Failed 1930 uprising in colonial Vietnam against French rule
The Yên Bái mutiny (, "Yên Bái general uprising") was an uprising of Vietnamese soldiers in the French colonial army on 10 February 1930. This took place in collaboration with civilian supporters who were members of the Việt Nam Quốc Dân Đảng (VNQDĐ, the Vietnamese Nationalist Party).
The aim of the revolt was to inspire a wider uprising among the general populace in an attempt to overthrow the colonial regime and establish independence. The VNQDĐ had previously attempted to engage in clandestine activities to undermine French rule, but increasing French scrutiny on their activities led to their leadership group taking the risk of staging a large scale military attack in the Red River Delta in northern Vietnam.
Shortly after midnight on 10 February, about 50 Vietnamese soldiers ("Tirailleurs indochinois") of the 4th Regiment of Tonkinese Rifles within the Yên Bái garrison turned on their French officers, with assistance from about 60 civilian VNQDĐ members who invaded the camp from the outside. The mutiny failed within 24 hours when the majority of the Vietnamese soldiers in the garrison refused to participate and remained loyal to the colonial army. Further sporadic attacks occurred across the Delta region, with little impact. French retribution to the attack was swift and decisive. The main leaders of the VNQDĐ were arrested, tried and put to death, effectively ending the military threat of what was previously the leading Vietnamese nationalist revolutionary organisation.
Background and planning.
Vietnam had gradually become a French colony between 1859 and 1883. The first phase started in 1859, when French and Spanish forces began an invasion of southern Vietnam, leading to the ceding of three southern provinces to form the colony of Cochinchina under the Treaty of Saigon in 1864. In 1867, the French seized three further provinces and by 1883, the process was complete, when northern and central Vietnam were conquered and made into the French protectorates of Tonkin and Annam and incorporated into French Indochina. Initially, military resistance to French rule came through the Cần Vương movement led by Tôn Thất Thuyết and Phan Đình Phùng, which sought to install the boy Emperor Hàm Nghi at the head of an independent nation. However, with the death of Phùng in 1895, military opposition effectively ended. The only other notable incidents after this came in 1917 with the Thai Nguyen rebellion. The lack of militant activity changed in the late 1920s with the formation of the VNQDĐ, or Vietnamese Nationalist Party. The party began to generate attention among French colonial authorities and was blamed for the assassination of Bazin on 9 February 1929, a French labour recruiter despised among the populace, leading to a heavy French crackdown. The French purges caused considerable detriment to the independence movement in general and the VNQDĐ in particular. Nearly 1000 VNQDĐ members were arrested; the demolition of many of the Party's facilities ensued. The VNQDĐ decided to abandon its clandestine philosophy and engage in open attacks against the French, hoping to foment a general uprising among the people. A minority felt that even though there was a danger that French crackdowns would irreparably weaken the party, they should try and bide their time and go into hiding in the mountainous Hoa Binh Province and focus on writing propaganda books and pamphlets, and take an extended period to prepare a large armed attack. It has also been alleged that Ho Chi Minh had tried to contact the VNQDD leadership to try and advise them to bide their time.
Recruitment campaigns and grassroots activist drives were put in place, even though the VNQDD were realistic and understood that their assault was unlikely to succeed. The village elders were used to mobilise neighbours into the political movement. Others travelled to nearby villages and tried to recruit younger members by invoking the success of Japan in militarily defeating Russia in 1905 and Kuomintang in China. The party logic was "Even if victory is not achieved, we will fully mature as human beings with our [heroic] efforts".
Since the VNQDĐ was only strong in the northern areas of Vietnam, the attacks were to be staged in the Red River Delta, and the garrison at Yen Bay was identified as a key point. The French authorities used Vietnamese soldiers and VNQDĐ members were among the garrison at Yen Bay; they engaged in cajoling their colleagues with revolutionary rhetoric. Although armed resistance had died down since World War I, the Red River area of northern Vietnam, which included Yên Bái, had been a disproportionate source of nationalist militancy since the French colonisation.
However, the preparation for the planned uprising was affected by discoveries of arms caches and propaganda material. In part, this was due to a high-ranking informer, Pham Thanh Duong, who was on the VNQDD's Central Committee as the head of military affairs. A high-level planning meeting was held on 1 November 1929, and this was soon reported in full to local colonial officials and military intelligence. At this meeting, the VNQDD leader Nguyễn Thái Học asked for a map of the French military airfield at Bach Mai and assigned Duong the responsibility of recruiting personnel for an attack. Discussions were also held for the finalisation of plans of attack on Nam Dinh, Lang Son, Haiphong, Bac Ninh and Mong Cai, although an intended assault on the capital Hanoi was still not ready. Hoc told Duong that several hundreds of civilians would be found for the airfield attack, and that sufficient food and weaponry was available for participants. Two days later, at another meeting, the leadership discussed the importance of holding the towns to be attacked for several days so that exiled Vietnamese could arrive from China. The VNQDD leadership also discussed the need to try and widen the attacks to areas in central and southern Vietnam, and to recruit Vietnamese soldiers who were members of the colonial army.
