Age of Conquest: A Kings and Generals Podcast

Last time we spoke about the beginning of the Tonkin campaign of 1883-1886. Henri Riviere picked up after Garnier and got himself killed on the Paper bridge. In the face of a unauthorized and failed Tonkin Campaign, that should have been the nail in the coffin. But a new administration took hold in France and they were certainly more gung-ho about colonizing southeast asia. General Bouet picked up after Riviere, but he was met with some failure and uninspiring victories. He quit his job and it fell to Admiral Courbet to continue France's campaign to take all of Tonkin. However to defeat the Black Flag Army of Liu Yongfu was a tricky thing as the Qing were covertly supporting them. France had to decide if she would continue, for if she did it might mean another war against the Qing dynasty. #44 The Sino-French War of 1884-1885 part 1: Battle of Fuzhou Welcome to the Fall and Rise of China Podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about the history of Asia? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on history of asia and much more so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel where I cover the history of China and Japan from the 19th century until the end of the Pacific War. Admiral Courbet just received reinforcements in the form of 10,000 men, 6 gunboats and orders to attack Liu Yongfu and the Black Flag regardless of how it might drag the Qing dynasty into war. The Black Flag Army had set up camp in the fortified city of Son Tay which lay a few km's south of the red river. The city fort was in a pentagonal formation with walls 11 feet high, surrounded by a deep moat and within the center was a citadel. The french scouts estimated the fort had well over 100 cannons, this was not going to be a walk in the park as they say. Liu Yongfu and the Black Flag Army knew the French would approach Son Tay from the east using their gunboats along the Red River. This was because the Black Flat had hired european engineers in advance to convert the town north of Son Tay blocking its approach into a impregnable strongpoint. Large dykes, water filled ditches, bamboo palisades and trenches surrounded it and offered the Black Flag Army extremely well positioned defensive lines. Thus to take a northern route meant the French would have to take Phu Sa. Liu Yongfu had roughly 3000 veteran Black Flag soldiers , 7000 local vietnamese troops led by Prince Hoang Ke Viem and an additional 1000 Qing troops led by Tang Zhiong. Hoang Ke Viem's men manned the citadel, Tang Zhiong's were inside the city and the walls and field were Black Flag Army's responsibility. On the other side, Admiral Courbet deployed 9000 of his men for the campaign against Son Tay, distributed into two columns led by Colonel Belin and Bichot. Belin would lead 3300 men consisting of 2 Turco battalions, 1 marine battalion, some Cochinchinese riflemen, 1 foreign legion battalion, 3 marine artillery batteries and 800 Tonkinese rifleman. Bichot's group consisted of 3 marine battalions, some Cochinchinese riflemen, a fusilier-marins battalion and 3 artillery batteries. Both columns departed from Hanoi on December 11th. Bichot's group were transported up the Red River by the 6 gunboats and made it ashore on the western bank of the Day River, where they secured a pathway for Belin's column to march. By December 13th both columns met up 5 km's away from the forward defensive lines of Son Tay. On December 14th the French advanced from the east towards the Phu Sa positions, beating back some Black Flag sorties against their flanks. They opened fire with their artillery for 2 hours upon the Phu Sa gun placements. Then 2 forward battalions seized the most forward defensive position at Phu Sa, but from there they found no way to keep pushing forward. During this action the French had 68 men dead and around 250 wounded. Thus in a single day Courtbet had lost more men that Bouet or Riviere in all their battles put together. Liu Yongfu hoped to exploit the French losses by ordering a night raid. This however turned into a disaster and not only did he loss many men to the combat, others began to abandon Phu Sa, fleeing for Son Tay. On the 16th Courbet ordered the men to try and prod Son Tay from the northwest. The French artillery softened up the defense before Coubet personally rode out to the forward position well within the Black Flag Army's fire range. Courbet led the men to attack the western gate of Son Tay which was demolished by artillery and explosives. Li Yongfu's men quickly withdrew into the citadel as the French stormed into the city. By this point it seems Liu Yongfu knew it was too dangerous to defend the city so he ordered his men to evacuate under the cover of darkness. The French had suffered 83 deaths and a few hundred wounded while the Black Flag were estimated to have nearly 1000 killed and another 1000 wounded if French sources are ever to be believed. The Vietnamese and Chinese troops had evacuated well in advance of the French storming the city and thus played only a minor role in the battle. Now the terrible losses the Black Flag did incur had significant consequences going forward. Liu Yongfu felt his men had intentionally been tossed to the lions by the Chinese and Vietnamese and he determined going forward that he would not again expose his army so openly. Liu Yongfu took his army from Son Tay over to Bac Ninh. Now at this point Admiral Courbet officially handed command of the land forces over to General Charles Thoedore Millot. Millot would take command of the 10,000 man force which included 2 Brigade commanders who had recently made their marks so to say in history. General Louis Briere de L'isle, the former governor of Senegal commanded the 1st brigade and the 2nd brigade was commanded by Foreign Legion general Francois de Negrier who had quelled an Arab rebellion in Algeria. Now in Bac Ninh the 3000 strong Black Flag Army would have very powerful allies. The Qing governor of Guangxi province, Xu Yanxu was commanding over 20,000 Qing forces with his subordinates Zhao Wo and Huang Guilan. The soldiers were veterans of the Anhui and Xiang armies, ie; Li Hongzhang and Zeng Guofan's old forces. Half of the Qing forces were deployed along the Mandarin Road southwest of Bac Ninh and the other half were deployed east of Bac Ninh along the Trun son and Dap Cau mountains. General Millot gave each brigade two marching regiments each containing roughly 3 infantry battalions a piece. The 4 commanders of each regiment were Colonels Defoy, Belin, Duchesne and Bertaux-Levillain, interesting last name there haha. Now despite the numerical superiority, the Chinese forces were quite demoralized and Liu Yongfu intentionally was going to keep his Black Flag units out of the real fray of danger, and these factors came out to play in the battle. The two brigades were to approach Bac Ninh from two different locations: the first brigade would depart from Hanoi and the 2nd brigade from Hai Duong. Millot's primary objective was to capture Bac Ninh, but he also hoped to annihilate the Qing forces in the process. To manage this he planned to seize some river crossing around Bac Ninh so the Qing forces would be unable to escape. These crossing were found north of Bac Ninh at Dap Cau and Phu Cam which led to Lang Son and Thai Nguyen respectively. On March 6th, the 1st brigade were ferried from Hanoi up the Red River to land just due south of some Qing defensive lines along the Mandarin Road. On land the 1st brigade marched along the northern bank to head southeast of Bac Ninh to a village called Chi. Meanwhile the 2nd brigade advanced from Hai Duong going along the southern bank to Song Cau where they attacked some Qing forward positions at Do Son and Ne Ou. While the 2nd brigade met the enemy on land, their gunboat support went around behind the Qing lines close to Phu Lang to begin bombarding them. Upon seeing the French gunboats positioning, the Qing forward units made a withdrawal to Bac Ninh. This allowed the 2nd brigade to occupy some minor forts and gradually move towards Chi to meet up with the 1st brigade. The 2 brigades united and advanced upon Bac Ninh by March 12th. Forces of the 1st brigade pushed the Qing out of Trung Son while forces of the 2nd brigade seized the village of Xuan Hoa. The Qing made little resistance at these outpost, basically abandoning them when the French came into visual proximity. Then at 4pm the 2nd brigade alongside their gunboat support attacked Dap Cau just east of Bac Ninh. The arrival of the French at Dap Cau threatened the Qing's left defensive lines. The Qing's escape routes to Lang Son were being severed off by the seizure of Xuan Hoa, Lang Buoi and now Dap Cau. Thus the only concern the Qing commanders were thinking of was how to quickly withdraw their men to Lang Son before the roads were completely cut off. The Qing resistance began to collapse as a result, morale had dropped and many were routing. The French regimental commanders saw the Qing's left flank were breaking and believed they could encircle a large part of the Qing forces. At 5pm the French commanders noticed the Qing flag still flew atop the citadel tower at Bac Ninh, but between the city, Dap Cau and Trung Son all that could be seen was fleeing Qing soldiers. The 2nd brigade attacked Bac Ninh the next morning, capturing large sums of ammunition and curiously enough fully functioning modern Krupp artillery pieces that looked so pristine, they figured none had even fired a shot. Without waiting for the 1st brigade to come from Trung Son, the 2nd brigade forced their way into the city of Bac Ninh. In the meantime the efforts to encircle the fleeing Qing had been thwarted by tenacious rearguard actions by Qing forces fighting out of Dap Cau. Thus the majority of the Qing forces were able to escape north along the banks of the Song Cau river. While the Qing fled the French gunboats bombarded them inflicting heavy casualties. General Millot was nowhere near done trying to trap the escaping Qing forces and send his two brigades after them. The 1st brigade pursued the enemy as far as Thai Nguyen where they inflicted casualties upon the Qing, Vietnamese and Black Flag forces until march 19th. The 2nd brigade annihilated a Qing rearguard force at Phu Lang Thuong and chased a large portion of the Qing right flank as they went to a town called Kep. Millot then called his two brigades to return to Bac Ninh by March 24th. The French state they had 9 deaths and 39 wounded while claiming to have killed 100 enemy units and a few hundred wounded. The defeat of the Qing forces was an enormous embarrassment for the Qing dynasty and thus for its true leader, Empress Dowager Cixi. The Qing court and people of China met the news with shock, mostly because they had heard that for a few months the Black Flag Army had managed to inflict heavy casualties upon the French, but their professional forces had utterly failed. Empress Dowager Cixi in her rage punished several Qing officials, such as the governors of Guangxi and Yunnan, Xu Yanxu and Tang Qiong. Both men were dismissed from their posts, meanwhile the field commanders at the battle of Bac Ninh, General Huang Guilan and Zhao Wu were disgraced. Huang Guilan committed suicide at Lang Son on March 14th as a result of his shame while some of his chief of staff, Chen Degui and Dang Minxuan were beheaded in front of their troops at Lang Son on May 26th. Now before the major losses, the Qing court had been debating the issue of whether or not they should wage a undeclared or declared war against France or keep out of Vietnam completely. The leader of the moderates was Li Hongzhang who sought diplomacy while the leader of the hardliners was Zhang Zhidong who continuously called for full-scale war. After losing Son Tay and now Bac Ninh, Empress Dowager Cixi began to see no other way to solve the situation than diplomacy and thus Zhang Zhidong lost favor and Li Hongzhang won it. Cixi ordered Li Hongzhang to begin talks, which would occur at Tianjin with Captain Francois-Ernest Fournier. The French demanded China withdraw her forces from Vietnam and respect Frances protectorate over Annam and Tonkin. This would mean China was officially relinquishing its suzerainty over Vietnam, which they capitulated. The result was the Tientsin accord of May 11th 1884. To follow this up, 3 weeks later the new French Minister to China Jules Patenotre negotiated a revised treaty of Saigon. It was called the Treaty of Hua, done between France and the Nguyen dynasty which officiated the protecorateship of Annam and Tonkin. In essence it was the stepping stone to simply making Vietnam a colonial possession of France. The treaty was signed on June 6th of 1884 and followed up by a symbolic show where the French melted down a seal that was given to the previous