Houston Nutt

The Capture of Nam Dinh (27 March 1883), a confrontation between the French and the Vietnamese, was one of the early engagements of the Tonkin campaign (1883–86). In a brief campaign in the last week of March 1883 Commandant Henri Rivière captured the citadel of Nam Dinh, the second-largest city in Tonkin, with a flotilla of gunboats and a battalion of marine infantry. Rivière's seizure of Nam Dinh was an important escalation of French ambitions in Tonkin, with the result that China began to covertly support the Vietnamese government in its opposition to French aggression.

Background

Henri Rivière (1827–83)

In late February 1883 the French forces in Hanoi were reinforced by a 500-man battalion of marine infantry from France under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel Carreau, which more than doubled the force at Rivière’s disposal, was a parting gift from the bellicose Admiral Jauréguiberry, who had been replaced as navy minister on 29 January. Carreau’s men sailed from France aboard the transport Corrèze and reached Hanoi on 24 February. The instructions that accompanied the reinforcements specified that they were not to be used to extend the French occupation of Tonkin.

On 8 March Rivière learned that the Annamese government was planning to lease the coal mines at Hon Gai, a coastal town near Haiphong, to a Chinese consortium which was really a front for a British company. If the British were allowed to install themselves at Hon Gai, France could bid farewell to its dreams of colonial expansion in Tonkin. In defiance of both the letter and the spirit of his instructions, Rivière immediately decided to take the initiative. On his orders, Commandant Berthe de Villers left the following day aboard Parseval, raised the French tricolour in Hon Gai and established a post of 50 men there. The French met no resistance.

In his report on this action to Charles Thomson, the governor of Cochinchina, Rivière explained that he had occupied Hon Gai primarily to secure his line of communications with Haiphong. But he did not hide the fact that he was also attempting to extend French control of Tonkin. With his friends, he was even franker. 'I have taken possession of the entire mining district,' he wrote. 'We have always coveted it, but have always hesitated to act. This will force them to take forward their Tonkin Question!'

Rivière also believed that, in his present situation, doing nothing was more dangerous than taking the initiative. Alarming news was coming in from both the north and the south. At Son Tay, Liu Yongfu was preparing to attack the French in Hanoi with 5,000 men. In the Delta, the governor of Nam Dinh had armed the citadel, and the French gunboats were having great difficulty in preventing him from blocking the canals. Rivière was convinced that France should strike first. Now, at last, he had the means to act. 'As this indecisive government has been imprudent enough to send me 500 men,' he wrote to a friend, 'I have decided to use them to do what it did not decide I should do.'

Rivière decided to strike at Nam Dinh, again in order to secure his communications with the coast. It was the strategy that Francis Garnier had adopted in 1873, and it was probably the right one. But the decision aroused considerable opposition among his officers. They argued that it would result in a most undesirable division of the small French force at Hanoi. Nam Dinh would have to be garrisonned if it fell, and the French would then be too stretched to carry out further military operations. They recommended that the French should instead attack Liu Yongfu in Son Tay with all their available forces. Rivière was not convinced. He believed, probably rightly, that the French were not strong enough to take on Liu Yongfu. He overruled his officers and ordered plans to be prepared for an expedition against Nam Dinh. Eleven months after French troops had gone into action at Hanoi, Rivière once again threw down the gauntlet to the Vietnamese and Chinese courts.

The campaign

Chef de bataillon Badens made a reconnaissance of Nam Dinh on 11 March by boat, and reported that it had been put into a good state of defence and was garrisoned by an army of 8,000 to 10,000 men. Rivière nevertheless decided to attack the city, and assembled a flotilla of junks and steam-launches to transport four and a half marine infantry companies under Colonel Carreau’s command and a detachment of Cochinchinese riflemen—520 men in all—down the Red River to Nam Dinh. This was a breathtakingly small attacking force, but it would be supported by several gunboats, whose firepower would enormously increase the chances of success. Rivière took personal command of the expedition, and his flotilla left Hanoi on 23 March, accompanied by the gunboats Hache and Yatagan. Berthe de Villers was left to defend Hanoi with three and a half companies of infantry and the gunboat Léopard.

