine infantry marching regiment on ahead to seize the village of Tai Bac on the Black River and fortify it as a base for the river crossing and subsequent march on Hung Hoa.

On 10 April, after a day spent scouting ahead, Brière de l'Isle's 1st Brigade reached the Black River. On 11 April the brigade set off southwards at dawn on a wide outflanking march to threaten Liu Yongfu's line of retreat. The brigade crossed the Black River at Bat Bac and then marched northwest along the mountain path to Xuan Dong and Chic Nau, coming in on Hung Hoa from the south.

French soldiers at a halt on the Clear River during the march to Hung Hoa, April 1884

Meanwhile, de Négrier's 2nd Brigade painfully crossed the Black River at Vu Chu on 10 April. Millot's staff had assembled fifteen junks and two tugs for this operation, but de Négrier had nearly 4,000 men to get across and a large artillery train. Five French soldiers and a dozen coolies, too impatient to wait their turn to cross the river by junk, tried to swim across and were carried away by the strong current and drowned. These were the only French casualties of the Hung Hoa operation.

At 6 a.m. on 11 April the 2nd Brigade left the Black River and marched due west towards Hung Hoa. At 9 a.m. the brigade’s advance guard occupied a position on a wooded height overlooking the Red River above the village of Trung Xa. The Trung Xa plateau, thickly covered in tall umbrella pines, offered an ideal observation post and firing platform for the French artillery. Hung Hoa, on the southern bank of the Red River, was clearly visible five kilometres to the west. By 10 a.m. Millot's heavy artillery and the bulk of the 2nd Brigade's infantry were assembled on the Trung Xa plateau. The Black Flags remained passively inside Hung Hoa, and made no attempt to dispute the French advance.

Millot had hoped that the gunboats of the Tonkin Flotilla could support the attack, but Hache and Yatagan drew too much water to sail beyond the confluence of the Red River and the Clear River. Only Trombe and Éclair were able to reach the junction of the Red and Black Rivers and take a part in the coming battle.

Bombardment and capture of Hung Hoa, 11–12 April 1884

The Black Flags had thrown up an impressive series of fortifications around Hung Hoa, but Millot made no attempt to attack the town's formidable defences. Having pinned the Black Flags frontally with General de Négrier's 2nd Brigade, he subjected Hung Hoa to a ferocious artillery bombardment from the Trung Xa heights with two 80-millimetre and one 90-millimetre artillery batteries. The bombardment began at 10 a.m. on 11 April and lasted for several hours. It set many buildings inside Hung Hoa alight and inflicted heavy casualties on the Black Flag defenders. The French, by contrast, did not suffer a single battle casualty. The soldiers of the 2nd Brigade spent the day in complete idleness, enjoying the warm spring sunshine and watching the smoke rise silently from Hung Hoa as the French artillery methodically reduced the town to ruins.

While Millot's artillery bombarded Hung Hoa, General Louis Brière de l'Isle's 1st Brigade successfully executed its flank march to the south of Hung Hoa. On the evening of 11 April, seeing Brière de l'Isle's Turcos and marine infantry emerging behind their flank at Xuan Dong, the Black Flags evacuated Hung Hoa before they were trapped inside it. They set alight the remaining buildings before they left, and on the following morning the French found the town completely abandoned.

Order of the day

On 13 April 1884 Millot issued the following order of the day to mark the capture of Hung Hoa:

Un mois jour pour jour après la prise de Bac-Ninh, vous entrez dans la citadelle de Hong-Hoa. C’est une nouvelle et brillante victoire, dont la République vous remercie. Si j’ai été assez heureux pour épargner votre sang, vous m’avez en revanche prodigué votre énergie dans les circonstances fréquentes où j’ai dû y faire appel. Je suis heureux de vous le dire. Si vous avez agrandi notre possession d’une belle province, vous avez prouvé de nouveau que la France avait de vigoureux soldats animés du plus pur patriotisme.

(One month to the day after the capture of Bac Ninh you have entered the citadel of Hung Hoa. This is a new and splendid victory for which the Republic thanks you. If I have been fortunate enough to have spared your blood, you have repaid me by giving lavishly of your energy on the many occasions I have had to call upon it. I am happy to say that you have not only added a fair province to our possessions but have once again shown that France has vigorous soldiers animated by the purest kind of patriotism.)

Aftermath

Given its strategic importance, Millot decided to occupy Hung Hoa. He appointed Lieutenant-Colonel Jacques Duchesne commandant supérieur of Hung Hoa, and the town was garrisonned with the 1st and 2nd Legion Battalions (Lieutenant-Colonel Donnier and chef de bataillon Hutin).

The Black Flag Army retreated westwards up the Red River to Thanh Quan, while Prince Hoang Ke Viem's Vietnamese forces fell back southwards from Dong Yan towards the Annam-Tonkin border, making for the sanctuary of the province of Thanh Hoa, where the French had not yet installed any garrisons. Millot dispatched Lieutenant-Colonel Letellier with two Turco battalions and supporting cavalry to harry Liu Yongfu's retreat, and sent General Brière de l'Isle with the rest of the 1st Brigade in pursuit of Prince Hoang.

During the last fortnight of April Brière de l'Isle pursued Prince Hoang's forces through the southeast provinces of Tonkin, through towns and villages that had never before seen a French soldier. After entering Dong Yan and destroying its citadel he faced about and marched down to the Black River, crossed the river at Gran Co, then left the mountains and led his troops down the Day River to Ninh Binh, accepting the submission of the small prefectures of Phu Quat Hoai, Phung Hung Hoa and Phu He as he went. Millot also sent the gunboats Carabine to Phu Ly and Mousqueton to Ninh Binh to further intimidate the inhabitants of the southeast provinces and to hunt down stragglers from Prince Hoang’s army.

In early May Brière de l'Isle cornered Prince Hoang in Phu Ngo, several kilometres to the northwest of Ninh Binh, but the French government forbade him to attack the Vietnamese defences, having just received news that China was ready to treat with France over the future of Tonkin.

Further French successes in the spring of 1884, including the capture of Thai Nguyen, had convinced the Empress Dowager Cixi that China should come to terms, and an accord was reached between France and China in May. The negotiations took place in Tianjin (Tientsin). Li Hongzhang, the leader of the Chinese moderates, represented China; and Captain François-Ernest Fournier, commander of the French cruiser Volta, represented France. The Tientsin Accord, concluded on 11 May 1884, provided for a Chinese troop withdrawal from Tonkin in return for a comprehensive treaty that would settle details of trade and commerce between France and China and provide for the demarcation of its disputed border with Vietnam.

In theory, the Tientsin Accord should have resolved the confrontation between France and China in Tonkin, but a clash between French and Chinese troops at Bac Le on 23 June 1884 plunged both countries into a fresh crisis. China's refusal to pay an indemnity for the Bac Le ambush led two months later to the outbreak of the Sino-French war (August 1884–April 1885).

References

• Challan de Belval, Au Tonkin 1884–1885: notes, souvenirs et impressions (Paris, 1904)
• Huard, La guerre du Tonkin (Paris, 1887)
• Lung Chang [龍章], Yueh-nan yu Chung-fa chan-cheng [越南與中法戰爭, Vietnam and the Sino-French War] (Taipei, 1993)
• Sarrat, L., Journal d'un marsouin au Tonkin, 1883–1886 (Paris, 1887)
• Thomazi, A., Histoire militaire de l’Indochine française (Hanoi, 1931)
• Thomazi, A., La conquête de l'Indochine (Paris, 1934)