Nguyen Emperor Gia Long by the Qing emperor. Now while the treaty of Hue and the Tientsin Accord should have ended all the conflict, well it did not. No it seems, Mr. Fournier was a bit of a moron when it came to diplomacy and he royally messed up with the Tientsin Accord. The crucial mess up was, while the accord stated the Qing had to withdraw their forces from Vietnam, it never stated a deadline. The French began to demand the Qing withdraw immediately, while the Qing argued they could not withdraw until all minor articles of the said Tientsin Accord were not concluded. Long story short it was a paradox of a situation and the Qing were simply using the accord's other minor issues to maintain their forces where they were. The entire situation was met with uproar from the Chinese public, and this bolstered Zhang Zhidong and the hardliners against Li Hongzhang who began calling for his impeachment. Now as much as I love Li Hongzhang, he sort of messed up during the Tientsin Accord agreement. He hinted to the French the Qing withdrawal would occur, but that it might see a few snags, this was verbally done of course. Thus the French assumed and it was a he said she said type of situation that the Qing forces would immediately withdraw and of course they didn't. Thus on the ground, in early June a French force led by Lt Colonel Alphonse Dugene advanced to seize the cities of Cao Bang, That Khe and Lang Son. His forces formed a long column starting at Phu Lang Thuong as they advanced along the Mandarin Road heading to Lang Son, Phu Xuyen, Kep and Cau Son by June 15th. The march was grueling, it was extremely hot and some flooding made their way difficult as they had to continuously build bridges. They were forced to set up camp around Cau Son and a smaller town called Bac Le for a few days and when they continued their march they began to realize they were being watched by scouts. They sent out advance patrol parties and some of these were fired upon, but they had no way of knowing who was attacking them. It could be Nguyen forces, Qing forces, Black Flags or simple bandits for all they knew. Dugenne intended to continue nonetheless and by June 22nd they were on their way to Lang Son. At this point Dugennes men came up to a river and on the other side were Qing troops. Neither side fired upon another, and Dugenne figured they were stragglers from the Qing forces that fought at Bac Ninh. Thinking they would not oppose him he gave orders to cross the river, but little did he know, on the other side were 4600 Qing soldiers armed with modern arms like rapid-firing Remington rifles. Now both sides were well aware of the Tientsin Accord, but back in China, all the bickering against Li Hongzhang led to no official orders for the men to withdraw from Tonkin. In fact their regimental commander, Wang Debang's last orders were to hold their positions. On June 23rd, an advance guard led by Captain Lecomte crossed the river as some Qing infantry began to take up defensive positions on a hill 250 meters behind the river. The French went over the river unmolested, but as soon as they landed on the other side all hell broke loose. The Qing fired intentionally over their heads to scare them off, but Lecomte reacted by ordering his men to begin flanking the Qing. The French troops charged up the hill as the Qing pulled back, allowing the rest of the French forces to cross the river by 11am. Meanwhile a few hours prior, around 9am, three Qing envoys showed up to Dugenne with letters. The letters were from the Qing commanders in the field explaining to Dugenne, while they understood the Tientsin Accord articles, their officials' last orders were to hold their position so they were in quite a pickle. They requested Dugenne send a message back to Hanoi to seek further instructions. Now Dugenne should have complied with this, but instead he sent word back to the Qing commanders at 3pm stating he would continue his march up the Mandarin road. Allegedly Dugenne did this because he assumed the Qing would just pull to the side and allow his force to pass. Dugenne gave orders to his men not to open fire explicitly unless he ordered them to do so and they marched. For quite some time the march went unmolested until the French were going around the Nui Dong Nai cliffs. Suddenly the Qing forces who had been shadowing the French column open fire upon both their flanks. The French vanguard deployed as best as they could as Dugenne tried to order a bugler to sound a ceasefire call, but it was to no avail. The Qing sounded their own bugles ordered more men to join the battle forcing Dugenne to plan a defense. Now Dugenne was leading 450 French troops and 350 Tonkinese auxiliaries, and to add insult to injury many of his forces were not veteran troops. His men formed a square formation, digging trenches and by the late afternoon had repelled multiple attacks and led some minor counter attacks. During the night the Qing brought forward more forces occupying the heights surrounding the French and in the morning attacked all sides of the French square. Dugenne made several counterattacks, but without significant numbers nor artillery support he knew they would soon be encircled and annihilated. By 11am he ordered a withdrawal to Song Thuong, abandoning the baggage trains and fighting each step they took. Despite the intense situation, the officers managed to keep the men orderly, and the withdrawal was done effectively. General Millot received word of Dugennes plight on June 23rd and immediately dispatched the 2nd brigade to save them. The 2nd brigade reached Dugenne's column near Bac Le on the 27th and set to make a counterattack to repel the Qing forces back to Song Thuong. However just as General Negrier was about to issue orders he received word from Millot ordering him to get everyone back to Hanoi at once. The French had suffered 22 deaths and 70 wounded during the ambush and allege they inflicted 300 casualties upon the Qing. News of what was called the Bac Le Ambush reached France prompting Jules Ferry's government to demand a apology in the form of indemnity payments and immediate implementation of the Tientsin accord from China. The Qing sought to further negotiate, but refused to apologize or pay an indemnity. Negotiations began again, but the mood in both France and China was pure outrage and the sabers of war were rattling. While negotiations were still going on the French government sent orders to Admiral Courbet to take his recently established Far East Squadron to give battle to the Qing navy at Fuzhou. Admiral Courbet's Far East Squadron during late August consisted of 13 ships only a fraction of what it would be a bit later on; He had 5 ironclads on hand though they were all over the place performing missions, there was Bayard his flagship, Sharp, Atalante, Trimphanate and La Galissonniere. He also had cruisers Duguay-Trouin, Villars, D'Estaing, Volta, gunboats Lynx, Aspic, Vipere and two torpedo boats. The Qing Fujian Fleet had 11 western style ships and 11 chinese war junks in the region. The Qing flagship was the wooden corvette Yangwu, followed by scourt-transports: Fupo, Ji'an, Yongbao, Chenhang, Yixin, wooden gunboats: Zhenwei, Fuxiang, Jianshen and Fusheng and 12 Chinese war junks. In terms of crews the French would have 1780 vs 1040 for the Qing. In terms of firepower the French were overwhelming better armed with the Qing having only a few ships that were capable of return fire. Overall command for the Qing was led by imperial commissioner Zhang Peilun. Admiral Courbet arrived at the Fuzhou anchored near the port of Fuzhou on August 22nd, observing the Qing fleet deployed with a northern group of 8 ships and a southern group of 3 ships. Courtbet placed his squadron between these clusters and observed his enemy. The Qing ships were seen to swing with the tides, prompting Courbet to plan for his attack to commence at the top of the tide roughly around 2pm the next day. He deduced the Qing ships would swing away from his fleet presenting their vulnerable sterns. The Qing northern group seemed to be protecting her dockyards while the southern group seemed to be protecting a customs building. Assuming the Qing would not change their formations, Courbet hoped to begin battle at 2pm with his torpedo boats first then cannon fire by the rest. The next day, neither side made any attempt to redeploy or mess with the other and by 1:30pm the French crews were preparing for battle. The Qing seemingly did nothing upon witnessing the French clearly preparing their ships for a fight by 1:45pm, but at 1:55pm Qing mineboats began advancing towards the French ships. Courbet immediately raised flags for attack commencement, 5 minutes before the expected timetable. Torpedo boat no.46 surged forward hitting the Yangwu with a Spar Torpedo. For those of you who don't know what this is, picture a extremely long pole poking infront of your ship with a bomb on its end. The idea is quite simple you rush head first towards an enemy ship jab the pointed pole at the hull of a ship and detonate the bomb on the end using a fuse. Takes a lot of balls to pull this off to be sure. The bomb damaged Torpedo # 46's boiler and ruptured the hull of Yangwu. Meanwhile Torpedo boat #45 tried to do the same action to Fupo which was less successful in her venture. As the two torpedo boats made their daring escapes under fire the French cruisers and ironclad Triomphante began opening fire. The Yongbao, Feiyun, Fushen, Jiansheng, Ji'an and Chenhang were lit ablaze or sunk from shellfire. Only the Fupo and Yixin survived the onslaught, forced to flee upriver as they were chased by the gunboats, Lynx, Vipere and Aspic. The Zhenwei received a shell hit from Triomphante causing a large explosion. Before the carnage had unfolded, the Qing had concentrated their fire upon the Volta, which Courtbet was forced to use as his Flagship as the Bayard did not make it in time for battle. The Qing clearly did this in order to kill Courtbet hoping it would be a decisive victory. Several crew aboard the Volta were killed or wounded, a roundshot smashed through her bridge nearly killing the captain Gigon. By 5pm the fighting had died down, but during the night the Qing made several unsuccessful fireship attacks. The next day Courbet ordered his ships to land some companies ashore to set up explosives to destroy the Fuzhou dockyards, but upon seeing the Qing left infantry to defend them was forced to cancel the plans. Instead he had his fleet begin bombarding the dockyards and outer buildings, but was unable to completely destroy the yards. The ships stayed at anchor another day as the Qing attempted a night torpedo attack as the gunboat Vipere who was anchored on the outside of the formation. Searchlights picked up the torpedo attempts and they were fired upon until they gave up. On August the 25th, Courbet took his forces down the Min River with Triomphante and Duguay-Trouin leading the way. For two days he had his forces bombard some Qing shore batteries defending the approach to Fuzhou followed by forts at the Jinpai pass. In the end the French had 10 deaths, 48 wounded due mostly to sniper fire with two ships receiving light damage. The Qing lost 9 ships completely with the others running aground, severely burnt or damaged in various other ways. The estimated death toll was estimated to be between 2000-3000. The Qing put up a memorial shortly after the war commemorating a list of 831 sailors and soldiers killed on the 23rd, but the list does not include deaths incurred during the Min River voyage. The captain of the flagship Yangwu, had abandoned his ship prematurely and was beheaded later for cowardice. Countless men lost their jobs, like the governor-general of Fujian and Zhejiang He Jing, the governor of Fujian Zhang Zhaotong and the director general of the Fuzhou dock yard He Ruzhang. Zhang Peilun who made no significant effort to direct the Fujian Fleet was degraded and replaced by our old friend General Zuo Zongtang. The battle of Fuzhou, put simply was a shitshow for the Qing. There were numerous factors that led to the humiliating defeat. A major factor was Germany making excuses not to send the new Dingyuan and Zhenyuan over in time. Also the Fujian Fleet received absolutely zero help from the other fleets despite Zhang Peilun pleading for help from the Beiyang Fleet, Nanyang Fleet and Guangdong fleet, even with direct orders from Empress Dowager Cixi in hand. These fleets all had respective commanders who were loathe to see any of their assets damaged and thus held back. I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me. Incompetency and corruption led to a huge loss at the battle of Fuzhou. Now the Qing dynasty had really gotten herself into a mess and a full scale war with France was only beginning and about to get a whole lot worse.

