Tân Sở, Vietnam
Early August, 1884
As he approaches Phan Đình Phùng’s quarter with a bowl of simple breakfast, the twenty-years-old military officer Cao Thắng finds the wooden hut unusually quiet. He calls out Phan’s name several times with no answer. He enters the house and finds the commander lying unconscious with a scorching fever in his spartan bamboo bed. He immediately rushes out and find medicinal plants which he boils and administers to the commander, and orders two recruits to attend to the commander and cool his fever with damp clothes all day and night.
It is not until the next morning that Phan recovers from his fever. One of the attendants hurries to bring him breakfast. After two big bowls of porridge to regain some strength, he slowly pushes himself out of bed and walks out of the hut to look for Cao who are giving martial drills to the recruits.
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| Imperial city of Hue |
As soon as he sees Phan, Cao rushes to hold his arm for support and sits him on a wooden bench, while the fifty or so recruits pause to look. Cao shouts at them to continue with the sword drills.
Cao: Are you feeling better, Commander?
Phan nods: Yes, thank you for taking care of me. It’s embarrassing. In all of my 37 years, I have never been so sick.
Cao: It’s the jungle, Commander. It’s to be expected for anyone. But after a few times with the right medicine, your body will become stronger.
Phan: Where did you find the right medicine in the jungle like this?
Cao: In the jungle, sir. Where else? The forest has all the medicine we ever need.
Phan: How do you know what plants to use?
Cao: I learned it from the indigenous people of the mountains since I was young, sir.
Phan: How many times do I have to tell you not to call me sir?
Cao: How can I not, sir? You are a scholar gentry placing first at the national mandarinate exam, and I would still be a good-for-nothing bandit or, worse, dead, if your brother had not protected me from the royal troop ten years ago.
Phan: That doesn’t matter. We are now equal as comrades fighting for our country. Apart from you, who has the knowledge and skills to train our soldiers? I am just a stupid mandarin who knows nothing practical in my life.
Cao: You know more than all of us put together and a hundred times more. We are just a bunch of ragtag urchins. Do you really think we can fight the French?
Phan: If not people like you who have been fighting them for years, who else? People at the court have just been fooling themselves that they can stop the French, but they will never stop until they own all of Vietnam.
Cao: I am sure there is still hope, sir.
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| A portrait of Phan Đình Phùng |
Phan shakes his head gently and pulls out a piece of paper from his pocket.
Phan: Two days ago I received a pigeon message from Hue. The young Emperor Kiến Phúc died several days ago, and another fifteen-year-old was put on the throne. They call him Emperor Hàm Nghi.
Cao: That’s terrible, sir. That’s how many emperors since Emperor Tự Đức died in the middle of last year?
Phan nods: Well, Tự Đức was the fourth emperor of the Nguyễn Dynasty. This new one is number eight. The fourth one in just over a year. And I have a premonition that he will not last long. The whole court will soon fall under French control…
Cao lowers his voice: In that case, you were absolutely right to propose a plan to build this secret base to Regent Tôn Thất Thuyết.
Phan nods: I was hoping to be proven wrong, but we must prepare for the worse. It was during my inspection trip to the North to address the complaints against corrupt or incompetent officials that I discovered this area and wrote the book of Vietnam geography. But of course, I left out a lot of strategic details to keep them from the French. There are too many French collaborators at court.
Cao: What happened to the three emperors before this one, sir?
Phan: Well, you know that Tự Đức couldn’t have children due to smallpox when he was young, so he adopted three nephews as sons. Before he died, he chose the youngest Kiến Phúc because he’s the least likely to be corrupted by the French. Regent Tôn and I secretly agreed that Kiến Phúc would not survive the more powerful royal family members under French influence, so these would have to be eliminated before he can rule effectively. So in contradiction to the late emperor’s will, the Regent arranged to have the oldest adoptee Dục Đức crowned as number five just to have him deposed and imprisoned with trivial accusations three days later. To avoid suspicions from French spies, I made a false pretest against the Regent’s actions for him to have me stripped of my position, thrown briefly into jail, and exiled according to our plan. That’s when I came to find you to help me execute the next steps.
