Who were the contenders in The Pacification of Tonkin?
Pacification of Tonkin
The Cần Vương insurgency against the French launched in Annam in July 1885 after Hàm Nghi's flight from Huế was portrayed by the insurgents as a patriotic, anti-French, struggle to 'aid the king'. The insurgency in Tonkin was rather more complex. Many of the insurgents fought for patriotic motives, but others simply wanted to exploit the anarchy that prevailed in much of Tonkin at the end of the Sino-French War. The Chinese armies that had fought the Sino-French War dutifully withdrew from Tonkin in May and June 1885, but their ranks were by then full of Vietnamese volunteers or conscripts, and these men, unpaid for months, were simply disbanded on Tonkinese soil and left to fend for themselves. They kept their weapons and supported themselves by brigandage, in many cases sheltering behind the patriotic rhetoric of the Cần Vương insurgency. The French, although reluctant to admit that any of the 'brigands', 'bandits' and 'pirates' in arms against them had noble motives, were well aware that they were fighting a range of enemies in Tonkin:
Throughout Tonkin hard-working law-abiding cultivators had always been left defenceless in the face of the exactions of the mandarins and the Chinese and Annamese pirates. The reign of the mandarins was now ended, but force would be needed to deal with the pirates, whose number had increased in the past two years. The ranks of the Black Flags and the other professional brigands who had been fighting us were swollen by discharged Chinese soldiers, other soldiers who had deserted with their arms and equipment because they had not been paid, Annamese ne’er-do-wells who preferred pillage to agriculture, and sometimes law-abiding peasants who had been forcibly conscripted.
Liu Yongfu's Black Flag forces continued to harass and fight the French in Tonkin after the end of the Sino-French War.
Battle of Woody Point
On March 22, 1811, the "Tonquin", a 290-ton barque commanded by Lieutenant Jonathan Thorn, reached the Columbia River with the intention of trading with the natives of the northern Pacific coast. To do this a trading post was necessary. After sailing around the mouth of the river for a while, the traders established Fort Astoria, the first American claim on the Pacific coast. The "Tonquin" had departed New York the previous September, with brief stops in the Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic and the Sandwich (Hawaiian) Islands in the mid-Pacific. Now after establishing a base of operations, the traders were free to explore the region in pursuit of fine furs.