Last time we spoke about Francis Garnier and his wild expedition in Vietnam. Yes against all his superiors orders, Garnier decided to grab a few of the boys and sail up river to threaten and steal territories for France. He first struck at the grand city of Hanoi, taking it much to the shock of the Nguyen officials. But he did not stop there oh no, he then set his eyes upon the provinces of Hung Yen and Phu Ly. Both were taken with shockingly small forces, but Garnier strived for even more and dispatched a force to take Hai Duong. Then he found out the Vietnamese at Ninh Binh were forming an army to fight him so he attacked it. This greatly pissed off the Vietnamese and their Black Flag Army allies who attacked Hanoi and in the process Garnier died charging into the enemy like a madman. Today we continue the story of how France colonized Indochina. #43 The Tonkin Campaign Welcome to the Fall and Rise of China Podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about the history of Asia? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on history of asia and much more so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel where I cover the history of China and Japan from the 19th century until the end of the Pacific War. Now last we spoke, Henri Riviere basically took up the mantle of Francis Garnier and began to seize territory in Tonkin against his nation's wishes. That was of course until the government changed and the new administration led by Jules Ferry were very pro colonization and immediately supported Riviere. Now Rivieres actions had caused a real maestrum for the Nguyen empire. Liu Yongfu went to Hanoi and slapped a note against the citadel on March 26th of 1883 threatening to kill Henri Riviere, taunting the french into battle. This scared the hell out of the Nguyen court who expected Riviere to unleash hell so they ordered prince Hoang Ke Viem to go seek out the Black Flag Army to see what could be done. Hoang Ke Viem was sent under the guise he was trying to move the Black Flag forces away from Hanoi, but Riviere did not buy it at all. Riviere sent a letter to Hanoi's military commander Hoang Dieu, demanding he submit or get rid of the Black Flags, otherwise he would yet again attack Hanoi. Hoang Dieu simply stated it was impossible for him to do so. Thus Riviere and his forces occupied Hanoi by April 26th, further stressing out the Nguyen court who desperately sent envoys to negotiate with France. Meanwhile Hoang Ke Viem saw the paint on the wall and began to mobilize forces in the northern provinces for war. During the negotiations with the French, Riviere demanded the French be allowed to garrison at Son Tay, but the Nguyen court said they could not, it was in fact because the Black Flags were there. Rivier took this as an act of hostility and began to suspect Hoang Ke Viem was working directly with the Black Flags. Things were however not looking good for Riviere, he had very limited forces and was forced to go on the defensive. The Nguyen court then ordered Hoang Ke Viem to write a letter to the French in Hanoi to officially explain the role of the Black Flags, in the vain hope of regaining Hanoi free of conflict. Despite all of this Hoang Ke Viem and the Black Flags mobilized for battle. On March 28th, in response to Liu Yongfu's taunting, Riviere elected to go out and fight the enemy. Why would he do this with basically under 500 men against thousands? According to the French, Riviere was forced to do so to protect the prestige of France, so he led a column of 450 troops out of Hanoi's citadel to face the Black Flag Army who had taken a position in Phy Hoai, just a few miles away. His force was soon discovered by Liu Yongfu's scouts who set up an ambush at a village called Cau Giay. Within this village was a bridge, known to the french as Pont de Papier "Paper bridge". The Black Flag forces hid themselves west of the bridge in the village of Trung Thong, Thien Thong and Ha Yen Ke. These 3 smaller villages were covered in thick bamboo groves and trees making them excellent spots to perform an ambush. The French column reached the Paper bridge around 7:30am led at the ron by the Chef de Bataillon Berthe de Villers. As they crossed the bridge, the French vanguard was suddenly fired upon by Black Flag troops prompting Berthe de Villers to deploy his men into a line formation and push forward towards the 3 villages. Liu Yongfu waited for the enemy line to fully commit, then tossed in his reserves, launching a sudden flank attack to the French's right. The Black Flag flank's volleys caused tremendous casualties upon the french, mortally wounding Berthe de Villers, forcing Riviere to assume direct command of the column. To avoid encirclement, Riviere ordered his men to pull back and regroup on the other side of Paper bridge. The retreat was conducted initially in good order, being covered by artillery support, but then disaster struck. Suddenly their artillery cannons overturned by the force of their recoil fire, prompting Riviere and some officers to rush forward to help the gunners allowing the Black Flag to unleash some deadly volleys. The volley's killed some French officers and wounded Riviere, and upon seeing this the Black Flag Soldiers surged forward to attack the French rearguard. During the mayhem Riviere was killed, and almost complete catastrophe occurred for the French forces, until Lt De Vaisseau Pissere took command and pulled the men to the eastern side of the bridge. The Black Flag were finally pushed back and the French column was forced to limp back to Hanoi. The French had lost 5 officers, 30 men and had 55 wounded. The Black Army were estimated to have lost 50 dead and perhaps 50 wounded out of a total of 1500 men. In the greater scheme of things, it was a small battle, but it had a significant effect. Aside from the loss of face for France and death of Riviere, it prompted action from the new government of France. Jules Ferry's administration received word of the loss and Rivieres death on May 26th and it was met with outrage. French Naval minister Admiral Peyron declared "'France will avenge her glorious children!' His words would be echoed in the Chamber of Deputies for they immediately tossed 3.5 million france to finance a punitive expedition to Tonkin. The Tonkin Expeditionary corps were established in June of 1883 sent primarily to pacify Tonkin. They were led by General de Brigade Alexandre-Eugene Bouet, the most senior marine infantry officer close on hand, that being in Cochinchina. Bouet began his new mission by changing the attire of his forces, introduced lightweight black pyjama style summer uniforms, with some added black cloth to cover their white pith helmets. The idea behind this was simple, try not to stand out like a sore thumb so much in the jungle. Bouet arrived to Tonkin to find their position pretty precarious. The French only had small garrisons in Hanoi, Nam Dinh, Haiphong and very isolated small outposts in Hon Gai and Qui Nhon. Thus for the month of June he had the men dig in and perform defensive actions, sporadically being harassed by Vietnamese and Black Flag forces. Bouet needed to wait for reinforcements and decided to hire some local Yellow Flags. I have not mentioned them, but the Yellow Flag's were basically the same type of force as the Black FLag's, Chinese bandits who crossed over the border after the Taiping Rebellion. The Vietnamese government initially began to support the Yellow Flags to fight off the Black Flags, but as time went on the Black Flag's pretty much beat the shit out of the Yellow flags, excuse my French. Bouet would allegedly hire 800 Yellow Flag members to augment his forces. In late july Bouet received reinforcements when Admiral Amedee Courtbet arrived to Ha Long Bay giving the French around 2500 infantry, 6 gunboats and some artillery pieces to work with. Bouet knew with these forces he could perform some offensive campaigns against the Black Flag Army, but he also was under orders to push for a political settlement with the Nguyen empire to recognize the French protectorate in Tonkin. Bouet and Courtbet met with Jules Harmand the new civil commissioner general for Tonkin to discuss war plans. The 3 men agreed that Bouet should launch an offensive against the Black Flag Army in Phu Hoai as a first action. They also noted that Rivieres suspicions about the Nguyen working with the Black Flags covertly was most likely true, therefore they decided to also strike against the Vietnamese forces as well. This was a significant escalation as attacking the Nguyen army forces could provoke the Qing dynasty. The first thing to be done was sail up the Hue river, but in order to do so the French would need to seize the Thuan An forts guarding its entrance. Admiral Courtbet took his flagship Bayard out on august 16th to scout the forts while his flotilla assembled. Courtbet would have the ironclad Bayard and Atalante, the cruiser Chateaurenault and gunboats Vipere, Lynx and armed transport Drac and Annamite. On August the 18th the flotilla got into position at the entrance of the Hue river. A delegation was sent in advance to the Nguyen officials to demand the surrender of the forts, but the fort commander declined to respond. At 5:40pm the French ships began to open fire, met by return fire from the forts. The bombardment lasted only an hour, until it got dark and the ships had to turn on their electric searchlights to illuminate the forts. Dawn the next day the ships recommenced bombardment devastating the forts, though the Nguyen return fire did manage to strike their ships a few times. On August the 20th, 2 marine companies were landed near the northern fort led by Captain Parrayon of the ship Bayard. The Vietnamese trench line troops fired upon the invaders. After and hour of fighting, Parrayon seized the northern fort and raised the French flag. After taking this fort the French turned their attention to the southern fort and began to bombard it and prepared marines to land. It was all for nothing however as the defenders had abandoned the fort and nearby village while the northern fort was under attack. The casualties for the Nguyen forces were heavy, with some outrageous estimates ranging up to 2000. Enseigne de vaisseau Louis-Marie-Julian Viaud served under Admiral Courbet aboard the Atalante and he wrote extensively of the Tonkin campaign under the pen name Pierre Loti. He wrote about the battle of Thuan An, giving accounts of atrocities committed by the French forces. He would later be recalled by the French navy and suspended from duty for publishing such works, here is a passage about the aftermath of the battle "The great slaughter now began. Our men fired double volleys, and it was a pleasure to see their streams of well-aimed bullets shredding the enemy ranks, surely and methodically, twice a minute, on the word of command... We could see some men, quite out of their senses, standing up, seized with a dizzy desire to run... They zigzagged, swerving this way and that way as they tried to outrun death, clutching their garments around their waists in a comical way... Afterwards, we amused ourselves by counting the dead…" Pierre Loti spoke of how the French