On 24 November 1929, in preparation for the attack, the VNQDD formed a provisional government in anticipation of ending French rule. This occurred in the presence of 13 provincial VNQDD leaders. Hoc was elected president, Nhu vice president, Chinh the interior minister, and Duong the military affairs minister. On 25 December 1929, the French authorities made an attempt to arrest the whole VNQDD leadership in a raid on a planning meeting at Vong La, having been tipped off by Duong. The VNQDD leaders narrowly escaped, learning of Duong's role in the process. Duong was later shot in the abdomen by VNQDD members in Hanoi in May 1930, seriously injuring him. Chinh was taken by Nguyen Dac Bang to the latter's village in Son Duong to recover from injuries caused in the raid, and the village turned out to be a focal point for the preparations for the attack, serving as the de facto regional headquarters. Throughout the latter part of 1929, more VNQDD members came to Son Duong to hide and continue preparations.
With the knowledge that an attack was going to take place, and due to prior disturbances, French colonial authorities took measures within the colonial forces to try and dilute the effect of any anticipated mutiny. There had been specific concerns about the fidelity of Vietnamese troops in the garrisons located at Hanoi and Nam Dinh, and plans to transfer some troops to remote areas to lower the level of Vietnamese troops in these areas had been discussed. A number of Vietnamese warrant officers, who had been charged with disciplining their Vietnamese enlisted men, had already been transferred away from larger centres, disrupting VNQDD attempts to foment an insurrection within the colonial military. At a more general level, large-scale arrests in the provinces of Kiên An, Hai Duong, Vinh Yên, Bac Ninh and Bac Giang had also compromised the planned military campaigns in those localities. Despite the fact that Duong's cover had been blown, the French authorities still continued to receive some intelligence indicating that attacks were planned for northern Vietnam during the Lunar New Year period in early February. Military and civilian colonial leaders were placed on alert and efforts were made to clamp down on the propagation of any anti-colonial sentiments among Vietnamese soldiers. Having been warned of an impending attack on the town of Hung Hoa in Phu Tho Province, 50 additional soldiers were brought in on the eve of the attack, something the VNQDD was unaware of.
On 28 January 1930, a final planning meeting was held in the village of Vong La in Phú Thọ Province. The VNQDĐ leader Nguyễn Thái Học declared that the situation was reaching desperation, and asserted that if the party did not act soon, they would be scattered by French police. Học built up enthusiasm for the revolt, and those who were reluctant to carry through were coerced into complying. The uprising was set for the night of 9 February and the small hours of the following day. Hoc was to command forces in the lower Red River Delta near the city of Haiphong, Nguyen Khac Nhu was assigned the upper delta around Yên Bái and Pho Duc Chinh was to lead an attack on the military post at Sơn Tây. Nguyen The Nghiep, who had split with the main body of the VNQDĐ, led a group who was now across the Chinese border in Yunnan province. He said that he had the support of local soldiers at the Lào Cai garrison and would launch attacks on French border posts, so exiled VNQDĐ members could re-enter Vietnam and join the uprising.
The uprisings were supposed to be simultaneous, but Học sent a last-minute order to Nhu to postpone action until 15 February. The messenger was arrested by the French and Nhu was unaware of the change in schedule. Yen Bay was a military post comprising more than 600 troops in four companies of infantry. These were commanded by 20 French officers and non-commissioned officers. VNQDĐ members had been espousing revolutionary sentiment in the area for several months and there was considerable tension in the town leading up to the planned mutiny. The nearby village of Sơn Dương in Phú Thọ was a hotbed of preparations, as many of the bombs and hand grenades used by the VNQDĐ were manufactured there. These were made from cast iron shells or cement opium containers that were then filled with gunpowder. More than 100 bombs by around 20 militants were made at the home of Nguyen Dac Bang, who also organised the drafting and printing of propaganda leaflets—for distribution among soldiers and civilians alike—and led the recruitment of villagers in his area. Over the course of the preparations, the village administrators, who were part of the French regime, joined the movement and did not report the activities to their colonial superiors. It was there that Nhu prepared a command post to coordinate what would be the centrepiece of the attack, the assaults against Yên Bái and Phú Thọ. Bombs and other weapons were also manufactured in Cao Mai and Xuan Lung in the district of Lam Thao.
Some VNQDĐ members, villagers from Sơn Dương and other settlements in Lâm Thao District, both male and female, had begun to arrive in Yen Bay with weapons in their baggage. They travelled to the garrison town by train on the pretence of going on a pilgrimage to a noted temple. They carried bombs, scimitars, and insignia, which they hid under religious material, such as incense and fruit and flowers that were to be offered at the altar. The group split into three and disembarked at three different stations in order to avoid raising the suspicion of the police. They were then led to hideouts by those Vietnamese soldiers in the colonial army who were in league with them. Contemporaneous French military reports and a VNQDD member suggested that there were around 200 people from Phu Tho province, but the final French report estimated 60 participants based on the fluctuation in the number of fourth-class train tickets sold for the relevant rail service.
On 9 February, the evening before the attacks, back in Sơn Dương, a large contingent of rebels made their final preparations before heading into battle. They met at three points; the homes of Bang and the local Confucian scholar, and in the fields. They then joined together for a final meeting before Nhu divided the combined forces in two groups.