Cao: What happened at the court after you left, sir?
Phan: After the execution, a senior member of the royal family, a half-brother of Emperor Tự Đức, asserted his claim on the throne as number six and the Regent Tôn failed to stop him. But Hiệp Hòa made a fatal mistake when he sent his mandarins to sign the Harmand Treaty after their attack on Thuan An Fort. Accusing him of bringing an elephant home to trample his ancestors' grave, the Regent managed to depose and force him to take poison after four months on the throne.
Cao: I see. That’s how Kiến Phúc finally became emperor as intended. I heard he was often in bad health, but who would have thought that he would die so soon after all the troubles to secure his seventh place?
Phan: I am not sure how it happened. The pigeon message didn’t give any details. But I wouldn’t rule out poison by a French agent.
Cao: Then we must do everything to ensure that our new emperor is safe. May the ancestral emperors protect him too.
Phan: That was on my mind too. May be that’s why in my feverish dream I saw myself back in Hue visiting the tomb of the first emperors.
At this point, the recruits, having finished their drills, gather around the two superiors. Cao tells them to go away, but Phan says they can stay to hear what he has to say. As soon as Cao nods, all the recruits come to sit around them.
Cao: Please describe the imperial tombs to me, sir, if you don’t mind. None of us here have seen Hue and will probably never get to see the imperial city in this life.
Phan: The tomb of Emperor Gia Long, the dynasty founder, lies the furthest downstream from the citadel. After reaching the site on a boat, you walk on a beautiful path through a peaceful pine forest situated between forty-two hills representing a protective wall surrounding the highest hill where the emperor lies. Then you walk up marble steps until you find Minh Thanh Temple containing the emperor and the queen’s funerary tablets and personal items.
Then you go down a few steps through an ornate gate toward the Courtyard of Salutation with ten stone mandarins and their horses, elephants, and imperial guards. In front, there is a half-moon pond flanked by stone dragons. Then you walk up six levels of marble terraces lined with royal dragons and clouds until you reach the royal burial site on the very top where the emperor’s and the queen’s magnificent graves are laid side by side in the enclosure sealed with a bronze gate.
Cao: Wow. It must be a very special place.
Phan nods: The site was chosen by Fengshui experts befitting the emperor who united Vietnam, north and south. Nearby there’s a large stone stele with the inscription of his biography, recalling his life’s hardships including the early years when he spent in exile at Siamese court feeling like ‘a black leopard in a cage’ and ‘a dragon at the bottom of a deep well.’
Cao: Why was he in Siam, sir?
Phan: He was the last of the Nguyễn lords to survive Tây Sơn rebellion, so he sought help from Siam’s newly established dynasty. But it all went badly, so he tried the French, sending his son to Paris with a missionary named Béhaine promising to give Dà Náng and Côn Dâo island to the French emperor if they helped him win. But after signing the Treaty of Versailles, the French Revolution broke out while the French in India were not interested, so he only received backing from the French missionary and some mercenaries until he finally managed to unite the country.
Cao: Making deal with the French. Isn’t that like bringing in a snake to bite one's own chickens, sir?
Phan: Looking back now, you’re probably right. It was a bad idea. But at that time, all fighting sides even the old Trinh lords and the Tây Sơn also enlisted foreign help because they had modern weapons.
Cao: But those foreigners will never do nothing for free.
Phan: France did send ships some years later to claim what was promised, even though they didn’t fulfil their end of the deal, so the emperor refused. But French missionaries were allowed to stay.
A recruit blurts out: But they teach us to disrespect our ancestors. That’s completely wrong.
Other recruits nod in agreement.