marines took pleasure bayoneting wounded Vietnamese troops, slaughtering the clearly outgunned men. The seizure of the forts shocked the Nguyen court and an 48 hour armistice was quickly agreed upon. The Nguyen court agreed immediately to evacuate 12 inland forts defending the Hue river, destroyed their ammunition and removed barrages. Jules Harmand sailed up the Hue river to meet directly with the Nguyen court where he threatened them with complete annihilation unless they accepted a French protectorate over both Tonkin and Annam. This is what he said to them "If we wanted to, we could destroy your dynasty root and branch and seize for ourselves the entire kingdom, as we have done in Cochinchina. You know very well that this would present no difficulty to our armies. For a moment, you hoped to find help from a great empire on your borders, which has on several occasions posed as your suzerain. But even if such a suzerainty ever existed, and whatever the consequences that might once have resulted from it, it is now nothing but a historical curiosity. Now here is a fact which is quite certain. You are completely at our mercy. We have the power to seize and destroy your capital and to starve you all to death. It is up to you to choose between war and peace. We do not wish to conquer you, but you must accept our protectorate. For your people, it is a guarantee of peace and prosperity. For your government and your court, it is the only chance of survival. We give you forty-eight hours to accept or reject, in their entirety and without discussion, the terms which we are magnanimously offering you. We believe that there is nothing in them dishonourable to you, and if they are carried out with sincerity on both sides they will bring happiness to the people of Annam. But if you reject them, you can expect to suffer the most terrible of misfortunes. The worst catastrophe you are capable of imagining will fall far short of what will actually befall you. The empire of Annam, its royal dynasty and its princes and court will have voted for their own extinction. The very name of Vietnam will be erased from history." The Nguyen court, cowed to this on August 25th by signing the Treaty of Hue. The treaty forced the Nguyen empire to recognize the French protector for both Tonkin and Annam. The Nguyen court would survive, but now had to take direction from French advisors. The Nguyen Emperor would be required to take personal audience with the French commissioner general in Tonkin, a unprecedented thing for them. And in return for all of this, the French would drive out the Black Flags, something they were already doing. Now while Admiral Courbet slammed the Nguyen forces at Thuan An, General Bouet led the offensive against Liu Yongfu's Black Flag army. He led 2500 French and Vietnamese troops augmented by a further 450 Yellow Flag members. His force was divided into 3 columns, the left led by Lt Colonel Revillon consisting of marines, Cochinchinese riflement, 2 artillery sections and the Yellow Flag battalion. The central column led by Chef de bataillon Paul Coronnat consisted of a marine battalion, a marine artillery battery and some Cochinchinese riflemen. Finally the right column was led by Colonel Bichot consisting of a marine infantry battalion, a artillery battery and more Cochinchinese riflement. Bichot took his column along the Red river where 6 French gunboats could support his movements. Bouet took a reserve force and marched behind Revillons column as they went to Phu Hoai. Liu Yongfu's Black Flag army consisted of around 3000 men who he had position 2 lines of field fortifications blocking the roads going to Son Tay. The first line was near the village of Cau Giay where Riviere had died on paper bridge and the second was close behind it defending the approach to the villages of Phu Noai, Noi and Hong. As Revillon's left column tried to attack the right side of the Black Flag first line they were quickly counterattacked by Liu Yongfu and the bulk of his forces. Revillons men began to run low on ammunition and performed a fighting withdrawal towards the Paper bridge. As they did so their Vietnamese coolies began to panic, nearly causing a rout. However a marine infantry battalion took up a position in the village of Vong and provided cover fire for the withdrawing forces inflicting heavy casualties upon the Black Flag army units who had left their defensive line to pursue them out in the open field. As night was approaching, Bouet tossed his reserves in enabling Revillon to stabilize a line. During the evening, Bouet had not received word from the other 2 columns thus he ordered Revillons column to pull back to Hanoi. It turned out the other 2 columns had failed to apply enough pressure on the Black Flag line of defenses allowing Liu Yongfu to toss nearly the kitchen sink at Revillons force who were simply more isolated. Coronet's center column had no even made contact with the enemy at all while Bichots column captured the village of Trem but then became stuck when they ran into the 2nd black flag defensive line. On the night of the 16th of august, Bichots men advanced on the defensive line only to find out the Black Flag units abandoned it during the night, because while all of this was going on, the Red River had begun flooding on august the 15th. The Black Flag army knew more so about the flooding situation in the area and had slowly pulled out. Bichot meanwhile was simply content with occupying their abandoned line and decided not to pursue the enemy which was a huge mistake as the black flag army was actually in quite a disarray from the flooding. The battle of Phu Hoai as it became known resulted in 17 deaths and 62 wounded for the French and perhaps a few hundred deaths and many hundred wounded black flag units. Though the Black Flag army took very heavy casualties, the fact was they had stopped the french advance and thus won a victory. This led to local Tonkinese officials to be quite wary over who was going to win the conflict. Now the flooding forced the Black Flag to pull back behind the Day River. They took up new positions around the villages of Phong which lay on the road going to Son Tay and the village of Palan which lay at the junction of the Red and Day rivers. Bouet resolved to attack the black flags again, so now he took his French, Cochinchinese and Yellow flag forces alongside 6 gunboats to hit the village of Palan. On August the 31st he began his offensive by using his gunboats to bombard the village and sent a French battalion to storm Palan. The village was taken with ease as the Black Flag units fled along the dykes away. Then the next day Bouet's column marched towards Phong along the 2 meter wide dykes running along the bank of the Day River. The column made it 3 kms from Palan where they ran into 1200 or so Black Flag units supported by over 3000 Vietnamese. The Black Flag units were armed with many modern Winchester rifles fighting tenacious giving little ground. The Vietnamese forces meanwhile were not making much of an active resistance and instead beat gongs, drums and made war chants, perhaps sitting on the fence so to say. As the French column pressed forward the Black flags began to pull back to a central defensive line behind earthen works and dykes. Li Yongfu had his HQ in a small pagoda and around his central command were hidden artillery positions well camouflaged. As the French approached the earthen works and dykes the artillery began to fire off causing heavy casualties amongst the French. The French were unable to locate where all the fire was coming from, prompting Bouet to order his gunboats to come closer to bombard the area. However the gunboat shells were soaked by rain and many were failing to explode causing little damage. Eventually Bouet ordered an assault upon the enemy's center. The column marched into a flooded rice paddy wading up to their breast in water and holding their rifles above their heads. The Black Flags from their concealed positions rained hell upon them. Despite the carnage the French pressed forward forcing the defenders to give way from intense fire and soon the Black Flag right wing collapsed towards the center. The French forces took advantage and began charging upon the enemy causing a rout as the Black Flag army fled. The french had roughly 16 dead with almost 50 wounded while the Black flags left 60 dead on the battlefield and probably had several hundred more dead and wounded carried off. Bouets men tried to keep orderly conduct, but apparently the Yellow Flag units went around cutting off heads from the corpses and plundering peaceful nearby Vietnamese villages, so Bouet disbanded them. Liu Yongfu retained his army despite the tactical victory for the French, thus from the point of view of his superiors, Bouet had failed. Bouet resigned in early september as a result and would be replaced by Lt Colonel Anicet-Edmon-Justin Bichot, the next high ranking officer in Tonkin. His tenure would be short lived however and consisted of little more than reconnaissance actions, though during these his men did find the remains of Henri Riviere, whose mutilated body had been buried near the village of Kien Mai. From that point on France decided to give Admiral Courbet command over the expeditionary forces. Courbet would receive significant reinforcements in the form of over 10,000 men led by General Charles Theodore Millot. Courbet was instructed to uphold the primary mission, to annihilate the Black Flag army of Liu Yongfu. However things were about to get a whole lot messier. The Black Flag army had fled to the fortified city of Son Tay and the French had gradually figured out they were being supported by the Qing dynasty. The French had discovered the Qing had sent a large amount of troops over the border pretending to be Black Flag army units. French foreign minister Paul-Armand Challemel-Lacour had met with the Qing minister Zeng Jize in Paris multiple times in 1883. He attempted to get the Qing to withdraw their covert forces who were garrisoning cities like Bac Ninh, Lang Son and Son Tay. The Qing refused and continuously made excuses. The French tried to speak to the German government to delay their recent sale of the battleships Dingyuan and Zhenyuan to the Qing to pressure them, only to be met with anti-french protests within China. Riots and minor attacks began against French held concessions in Guangzhou. The French knew, to attack the Black Flag Army further would most likely see a war break out with the Qing. France's military planners decided if they could launch a lightning storm campaign against the rest of Tonkin and seize it quickly enough, the Qing would likely back down. Thus in december of 1883 Admiral Courbet received authorization to launch a campaign against Liu Yongfu and the Black Flag Army, knowing full well it would probably result in an undeclared war against the Qing dynasty. I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me. The French kept allowing officers to stir up trouble in Vietnam leading to the Tonkin Campaign. Now France was stuck in a war against the Nguyen Empire, the Black Flag Army of Liu Yongfu and soon the Qing dynasty would join in the fun.