The citadel of Ninh Binh

The expedition had first to run the gauntlet of the defences of Ninh Binh, whose citadel was built on a massive crag overlooking the Red River and was defended by a number of cannon which completely commanded the passage. The flotilla reached Ninh Binh on the afternoon of 24 March, to find the gunboat Carabine waiting. This was a critical moment. The garrison of the citadel stood to arms at the French approach, and according to Rivière 'their guns, if well handled, could have annihilated us'. However, the governor of Ninh Binh declined to open fire, being 'one of those Asiatics who do not normally concern themselves with the misfortunes of their colleagues unless they affect them personally'. The expedition passed Ninh Binh unharmed, and anchored that evening at the entrance to the Nam Dinh canal, where it was joined by the gunboats Pluvier and Surprise.

On the following morning the flotilla anchored off the southern wall of the citadel of Nam Dinh, where the gunboat Fanfare was already in position. Rivière now had five gunboats at his disposal. He summoned the city’s governor Vu Truong Binh to present himself in person aboard Pluvier and to hand over the citadel before 8 a.m. on the following day. The governor’s refusal arrived in the evening.

The bombardment of Nam Dinh

Rivière wanted to open fire as soon as the ultimatum expired, but it was so foggy on the morning of 26 March that action was impossible. However, the fog cleared in the early afternoon, and Fanfare moved up close to the southern rampart and began to bombard Nam Dinh's outer defences at 2 p.m., firing slowly and accurately to dismount the guns facing the canal. To keep the defenders under cover, both Fanfare and Pluvier engaged them with their Hotchkiss canons-revolvers. After two hours the fire from the southern defences slackened and Fanfare withdrew, having suffered only minor damage from two hits by enemy cannonballs. Many of the guns in the citadel had ignored the French gunboats, and fired instead on a nearby Catholic mission.

The capture of Nam Dinh

Rivière assaulted Nam Dinh the following day. He disembarked his force at 11 a.m., after a devastating five-hour bombardment of the citadel by the gunboats. The troops went ashore in a suburb beyond the city’s outer walls and were able to advance under cover of the buildings until they reached the main defences. The attackers were unable to scale the walls, as they were protected by deep ditches filled with water, and had to use dynamite to blow in the gate of the eastern demilune, then the eastern gate of the citadel. Rivière led from the front, urging on his troops as they fought their way into the city and setting an example of personal courage. The Vietnamese resisted fiercely, but were overwhelmed by the superior firepower and morale of the French. By late afternoon the city was in French hands and its governor in flight. A large Vietnamese force outside the city attempted to attack the French gunboats in the early evening, but was shelled in the open and quickly dispersed.

French casualties in this operation were remarkably light: only four men wounded. However, one of the casualties was Lieutenant-Colonel Carreau, the commander of the expeditionary battalion, whose foot was smashed by a cannonball. His leg was later amputated, but his condition worsened and he died on 13 May. Vietnamese casualties are not known, but according to Rivière the defenders fought with unusual stubbornness, and when the French entered the city they found its walls piled with corpses.

The French found 98 cannon in the citadel of Nam Dinh, including five 30-millimetre rifled French guns ceded under the 1874 treaty. As the citadel was smaller than Hanoi’s and remained defensible despite the bombardment it had just suffered, Rivière decided to occupy it. He appointed Commandant Badens commandant supérieur of Nam Dinh, giving him a garrison of 440 men and two gunboats. Badens quickly restored order in the town and reconstituted its municipal government, appointing new magistrates on the advice of the head of the local Catholic mission. By 31 March, when Rivière returned to Hanoi, the shops had reopened and many of the inhabitants had returned.

References

• Bastard, G., Défense de Bazeilles, suivi de dix ans après au Tonkin (Paris, 1884)
• Duboc, E., Trente cinq mois de campagne en Chine, au Tonkin (Paris, 1899)
• Huard, La guerre du Tonkin (Paris, 1887)
• Marolles, Vice-Amiral de, La dernière campagne du Commandant Rivière (Paris, 1932)
• Nicolas, V., Livre d'or de l'infanterie de la marine (Paris, 1891)
• Thomazi, A., Histoire militaire de l’Indochine française (Hanoi, 1931)
• Thomazi, A., La conquête de l'Indochine (Paris, 1934)