Phan: I know their faith is very different from our Confucian belief. And the court felt the same way too. Their teachings about Jesus, the son of God in heaven challenge the rule of the Emperor himself as the Son of Heaven. They also undermine Confucian values which are the moral bedrock of our society. But the missionaries won’t obey any decreed prohibitions or leave the country. Instead, they started to build influence over court mandarins and royal family members and used their native converts for underhanded purposes including inciting rebellions. That’s how the problem finally came to a head under the second emperor Minh Mạng.
Cao: Please tell us about Emperor Minh Mạng’s tomb, sir?
Phan: His tomb lies slightly closer to the citadel. Following Fengshui principles, the layout resembles a womb, symbolizing a peaceful resting place awaiting a good rebirth. First you walk through the Great Entrance on either side of the middle dragon way reserved for the emperor, then you continue on the path flanked by Trung Minh Lake full of lotus flowers passing the stele house, the Courtyard of Salutation with two rows of stone mandarins, the temples of civilian and military mandarins on either side, Sung An Temple with the emperor and the queen’s funerary tablets and personal effects, then cross the bridge to pause at the moon-viewing Pavilion of Light with gorgeous scenery. Then you cross another bridge across Tan Nguyet Lake and climb 33 steps to arrive at the enclosure of the emperor’s and his queens’ tombs.
Cao: How was Minh Mạng as an emperor, sir?
Phan: He used administrative reforms to strengthened unity and stability throughout the country, asserted power into neighboring Lao kingdoms and Cambodia, and extended our territory to the Mekong delta. For all this, he sometimes came into conflicts with Siam, but what he wasn’t prepared for was conflicts with the West. One year before he died, the Opium War broke out in China. The Qing Empire was savagely beaten by the British. Minh Mạng was so alarmed that he decided to kick out the missionaries and shut the door to foreigners.
Cao: He did the right thing.
Phan: I don’t know. For how long do you think we can keep them out? What the country needed was to prepare ourselves for the coming troubles. One good thing he did throughout his reign was to recruit the best men to serve the country based on ability and honesty not family history and connections, although distrusted of Catholics were prohibited from taking the mandarinate exams.
Cao: Catholics have no chance to pass them anyway.
Phan: Some people can be Catholic and still be educated and excel in the classics. Nguyễn Trường Tộ was one of the Catholic patriots who couldn’t serve, although he later became important in another way.
Cao: And how did the French war start, sir?
Phan: When Minh Mạng died, his son Thiệu Trị became emperor and began to relax the anti-Catholic laws. After Britain won the Opium War, other European countries started to look for similar exploits elsewhere. French warships started to show up often at Da Nang demanding that we opened our ports for trade and give them privileges. In the last year of Thiệu Trị’s reign, a French ship with no good reason fired and sank five of our ships. Thiệu Trị was so angry that he ordered another round of persecution against the Catholics who he believed were behind French aggression.
A recruit asks: What’s Thiệu Trị’s tomb like, sir?
Phan: Because he reigned only for seven years, his tomb was built entirely by his son Emperor Tự Đức.. You enter the ornate gate, passing the Court of Salutation with only six stone mandarins, two horses and two elephants. Then you find a stele house and modest temples set among small gardens, and then cross three short bridges over a lake and walk some steps before arriving at the walled enclosure housing the graves of the emperor and the queen. Compared to Gia Long’s and Minh Mạng’s, it’s a very simple tomb in accordance with his own wish.
Cao: That’s a sensible wish. It’s better to spend money to prepare the country than build a lavish tomb only for himself.
Phan: Indeed, we should focus our money and time to strengthen ourselves. War would have come sooner if not for another revolution and internal turmoil in France as the wave of revolutions swept across Europe. Meanwhile, the fourth Emperor Tự Đức first had to contend with a rebellion led by his elder brother who was passed over for kingship. It was later discovered that he was backed by foreign missionaries.