Last time we spoke about how France ended up in Indochina. Yes while Britain got her hands very messy in China, France had likewise done the same in Southeast Asia. It began with Jesuit priests trying to convert those to Catholicism but they soon found themselves becoming increasingly more involved. The Nguyen empire grew weary of the tiresome catholics and began to crack down on them, leading to conflicts with the French and to a lesser extent the Spanish. Before they knew it a full blown war emerged where the Vietnamese tried desperately to fight off a Franco-Spanish force, but in the end were forced to capitulate to brutal demands. Yet again unequal treaties were placed upon a nation of the far east, but worse than that, the French took colonial possession of what became known as French Indochina. Today we continue that story. #42 Francis Garnier's Insane Expedition Welcome to the Fall and Rise of China Podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about the history of Asia? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on history of asia and much more so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel where I cover the history of China and Japan from the 19th century until the end of the Pacific War. So we ended off the last episode with the signing of the Treaty of Saigon, yet again another unequal treaty in the east. It was so harsh, the Nguyen Emperor, Tu Duc sent an embassy to France in 1863 trying to revise it. The embassy failed their mission as Napoleon III had no intentions of lightening his grip on the new territorial acquisitions. Those territorial acquisitions to refresh your minds were Bien Hoa, Gia Dinh and Dinh Tuong. Thus by 1864 France had acquired a large part of southern Vietnam and declared it the French colony of Cochinchina. Also in August of 1863 the King of Cambodia Norodom signed a protectorate treaty with France cutting off the Kingdom of Siam and Empire of Nguyen's suzerainty over his country. If you think that is humiliating, just wait to hear this. Tu Duc's envoy to France, Phan Thanh Gian returned to Vietnam and was nominated governor ship of 3 southwestern provinces, Vinh Long, Chau Doc and Ha Tien. His French counterpart the Governor of the news Cochinchina, Pierre-Paul de la Grandiere was worried the 3 provinces to his west might be troublesome so he secretly organized an expedition to occupy them. Perhaps Phan Thanh Gian was told, or perhaps not, but it seems the French convinced Tu Duc to simply hand over the provinces which he did. Phan Thanh Gian told his people not to resistance, awaited orders which never came and killed himself via poisoning. Thus France now controlled all of southern Vietnam. Emperor Tu Duc officially handed the provinces over in the 1874 treaty of Saigon. The treaty officially made the rest of Vietnam a protectorate of France, to which she promised military protection against the Qing dynasty. A large reason why the Vietnamese signed off on this was because of another event that occurred in 1873, known as the Garnier affair. In 1873 the French explorer Jean Dupuis traveled up the Red River to attempt trade with Yunnan province, specifically to sell guns to its governor. While that sounds bad, Dupuis also performed the heinous crime of carrying salt up the river. Yes it turns out this was strictly prohibited by the Nguyen empire. A dispute emerged and Dupuis found himself stuck in a district of Hanoi alongside 90 of his Chinese hired mercenaries. The Vietnamese feared french reprisals, thus instead of using force to get rid of them they issued a complaint to the French admiral Marie Jules Dupre who was acting governor of Cochinchina. Dupre seemed to think he had something to gain from the situation, so he sent an expedition led by Lt Francis Garnir to Hanoi to solve the mater. Garnier took the ships D'estree and Fleurus alongside 83 men. Another 60 men would join them 2 weeks later aboard the Decres. The D'estree arrived at Tonkin on October 23rd , while Garnier and his men traveled to Hanoi using local junks. On November 5th Granier's party arrived and met with Dupuis. Despite being told to tell Dupuis to simply leave, Dupuis managed to convince Garnier he had been greatly mistreated by forces led by Marshal Nguyen Tri Phuong. Garnier then tried to negotiate with the local Nguyen authorities, but they would not budge on anything, so Garnier decided for military action. When the second part of his expeditionary forces arrived on, plus some additional units he requested, a total of 180 men, he decided to use them to capture Hanoi. Garnier wrote a letter and sent it back to Admiral Dupre using the D'estree to justify his actions. Garnier took the 2 gunboats he had left, the Scorpion and Espingole and anchored them roughly 1200 meters away from the walls of Hanoi, in the perfect position to fire upon her citadel, but being out of range of the Vietnamese cannons. On the morning of October 20th, Lt Garnier took a large portion of his forces towards the south eastern gate of Hanoi. Once they were in position they began to fire upon its thick door. The Vietnamese defenders atop the walls attempted to fire down upon the enemy with their cannons, but they were placed "en barbette" instead of inside embrasures, basically they were aimed to hit ships out in the water and could not properly aim downwards. The cannons failed to hit the french, while the French returned fire using Chassepot rifles. The defenders then tried to use older style riles, and as a french eye witness noted began throwing nails on the floor, which he assumed was to try and stop them from walking closer to the wall. Regardless the nails did not work. Once the gate had been demolished the defenders began to rout and the French quickly seized the south western entrance to the city. Meanwhile the two gunboats bombarded the northern and western gates and Garnier led another party to use land artillery to hit the south eastern gate. Garnier entered through a breach and this began a general rout for the enemy. Meanwhile Dupuis and 30 of his mercenaries including a former EVA member named Georges Vlavianos held the eastern gate to make sure the enemy did not escape there. During the chaos the French who came across Dupuis force assumed the chinese mercenaries were Vietnamese defenders and began to fire upon them causing some casualties until Dupuis stopped them. In the end Garnier took the city with a force of around 200 men, a city with a population of 80,000. Marshal Tri Phuong was captured alongside 2000 of his soldiers. On November 23rd, Garnier dispatched the Espingole from Hanoi to go obtain the submission of Nguyen officials at the fortified cities of Hung Yen and Phu-ly. The next day the small force aboard the Espingole arrived to Hung Yen and they met with some Nguyen officials. The officials promised the europeans they would capitulate as quote 'you have managed to capture the great citadel of Hanoi. We will not have the audacity to attempt defending this one against you". The Governor officially submitted, so the Espingole left Hung Yen and proceeded for Phu Ly. It was only a 3 hours journey. This time the French found the doors closed to them, with a few defenders offering fight. The French force began firing at those they saw and this caused the defenders to flee. The French entered Phu Ly finding some cannons, a few low quality rifles and a lot of rice and local currency. They waited a week holding the city and on December 1st a Vietnamese man named Le Van Ba, whom Garnier had appointed to be in charge of Phu Ly arrived with a small militia force. The French force greeted them, handing over some weapons to help them garrison the city and then proceeded to take the Espingole to Hai Duong. Hai Duong held strong fortifications, outfitted with a large number of cannons, including some more modern european ones and was defended by roughly 2000 men. The French delegation was met by the governor of Hai Duong, Dang Xuan Bang who politely had tea with them. The French demanded he come aboard their ship to officially begin handing over the city. He politely refused to go aboard their ship, so a French officer threatened him stating "we will capture Hai Duong like we captured Hanoi". The governor politely refused their demands again, notably being charming and polite the entire time. The French went back to the Espingole, carrying some gifts the governor gave them. The last thing they told the governor was if he did not come over to their boat by 3pm, the city would be considered an enemy. 3pm went by without any sight of the governor, so the Espingole began to open fire on the citadel firing 10 shells to devastating effect. The French then ceased their fire hoping the damage to the citadel would entice the governor to surrender. The next day a junk came to the Espingole and aboard was an official, but not the governor himself. The French demanded the governor come himself or they would continue their attack. Well the governor did not show up so at 8:30 at night the Espingole made its way to fire on the nearest fort. The fort returned fire, but its cannons fire right over the Espingole's mast. The French sent 15 marines and 12 sailors aboard two sampans to assault the fort. Once they got within 50 meters of the fort they began firing their rifles which routed the forts defenders. They seized the fort with ease which was 600 meters from the cities citadel. From the fort they began to fire upon the Vietnamese soldiers. Eventually they began a march towards the citadel's main gate, but it had a moat. From atop its walls the Vietnamese were firing cannons, but the French simply waited for the cannons to fire and bolted towards the gate while they were reloading. The French had brought not artillery nor scaling ladders and were forced to run around the citadels walls looking or a weak spot to breach which they did find on its southern end. By 10:15am the French got inside the citadel and hoisted the french flag from its highest tower. They captured a few hundred vietnamese soldiers, but countless got away, including the governor. During this mess, the Espingole party was informed the governor of Ninh Binh and some Hanoi officials who had run away during the battle were organizing forces to oppose the French. The Espingole received 400 reinforcements who had been sent to help garrison their recent earnings. The Espingole commander sent word to Garnier about the Vietnamese building up a force to face them, prompting Garnier to send a force to subdue Ninh Binh. Garnier dispatched Aspirant Hautefeuille with a squad for the task and enroute he found out the Vietnamese were building large dams in the riverways to thwart their movements. Hautefeuilles force tore down the first dam operation they found only to find out another one was being built closer to Ninh Binh. They made their way to Ninh Binh and Hautefeuille got aboard a canoe with some sailors to parley at its citadel. When they landed they were swarmed by local civilians trying to give them gifts of oxen. As soon as the French reached the citadels gate they were swarmed by Vietnamese troops who proded them with spears trying to entice a battle. Hautefeuille noticed not to far away was the provincial governor, one Nguyen Vu, he recognized him because he had four parasols. Hautefeuille raised his pistol and screamed at the governor to submit to Garnier. The governor replied he would submit whole-heartedly. So Hautefeuille went over to him with a paper and pen demanding he write down his submission officially and allow him to escort the governor into the citadel, but to this the governor rejected. Apparently Hautefeuille grabbed the governor by his collar, but his gun to the mans head and threatened to kill him. A tense standoff occurred until the governor gave in and soon the french flag was raised over the citadel. For this achievement Hautefeuille would be appointed governor of the province by Garnier later in early December. Throughout early december Garniers garrisons were attacked by Vietnamese guerilla forces and hire Black Flag mercenaries. I had mentioned them once before, but to explain who exactly they are, they were the remnants of a bandit group that had ventured into northern vietnam from Guangxi province. Basically they were products of the Taiping Rebellion and when the Qing cracked down, they took up their shop and left for Vietnam. Nguyen officials loved to hire them to fight the French as they had experience fighting westerners. Garnier ended up visited some of the garrisons having issues with attacks, offering reinforcements and instructions on how to hold onto their cities. On December 18th, Garnier was back in Hanoi, receiving reports the Black Flags were becoming a real problem for its defenses. Garnier was just about to plan a assault of Son Tay where it was alleged the Black Flag's were operating, when a Nguyen envoy party showed up proclaiming a truce. Garnier began negotiations with the party, when on December 21st suddenly 2000 Vietnamese soldiers led by Hoang Ke Viem and 600 Black Flags approached Hanoi. The Black flags attacked Hanoi's citadel while the Vietnamese forces held back a further km away. The French lookouts saw an elephant amongst their force, which indicated the presence of a high Nguyen official. Garnier distributed his men around the walls while his men used their French cannons upon the Black Flag's, refusing to use the outdated Vietnamese swivel cannons. The French cannons began to cause a panic amongst the vietnamese army which quickly turned into a rout, while the Black Flag forces made an orderly retreat. Garnier was not satisfied with this, knowing full well they would attack again, so he decided to send a decisive blow against the Black Flags. Garnier sent Ensign Balny D'Avricourt with a squad of 12 men to hit the enemies left flank while he took 18 men to hit the village of Thu Le, around 1.2 kms southwest of the citadel where it looked like the Black Flag's were holding up. The two French forces went their separate paths and met up to bombard Thu Le. Garniers force saw the Black Flag force withdrawing and pursued them only to run into a swamp. Their cannon got stuck, but Garnier simply yelled "A la baionnette, en avant!". Garnier charged through the swamp as his men tried to keep up with him. They were suddenly met with a volley from the Black Flag who had lured them in, killing a few of the French. Garnier unhit, kept charging with his handgun, but tripped and fell. Upon seeing this the Black flag forces rushed forward and stabbed Garnier multiple times with spears and swords while firing at his comrades. The French retreated back to the citadel losing more men, as the Nguyen forces took Garniers head and some others back to Son Tay. Despite losing their leader, the French held onto the garrisons, sending word of his death and receiving word a new French envoy would be sent. At this point French authorities had found out about the Garnier expedition and were quite embarrassed by the entire thing. Actually they had found out a bit early in late november, prompting Lt Paul-Louis-Felix-Philastre to relieve Garnier and send a scathing letter to him that he never got a chance to read "Have you thought about the shame that will befall upon you when it will be known that, having been sent to expel some ruffian, you allied yourself with him to attack people who hadn't caused you any harm?" Lt Philastre arrived in Haiphong to meet with Nguyen officials to end the unsanctioned campaign. On December 29th, Philastre went to Hai Duong where he ordered the garrisons to be evacuated, where the local french forces tried to persuade him otherwise. Philastre then went to Hanoi to speak to more Nguyen officials about his orders for the French to leave the cities they stole. This led to the 1874 signing of the new treaty of Saigon where the French gave back the stolen cities, thus concluded what was in essence a short undeclared war. So Garnier had been sent to simply tell a guy caught smuggling to leave an area in Vietnam, only to begin a war stealing a bunch of major cities. The French government was deeply embarrassed by the ordeal, disavowing Garnier for his actions, but because of how incredible his accomplishments were, many in France saw him heroic. Yes he was romanticized, much like the conquistador Francisco Pizarro or Hernan Cortez, absolute psychopaths that they were. So while you think, boy oh boy France sure loves to send people on expeditions that results in them stealing territory…well France was nowhere near done with this recurring activity. In 1881 the French naval officer Henri Riviere was sent with a small military force to Hanoi to investigate Nguyen complaints involving French merchants. As you can already guess by now, Henri acted in defiance of orders placed upon him. As he would later argue, based on the fact the Nguyen dynasty was not respecting the Treaty of Saigon, still having a tributary relation with China, was paying the Black Flags to attack French in southeast asia and not complying with trade regulations, Henri took a force of 2 gunboats and some forces straight to the citadel of Hanoi and stormed it. When he showed up to Hanoi he told the Nguyen officials he was simply leading his forces to stamp out Black Flag soldiers in the area, but instead immediately set to work stationing his forces within the citadel. The governor, Hoang Dieu was given an ultimatum to have his forces stand down, but instead Hoang Dieu sent a letter of apology to his emperor and killed himself. It was yet again another embarrassment for France who handed Hanoi back over to the Nguyen officials, but Henri was not done yet. In the meantime, Henri's actions pushed the Nguyen Empire to seek aid from the Qing dynasty and Black Flag army. The Qing seeking to help their Vietnamese allies, but not at the cost of incurring the wrath of France again said they would aid them via the Black Flag's. In the summer of 1882 Chinese forces from Yunnan and Guangxi crossed the border into Tonkin, beginning to covertly occupy Hung Hoa, Bac Ninh, Lang Son and other cities. The French and Qing saw the paint on the wall, despite the covert activity leading Li Hongzhang and a French envoy to try and work out a deal where they would divide Tonkin into French and Qing controlled spheres of influence, but the deal never came to be. Thus both sides gradually increased their power in the region and in February of 1883, France sent a 500 man battalion of marines led by Lt Colonel Carreau to Hanoi who would be at the disposal of Henri Riviere. On the other side the Nguyen officials received aid from the warlord and leader of the Black Flag Army, Liu Yongfu. Liu Yongfu came from Guangxi and joined a local militia during the Taiping Rebellion, some claim this militia also fought for the Taiping. When the Taiping Rebellion came to a close, Liu Yongfu's prospects looked dire so he took his forces southwest, until they were finally pushed to cross the border into northern Tonkin. Liu Yongfu then established a camp outside Son Tay where he formed the "Heiqi Jun / black flag army" based on his dream of becoming "general of the black tiger". Though seen initially as an invader, the Vietnamese officials also were surprised at how proficient the Black Flag army was and reasoned it would be difficult to dislodge them. They reasoned if the Black Flag army could be hired to fight their enemies that served them just fine. When the Black Flag's killed Garnier that certainly earned them praise from the Vietnamese who would increasingly call upon them. Henri Riviere upon receiving the new forces was instructed specifically that they were not to venture past the French occupied parts of Tonkin. So Henri did the opposite of that, because French. He had learnt in early march of 1883, the Nguyen government was planning to lease some coal mines in Hon Gai to the Qing dynasty, but this proved to be a front for the British ironically enough. If the British were to gain this it would spell the end of French colonial expansion in Tonkin, this Riviere could have none of that. Riviere ordered Commandant Berthe de Villers to take 50 marines aboard the Parseval to take Hon Gai, and they did just that meeting zero resistance. As Riviere put it in a letter to the governor of Cochinchina, Charles Thomson ""I have taken possession of the entire mining district. We have always coveted it, but have always hesitated to act. This will force them to take forward their Tonkin Question!"" Now Riviere did not stop there, he received word that Liu Yongfu was preparing to attack Hanoi with an army of 5000 Black Flag troops. Over in Nam Dinh, their citadel had been warned by their governor of the incoming battle, prompting Riviere to act first. In Riviere's words "As this indecisive government has been imprudent enough to send me 500 men. I have decided to use them to do what it did not decide I should do." Riviere elected to strike at Nam Dinh, similar to how Garnier did in 1873. Nam Dinh was defended by around 6000 Nguyen soldiers and 500 Chinese led covertly by the Black Flag officer Vinh Thong Chat. These chinese soldiers wore the Black Flag Army uniforms, but in reality were Qing troops. French reconnaissance indicated around 8000 men defended Nam Dinh, regardless Riviere decided to go forward and attack the city with 520 men. They traveled the red river using 6 gunboats, reaching the Nam Dinh by march 25th. They quickly went to work seizing the naval barracks which were unoccupied. They also cleared fields of huts to set up firing lanes for their gunboats and set up artillery pieces. The next morning the bombardment began as Riviere simultaneously summoned the governor of Nam Dinh, Vu Trong Binh to come to his ship Pluvier to submit the citadel before 8am. Governor Vu Trong Binh was able to reject this before 8am. Nam Binh had 15 feet thick walls, unscalable and pretty much impossible to breach vie cannons, thus Riviere decided to force an entrance into the city by destroying one of its main gates with explosives. While his gunboats and artillery smashed the Vietnamese cannons along the walls, on March 27th his marines went ashore carrying dynamite blowing a gate up. The French then charged the citadel under heavy fire with Riviere at the front urging them on. The Vietnamese soldiers were overwhelmed by the superior firepower and by the afternoon the city fell as the governor fled. Riviere jubilantly stated "This will force them to take forward their Tonkin Question!'" Now Riviere expected to be punished for his renegade actions, but he lucked out enormous, for back home in France there was a change of government. The new administration led by Jules Ferry strongly supported colonial expansion and backed Riviere up from the offset. The new government followed this up by sending word to Li Hongzhang that Tonkin was going to be under French protection and to back off immediately. The Nguyen officials now were in quite a plight without their Qing defenders and wholeheartedly tossed their lot in with Liu Yongfu and the Black Flags. I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me. Francis Garnier died in a blaze of glory or insanity and now it seemed he had a successor found 10 years later in Henry Riviere. Would southeast Asia be able to thwart off the colonizing efforts of France or fall like domino pieces?