Not long after, the French president with support of the Church made himself emperor. Now he could do whatever he pleased, including invading other countries. After the end of the Crimean War, his attention came back to China and Vietnam. Emperor Tự Đức rejected his demand to establish a legation and a trading post, just when the Second Opium War broke out so they joined America and Russia to attack China while Britain was still reeling from the Indian rebellion.
But we were not left alone for long. Now on good terms with Britain after fighting the Crimean War and Second Opium War together, France saw the opportunity to make Vietnam their “India” outside British sphere of influence and interference. Using an execution of a Spanish priest as a pretext, this time they were joined by Spain and their Filipino colonial troops to attack Danang and capture Saigon. But they couldn’t hold on to it, because of the Italian War and more battles in China.
After the combined Western forces defeated China, they burned down and looted Peking Summer Palaces. The Chinese Emperor fled Peking and died shortly after. Now France returned with full force. In one year, they took Saigon and two eastern provinces of the South. Facing with northern rebellion, the Emperor knew that he could not fight two wars at the same time, so he authorized venerable Phan Thanh Giản to negotiate the humiliating Treaty of Saigon. The rebellion, in fact, was also backed by the foreigners.
Cao: So they attacked us from both ends. How cunning.
Phan nods: But Emperor Tự Đức didn’t give up easily, not least because Saigon is where his mother’s tomb was located. He sent venerable Phan to Paris the following year to negotiate the return of the three provinces in exchange for an enormous sum of payment. But the French occupying the southern provinces were too greedy while the French emperor was occupied with Mexico, so venerable Phan returned empty handed and was appointed governor to defend the remaining three southern provinces.
It was around this time that Nguyễn Trường Tộ started sending petitions to the court urging rapid reforms, but his proposals were met with resistance from many conservatives at court not only because he was Catholics but also briefly worked for the French as a translator translating official court documents during the Southern invasion because he thought it would help both countries to come to peaceful agreement.
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| A bust of Nguyễn Trường Tộ in his hometown Nghe-An |
Cao: What would a Catholic know anyway?
Phan: That’s what I thought too in the beginning. As Nguyễn Trường Tộ could not take the mandarinate exam due to his faith, he was given opportunities to travel with missionaries to Hong Kong, Singapore and other countries, and learned about the changing world from foreign books like the Ying-huan chih-lueh. So he had a better understanding than anyone in Vietnam about the danger facing the country.
Cao: What’s the Ying-huan chih-liieh, sir?
Phan: They are books written by a Chinse scholar Hsu about the world’s physical geography, the political map of the world, and Western expansion in Asia and its impact upon China and its tributary states.
In Nguyễn’s petition "On the dominant trends in the world" he wrote, “I have frequently studied world affairs and realized that to sue for peace with France is the best thing we can do. In Europe, France is the most formidable military power, second to none… In victory, their entire country would rejoice; they show no regret even if they have to sacrifice thousands of lives in order to preserve their national honor and prestige. Their commanders are daring, highly resourceful, and skillful in tactics in both land and sea battles. He argued that, in order to protect what had not been lost to France, Vietnam had no other choice than to sue for peace and buy time to strengthen itself.”
He also had read Wei Yuan’s Hai-kuo fu-chih, which not only gave information about the West but also suggested strategic measures to deal with the current Western encroachment, such as "using Westerners to fight Westerners", "using Westerners to entice Westerners", and "learning the strength of Westerners to control Westerners"
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| French Capture of Saigon 1859 |
Nguyễn Trường Tộ recommended to the court to embrace the methods of the West lest Vietnam should lose its sovereignty, and that it should "control the French by using other Europeans" or "use other countries to defend itself from foreign threat," In the petition "On the Six Advantages," he quoted the current Qing Emperor who said: The best policy to fight against the Westerners is to use Westerners.
He urged that Vietnam should make peace and give temporary concessions to France while developing itself like Japan. Modernization was to him of the foremost importance; for this reason, he called for an expansion of trade and relations with other countries. He cited the example of Siam that opened trade with several European countries to balance one against another, after their rival Burma, once powerful enough to fight off the Mongols and the Qing, lost almost all its territory to Britain.
He also proposed that Vietnam take the initiative and invite French companies to come and invest in Vietnam, participating in the development of its mines and other resources so that the Vietnamese could learn modern technology and thus bridge the gap between their country and the outside world. If Vietnam was not prepared to do so, France would force its way in, anyhow, and seize Vietnam's resources for its own use.
At the same time, he emphasized the need to preserve social and political order by upholding the imperial throne and the officialdom. Japan, Turkey and many European nations were saved from social upheavals because they were able to maintain such institutions.
Most importantly, in "On the education and accumulation of talents" he attacked "empty learning" (hu-hoc) and called for the adoption of "practical learning" (thuc-hoc) in education; recommended the establishment of various departments as fisheries, mining, forestry, geology, and irrigation; promoted equality of gender in education; encouraged the study of foreign languages among Vietnamese.
The Emperor resisted it in the beginning reasoning that we can never win barbarians with barbaric means, lest we become barbarians ourselves like Japan. But slowly he began to grasp the need for reforms. He assigned Nguyễn to go to France to recruit experts and purchase books and machinery for a technical school to be built in Hue. But it was too late. When Nguyễn was in Paris, the French forces in Cochinchina using an excuse of suppressing anti-French rebels violated the “Treaty of Amity” and captured the three remaining provinces. Unable to defend his territory, venerable Phan resigned and committed suicide.
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| Phan Thanh Giản (middle) and delegation to Paris (1863) |
Cao: I remember his words. The first time I heard it from your brother, I cried. He said “I was living at peace with you, and relying upon your good faith, but you now march against me with forces so large that would be madness to resist. I we fight it will bring misery to innocent people, and will only end in defeat. I therefore yield to you what you demand, and protest against your violence.”
Some recruits wipe off their tears.
Phan: The timing was unfortunate for Vietnam. Under pressure from the ranking officials of the dominant "war faction" who vehemently opposed both the French and Christianity, the court ordered Nguyễn and his group to return home. On his return, he sent another petition "Eight urgent matters" urging reforms in such areas as defense, administration, taxation, and education, and adoption of the vernacular script as the official written language instead of literary Chinese. But his voice was drowned out by the conservatives. In the end, his reform proposals came to nothing. Defeated, he went back to his hometown in Nghe-an.
Four years later when France was beaten in the Franco-Prussian War, he wrote another petition urging the court to exploit this opportunity to regain the lost provinces. He was summoned to Hue to discuss details but he died with illness before. That’s truly unfortunate because France had many internal problems during those years, and we could have strengthened ourselves before they came back this time.
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| Death of Francis Garnier 1873 |
Cao: But they attacked Hanoi ten years ago. I remember that’s the year your brother saved me, sir.
Phan: Apparently that time was all done by the French in Cochinchina. Once they realize that the Mekhong cannot be easily navigated to the rich mines of Chinese Yunnan, they turned their attention to the Red River instead. Garnier attacked Hanoi but died at the hand of the Liu Yongfu’s Black Flag Army.
Cao: Did you get to meet Nguyễn Trường Tộ, sir?
Phan: No, I entered the court six years after he died. During the last stage of the mandarinate exam, the Emperor Tự Đức posed questioned on how the West made such rapid military progress, my answer was “Such progress is not exclusive to the West. As Japan demonstrated, Vietnam could do the same as we have the will power”. Later the regent told me, it remined him of Nguyễn Trường Tộ. So I got the opportunity to read all his petitions from the library of the Regent. I deeply regret never have met him.
Cao: We certainly need more intelligent people like him.
Phan: Maybe that time has passed. The court is full of defeatists. Honest mandarins have left, while most of the remaining are either French collaborators or protecting their own interests, not the country. Now we need more and more people like you to fight the French.