Last time we spoke about the Gapsin Coup. Li Hongzhang snipped the bud of war before it could bloom after the Imo uprising and the Daewongun stole back power in Korea. The Daewongun was spanked and sent into exile yet again, but now Korea had become greatly factionalized. The progressives and conservatives were fighting bitterly to set Korea on a Japanese or Chinese path to modernization. This led radicals like Kim Ok-kyun to perform the Gapsin coup which was terribly planned and failed spectacularly. Japan and China were yet again tossed into a conflict in Korea, but China firmly won the day for she had more forces to bear. Japan licked her wounds and went home, learning a bitter lesson. That lesson was: next time bring more friends to the party. But today we are going to be taking a side quest, for many events were occurring in China, and one that brought yet again another foreign war. #41 How France Ended up in Indochina Welcome to the Fall and Rise of China Podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about the history of Asia? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on history of asia and much more so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel where I cover the history of China and Japan from the 19th century until the end of the Pacific War. As I said a while back, I wanted to try and hit some events that don't necessarily fit the, something like 4-5 episodes its taking to explain how the First Sino-Japanese war came about. And even as I am writing this, on my personal channel someone commented "hey please don't forget to do a podcast on the Panthay Rebellion", sigh. I chose to keep the Panthay Rebellion out of the Dungan Revolt episode, though many like to bundle these events up. I will try my best to hit that one, but if it somehow falls through my fingers, perhaps I will cheekily put it on my patreon, www.patreon.com/pacificwarchannel. A bit scumbag perhaps, but honestly its taking forever to get to the first sino-japanese war. Now this one, the Sino-French War is actually something a lot of my Vietnamese audience from my youtube channel have begged me to do an episode on for a long time now. Where to begin. This series focuses on the history of China and as such it fails to mention the experiences of China's neighbors quite often. For example while western nations like Britain were courting the Qing dynasty trying to open up further trade outside the Canton system, nations like France were likewise exploring and trying to exploit places like modern day Vietnam. During the early 17th century, France began to establish relations with Vietnam by sending the Jesuit missionary Alexandre de Rhodes. Alexandre de Rhodes was the first to write a catechism in the Vietnamese alphabet and upon returning to france in 1650 he advised the Catholic church they needed to dispatch bishops over to Vietnam to help development her roman catholic population, estimated to be around 100,000 converts by that point. He also warned that they must not allow what occurred in Japan to happen in Vietnam, referencing the Shimabara rebellion "We have all reason to fear that what happened to the Church of Japan could also happen to the Church of Annam, because these kings, in Tonkin as well as in Cochinchina, are very powerful and accustomed to war... It is necessary that the Holy See, by its own mouvement, give soldierss to these Oriental regions where Christians multiply in a marvelous way, lest, without bishops, these men die without sacrament and manifestly risk damnation." Alexandre de Rhodes efforts helped create the Paris Foreign missions society and soon the French East India company began operating in southeast asia. Throughout the 18th century the Jesuits missionary work and trade were very successful in Vietnam and this even led to military assistance. The French aided Nguyen Anh to retake his lands that had been taken from his family during a rebellion. The French were able to protect Nguyen Anh who became Emperor Gia Long and relations were fairly good with France, until his death whereupon relations fell considerably. The Nguyen dynasty increasingly viewed the catholic missionaries as a threat to their control. The french missionaries were soon being persecuted and then a revolt occurred in Cochinchina known as the Le Van Khoi revolt of 1833-1835. French catholic missionaries, Vietnamese catholics and Chinese settlers revolted against the current Emperor Minh Mang. Minh Mang quelled the revolt in 3 years while simultaneously fighting off a Siamese offensive. The revolt caused a dramatic increase in the persecution of catholics, leading to the execution of many missionaries. France tried to send diplomats to work out a peace deal with Minh Mang, but he would have none of it. In 1825 he made an edict ""The Westerner's perverse religion confuses the hearts of men. For a long time, many Western ships have come to trade with us and to introduce Catholic missionaries into our country. These missionaries make the people's hearts crooked, thus destroying our beautiful customs. Truly this is a great disaster for our land. Our purpose being to prevent our people from abandoning our orthodox way, we must accordingly completely eliminate these abuses." Minh Mang unlike his predecessor had no illusions about catholics, missionaries nor the west in general he sought isolationism. He was a very conservative leader and abided by confucianism. During his 21 years of rule he expanded his empire to acquire territory from parts of modern day Cambodia, Laos and Thailand. However after the first opium war saw the Qing dynasty humiliated by Britain, Minh Mang attempted to build an alliance with European powers by sending a delegation out in 1840 led by Ton That Tuong. They were received in Paris by Prime Minister Marshal Soult, but King Louis Philippe shunned the delegation and the Vatican urged a rebuke for "the enemy of the religion". The delegates tried to offer France a trade monopoly in exchange for military support in the case of being attacked by a western power, but it was all in vain. After this the delegation tried a similar treaty with America, but it also failed. Minh Mang died and was succeeded by his eldest son Thieu Tri, who upheld the anti-catholic stance of the Nguyen dynasty, but did make some efforts to thwart conflicts and handed over to France 5 imprisoned missionaries in 1840. Thieu Tri would be dealt a hard hand of cards, as during in 1840's his empire was hit by a global cholera pandemic that killed roughly 8% of his nations population. Meanwhile his fathers isolationist policies meant the empires economy was hurting. Back over in France, in 1843 the French foreign minister, Francois Guizot sent a fleet to east asia led by Admiral Jean-Baptiste-Thomas Medee Cecille, lol wow to that name, all first names literally imagine someone in English called John, Jacob, Ryan, Jack, Kyle. The reason for the expedition was to respond to the new situation in China, as Britain had just defeated her in 1842 and thus the door was busted wide open so to say. The French thinking was while Britain began exploiting China in the north, perhaps France could counterbalance this by trying to puncture China in the south. Of course France was not openly stating this, officially she sent the mission "to support British efforts with the Qing dynasty and to fight against the persecution of French missionaries within Vietnam". Admiral Jean-Baptist went to Vietnam in 1845 to try and get the release of one Bishop Dominique Lefebvre who had been condemned to death. Lefebvre had gone to Vietnam in 1835 and it was then illegal to work as a missionary. He was caught performing missionary actions and received the death penalty. A US captain named John Percivil of the USS Constitution attempted to gain his release but failed so he turned to Admiral Jean-Baptiste. Jean Baptiste managed to smooth things over and obtained Lefebvre's release and Lefebvre simply snuck right back into Vietnam and got himself caught yet again and was in the same situation by 1847. Thus in 1847 Admiral Jean-Baptiste dispatched to Vietnam two warships the 54 gun frigate Gloire and 24 gun corvette Victorieuse under captain Lapierre and Charles Rigault de Genouilly. They went to Touran to try and free Bishop Lefebvre, Bishop Duclos and to try and get the Vietnamese to allow for Catholics to worship again in Vietnam, perhaps they were getting tired of showing up everytime a priest was imprisoned. Negotiations began, but it seems Lefebvre's being a second offender made the Vietnamese believe the French were pulling a fast one thus it fell apart. The negotiations dragged on until april 15th of 1847 while 6 Vietnamese corvettes snuck up and attacked the french warships anchored in the Bay of Tourane. The French retaliated and sank 4 of the Vietnamese corvettes, disabled the 5th and inflicted roughly 1200 casualties, quite a one sided brawl. The French assert, the Vietnamese had deceived them by prolonging negotiations in order to surprise attack them. Colonel Alfred Thomazi a historian who covered this period had this to say about the event; "Thiệu Trị, indignant with this interference, decided to end the affair with a surprise attack. His plan was to invite the French officers to a banquet, kill them, and then burn and sink the ships. But Commandant Lapierre was on his guard, and declined the invitation. The mandarins, seeing the first part of their programme go astray, passed on to the second. They attacked." Thomazi gave the following description of the battle in Tourane Bay: 'Gradually the Annamese war fleet, consisting of five corvettes with covered batteries, several bricks and a large number of junks, gathered in the bay, and one morning, without prior warning, attacked the French vessels. These, as their armament was far superior, had little difficulty in destroying the entire enemy fleet, but they had to get underway thereafter, abandoning the Christians to the vengeance of their persecutors". In the end Lefebvre and Duclos were released. The Vietnamese were stunned by the dramatic disparity in firepower between their warships and the French. It showcased to many, the Vietnam's isolationist policies had left them extremely vulnerable to western powers and they began demanding modernization efforts. Things gradually began to get worse for the catholic community in Vietnam. In 1856 the French diplomat Louis Charles de Montigny was sent to asia to secure trade agreements. He first went to the kingdom of Siam where a treaty was signed on August 15th to facilitate trade, religious freedoms in order for Siam to gain access to French warship technology. Then Montigny turned to Vietnam arriving the next year where he demanded they establish a consulate in Hue, allow for free trade and to end their persecution of the catholic community. The Vietnamese court rejected all of these outright. When Montigny returned to France having failed in Vietnam, Napoleon III decided enough was enough and he dispatched a military force of 3000 men to Vietnam led by Charles Rigault de Genouilly. France actually had a few reasons they were dispatching forces, and it was not exclusive to Vietnam. Do remember the 2nd Opium War was kicking off, so these forces were also sent to deal with China. It also did not help that the Nguyen emperor Tu Duc ordered the execution of 2 Spanish catholic missionaries in 1857 as well. Thus Spain likewise sent a punitive expedition force to join the French. Their first target was to be Tourane. The French force was led by Admiral Genouilly's flagship the 50 gun frigate Nemesis alongside 2 corvettes, 5 steam gunboats and 5 transports carrying 1000 French Marines. The Spanish brought a armed vessel called the El Cano carrying 550 Spanish infantry, 450 Filipino Chasseurs Tagals. Now Tourane held 5 major forts on the western side of its peninsula which covered the approach to the town. The French called these the Fort de l'Aiguade, Fort de l'obervatoire, Fort du Nord, Fort de l'est and the Fort de l'ouest. They were accompanied by several shore batteries between them. The Vietnamese had a garrison of 2000 bien binh (provincial soldiers) led by Chuongco Dao Tri and the Governor Nam-Ngai tossed in another 2000 cam binh (centre soldiers) led by Do Thong Le Dinh ly. The Franco-Spanish force arrived to Tourane Bay during the night of august 31st and at dawn Admiral Rigault de Genouilly demanded the 5 forts surrender. He received no response and thus ordered his flotilla to bombard them. The forts response were on par with the Qing's performance during the opium wars, none of the western ships received damage. Rigault de Genouilly then landed some marines who quickly seized Fort de L'Aiguade. The charged its defenders chanting "vive l'empereur". The defenders were overrun and soon the Fort l'est and fort l'ouest were taken likewise with ease. El Cano had anchored off the entrance of the Da Nang river and aided the forces by bombarding the two forts, causing the defenders to flee. Most of hte vietnamese defenders were able to flee the carnage from the offset of bombardment, but those at the Fort L'observatoire were not quick enough. The French stormed into the fort and inflicted heavy casualties upon them before taking the rest prisoner. With this the Franco-Spanish force were able to occupy Tourane and the Tien Sa Peninsula. However upon occupying Tourane, suddenly the westerners found themselves under a siege. Admiral Rigault de Genouilly surmised their forces at Tourane could achieve nothing under these circumstances so he pulled them out and decided to try and find a new target. He considered Tonkin first, but ruled it out and instead chose Saigon. Saigon was chosen because of its strategic value, it was one of the main sources of food that fed the Vietnamese army. He left Capitaine de Vaisseau Thoyon at Tourane with two gunboats and a small garrison and took the rest of the force south. The force spent 5 days gathering supplies in Cam Ranh bay and then reached Cape Saint-Jacques on February 10th. They bombarded the forts that defended its harbors into silence before storming them with marines like they