Cao: One would have thought that they would stop bothering us after their European war defeat.
Phan: Quite the opposite. Once they put their house in order, they sought to seek prestige through enlarging their empire in Asia and Africa in order to compensate for the humiliation in Europe.
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| Combat of Nam Định during France's Tonkin Campaign of 1883 |
Cao: Can’t we ask for support from China?
PDP: China is surrounded by wolves so they are not ready to confront the French full-on as that will invite the others to join in like before. That’s why they have forsaken us. They signed an agreement with France in Tientsin a few months ago. That’s why France wanted Emperor Kiến Phúc to give them the imperial seal that Emperor Gia Long received from the past Qing Emperor when founding the dynasty.
A recruit suggests: How about asking help from Siam like Emperor Gia Long?
Phan: I am not sure. There has been several conflicts between us and Siam over the Lao rebellion and Cambodia that I don’t think they have forgotten. Even without those, they are also trying to survive like us and China, avoiding any pretext for France to invade them too.
Cao: But if Vietnam falls, won’t they be next?
Phan: That may very well be. Right now they are clutching their territories and tributary states as tightly as possible. I am sure France also has its desire on Lan Xang and other Lao kingdoms which stand between Tonkin and Yunnan.
A recruit then comments: Sir, you haven’t told us about Emperor Tự Đức’s tomb.
Phan: His tomb is different than the rest, because it’s a vast complex with a royal residence where he often escaped to when he was unhappy. I only visited it a few times for discrete meetings. The complex is very elaborate because he took three years to build it himself.
But what struck me most about it was the stele biography which he wrote, lamenting his own failings and the decision to accept “voluntary humiliation in order to bring peace to his kingdom”.
Cao: He should have fought, not accepting it so easily. We are here fighting. The people have been fighting even without the court support.
Phan: I know there are many posters calling for resistance. I heard about one anonymous poster calling for "putting down the French and retrieving the North" put on the main road of Nam Đàn District.
Cao: Because yielding to the French is a betrayal to our ancestors. Besides, it’s suicide.
Phan: It’s a slow death, but death for sure. The Cambodian king yielded his kingdom as French protectorate, and where did that get him? Gradually, they are trying to squeeze him out of all power, like a boa snake.
Cao: It’s a complete mistake, sir.
Phan: Nguyễn Trường Tộ’s words are these, “Once a mistake has been made, it is cause for eternal regret; By starting over from the beginning, the foundation for a hundred years may be laid."
Cao: Does he mean his own mistake working for the French, sir?
Phan: I am sure he deeply regretted that period of his life, but I always sensed that he was talking more about the country although I couldn’t pinpoint what he meant. It could be Gia Long’s for inviting the French in, Minh Mạng’s for kicking them out, Thiệu Trị’s for not preparing for war, or Tự Đức’s for not modernizing and strengthening the country.
Cao: Or all of them?
Phan: On the contrary, now I think it’s none of these. Our mistake, rather, is to think that the court is the country. That is wrong. Vietnam is its people. We need to start over by trusting and giving power back to the people, then the foundation for a hundred years may be laid.
He slowly kneels down on the ground facing the recruits, kowtows to them, and with the loudest voice he could muster shouts out,
“The Emperors are dead. Long live the people!”
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It is one of the great ironies of this time in SEA history that the European colonialists had essentially degenerated into acquiring empires for the sake of having empires. The French wanted the Mekong River as a back door into China where lay untold riches in the form of natural resources. But by the time of the Tonkin Campaign they already knew the Mekong could not be used in that way, and yet the greed for empire persisted. The Dutch, the British and the Russians were becoming aware that the cost of maintaining empires was outstripping the income being derived from them except through ever harsher exploitation. The Opium War completely unmasked the pretense that humanitarian ideals played any part in establishing realms of influence.
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