had done at Tourane. From cape saint-jacques they made a 5 day journey upriver, taking time here and there to bombard and storm some riverside forts. The Vietnamese defenders fought them off tenaciously and managed to land some cannonade hits into ships like the Dragonne and Avalanche inflicting hull damage. The defenders also tried to barricade the riverway behind the invaders, but the europeans made sure to dispatch naval forces behind to thwart these efforts periodically. Everytime the europeans attacked a fort or riverforce they made sure to spike the enemies weapons down or take them, thus reducing the enemies materials. By the 15th the Europeans were approaching some forts that defended Saigon's southern part. During the night they snuck 2 armed forces to destroy a barrage the Vietnamese had made using boats tied up together utilizing explosives. Dawn the next day the european warships anchored 800 meters from the forts and began their bombardment. They were so close some of the marine snipers in the warship mastheads were able to pick off Vietnamese gunners as well. The Vietnamese responded as best they could, but like the Qing during the opium wars, their outdated cannons were greatly overmatched. Soon landing companies began to assault the forts and by 8am the French and Spanish seized them. A few hours later, Capitaine Bernard Jaureguiberry took the Avalanche and scouted the Citadel of Saigon, before sending a French-Spanish force to assault it. Once the Europeans entered the citadel, the defenders began fleeing, though they did return with 1000 men to counter attack. The Europeans managed to repel the counter attack and by 10am the French and Spanish flag was raised over the citadel. The Citadel of Saigon was enormous and the Europeans could not spare the necessary men to man it, so Admiral Rigault de Genouilly decided to simply blow it up. Using 32 mines on march 8th of 1859 the citadel was brought to ruin. Alongside this the europeans set fire to the rice granaries which would burn for several months. The Europeans turned back to Tourane leaving a small garrison to hold Saigon, which would fight a few battles of its own before being forced to pull out. Taking Saigon proved to be a fruitless victory. Admiral Rigault de Genouilly lost favor back home and was replaced in november of 1859 with Admiral Francois page with orders to obtain a treaty to protect catholics in Vietnam, but not to seek territorial gains. Now at the same time this was all occurring, there was the outbreak of the Austro-Sardinian War and this meant the French would require large numbers of forces to go to Italy, which the Vietnamese leadership quickly found out about. When Page began negotiations in november with the vietnamese they refused his moderate terms, believing the French were no longer in a position of strength because of their troubles in Italy. So in the meantime Page reinforced the garrisons at Saigon and Da Nang awaiting the conclusion of the Italian war so more troops would be available to him. But by 1860 the 2nd opium war broke out requiring the French to send troops to China and Page was forced to relinquish much of his forces for the China expedition. In April Page left Vietnam to go to Canton, leaving the defense of Saigon and the neighboring Chinese town of Cholon under Capitaine de Vaisseau Jules D'Aries. D'Aries was left with 600 French marines and 200 Spanish troops who were led by Colonel Palanca y Guttierez. He also had on hand the corvettes Primauguet, Laplace and Norzagaray. With such forces he could not hope to with stand attacks from the Vietnamese so he was forced to hire some Chinese and Vietnamese auxiliaries who he placed in advanced posts and for patrols. With his 1000 man augmented force, in March they were attacked by a Vietnamese army roughly around 10,000 men in strength. This led to a long and bitter siege, while simultaneously Tourane faced a similar situation and as I said they were forced to pull out as a result over there. D'aries and his men fought the siege off from March of 1860 to February of 1861. However during this time, the British and French forces had won the battle of Palikao on September 21st of 1860, thus relieving the need for their forces over in China. 70 ships led by Admiral Charner, carrying 3500 soldiers led by General de Vassoigne were quickly dispatched to Saigon. This naval force was then the largest the Vietnamese had ever seen. Admiral Charners forces reached their besieged allies in Saigon to find a Vietnamese army estimated to be around 32,000 men strong led by Nguyen Tri Phuong. The Vietnamese siege forces had their siege lines extending 12 km's long centered around a village called Ky Hoa. As Colonel Alfred Thomazi recounted "The first objective was the capture of the entrenched camp of Ky Hoa. This was a rectangle measuring around 3,000 metres by 900 metres, divided into five compartments separated by traverses and enclosed within walls three and a half metres high and two metres thick. The camp was armed with more than 150 cannon of all calibres. Subsidiary defences were piled up in front of its walls: wolf-pits, ditches filled with water, palisades and chevaux de frise. Bamboo was employed in the defences with consummate art, and the walls were crowned with thorn bushes along their entire length. The number of enemy soldiers both in and around the fortified camp had grown steadily during the previous year. After the victory, we discovered from the muster rolls that there were 22,000 regular troops and 10,000 militiamen. There were also 15,000 men manning the forts along the upper course of the Donnai. All these men were under the command of Nguyen Tri Phuong, the most celebrated general in the Vietnamese army". The Europeans made their initial assault on February 24th, moving their artillery into firing range of the siege lines. With bombardment support the French and Spanish gradually attacked the fortifications taking heavy casualties in the process. A second assault was made the very next day starting at dawn and again our friend Thomazi has a lengthy account of the days battle "The action resumed at 5 a.m. on 25 February. The artillery advanced, facing east, enclosed by two columns of infantry: to the left, the engineers, the marine infantry and the chasseurs; to the right the Spanish infantry and the sailors. The sun, very low in the sky, was spoiling the aim of the cannons, and Lieutenant-Colonel Crouzat brought them forward by rapid bounds to within 200 metres of the enemy lines and ordered them to fire with case shot at the top of the ramparts. The firing was very heavy and our men, in the open, suffered appreciable casualties. Then the haversacks were laid on the ground, the sailors of the assault force reclaimed their scaling ladders, up to then carried by the coolies, and the admiral ordered the charge to be sounded. The right column, led by capitaine de vaisseau de Lapelin, crossed the wolf pits, the ditches and the chevaux de frise which extended for more than 100 metres in front of the enemy work under an intense fire, and was the first to reach the parapet. Most of the scaling ladders, which were very light, had been broken during the advance. Only three were left, which were placed along the wall, and the sailors of the assault force who could not find a place there climbed on the shoulders of their comrades. This time the fighting was bitter indeed. The first men to reach the summit were killed, but others took their place, throwing grenades inside. Then, using grappling hooks, they breached the perimeter fence and entered the fort. They then found themselves in an enclosed compartment swept by the fire from the neighbouring compartment, to which they could make no reply. It was a critical situation, and they suffered heavy losses. Finally, several resolute men, rallied by lieutenant de vaisseau Jaurès, succeeded in smashing in the gate that gave onto the other compartment with their axes, just as the engineers succeeded in breaking in, while the marine infantry and the chasseurs outflanked the enemy line on the left. The defenders were either killed where they stood or took to flight. The entire complex of the Ky Hoa lines had fallen into our hands." The casualties for the second day were heavy, 12 dead and 225 wounded and according to the French reports, the Vietnamese lost around 1000 men including commander Nguyen Tri Phuong. By seizing Ky Hoa, the Europeans were able to take the offensive. Their first target was to be the city of My Tho. A smaller expeditionary force led by Capitaine Bourdais aboard the Monge alongside the Alarme, Mitraille and some gunboats took a force of around 230 men to seize My Tho. They ran into two forts defending a creek leading to the city and began to bombard them. After the forts were neutralized they ran continuously into barricades the vietnamese forces made to bar further passage. Then on April the 4th, the Europeans received reinforcements from Saigon in the form of 200 Chasseurs, 200 Sailors, 2 companies of marines and some heavy artillery. Capitaine Bourdais relinquished command to Capitaine Le Couriault du Quilio and he went to work having their expeditionary force fight its way through the barricades which began to become increasingly well defended. By april 8th, the expedition was reinforced a few more times, including more gunboats prompting the Vietnamese to send two fireships against them. The French naval forces were able to hook the two fireships and tow them away. On the 10th a scouting party led by Captain du Chaffault managed to reach the walls of My Tho, exchanging fire with its defenders before returning to report. Quilio decided to press forward his warships to hit more forts defending the passage to My Tho until they finally got in range of My Tho's walls. As the Europeans prepared their assault of the city, suddenly a flotilla led by Admiral Page showed up taking the Mekong river passage and he bombarded My Tho by sea which surrendered on the 12th. After taking My Tho the French offered peace terms to Tu Duc, but this time demanded the cession of Saigon province, an indemnity of 4 million piastres, free trade rights and freedom of religion. Tu Duc was open to conceding on the religion, but rejected the others outright. Thus the French occupied My Tho and looked for new targets. Meanwhile Tu Duc had lost numerous materials and received many casualties for his efforts against the French-Spanish invaders. His forces simply could not meet the enemy on the open battlefield and thus he now sought to shift towards guerilla warfare. He dispatched men to venture into the enemy held territories and organize resistance groups. Soon Saigon and My Tho provinces were finding themselves in a state of siege. The French and Spanish forces began to fan out into the countryside hunting guerrillas, but as you can imagine this led to terrible violence against the common people. Admiral Charner was replaced by Admiral Louis Adolphe Bonard in November of 1861. When he arrived he found the forces were being increasingly attacked by guerillas. One band of guerilla forces attacked the French Lorcha Esperance by luring the vessel out and ambushing her. 17 French and Filipino sailors were killed and the ship was burned down. This prompted Bonard to launch a major reprisal campaign against the province of Bien Hoa. Again our dear friend Thomazi has a lengthy passage on the battle and capture of Bien Hoa ""The Annamese had established defence works on all the routes leading to Biên Hòa. They had built an entrenched camp held by 3,000 men at My Hoa, midway between Biên Hòa and Saigon, and obstructed the course of the Donnai with nine solid barrages and a stockade. The admiral decided to attack simultaneously by land and water. He ordered the detached posts to remain on the defensive and to concentrate all disposable forces before Saigon. All being ready, and an ultimatum issued on 13 December going unanswered, the columns set off at daybreak on 14 December. The first column, commanded by chef de bataillon Comte and consisting of two companies of chasseurs à pied, 100 Spaniards and 50 horsemen with four mortars, made for Gò Công, which it captured at 7.30 a.m. A second column, consisting of 100 Spaniards and a battalion of marine infantry with two cannon, under the orders of Lieutenant-Colonel Domenech Diego, placed itself before the camp of My Hao. At the same time capitaine de vaisseau Lebris, with two companies of sailors, advanced on the Donnai, taking in reverse the batteries on the right bank. Finally, a flotilla of armed launches, having followed the creeks as far as Rach Gò Công, cannonnaded the works which were also bombarding the gunboats anchored in the Donnai under the orders of lieutenant de vaisseau Harel of Avalanche. The forts replied energetically, and the gunboat Alarme was hit by 54 balls and had her main mast nearly destroyed. But once the defenders saw themselves threatened by a land attack, they hastily evacuated the forts, one of which blew up and the others were occupied. The sailors toiled throughout the night to demolish the barrages, while the naval hydrographer Manen sounded the passes. The first obstacles having been destroyed, the two infantry columns joined hands in front of the camp of My Hoa on 15 December. The marine infantry attacked the enemy's centre, while the chasseurs menaced his right and the Spaniards his left, and the cavalry made a turning movement to cut off his retreat. The Annamese panicked and took to flight. Admiral Bonard, aboard the dispatch vessel Ondine, ascended the river and exchanged cannon shots with the citadel. On 16 December the troops crossed the Donnai and occupied Biên Hòa, which the Annamese soldiers had evacuated, but not before burning alive numerous Christian prisoners. We took there 48 cannons and 15 armed junks. The operation cost us only 2 men dead and several wounded." Even after taking Bien Hoa, the guerrillas persisted to amp up their attacks.. The guerilla forces around My Tho began to snipe european columns marching along roads and a French gunboat carrying troops was blown up via sabotage. Bonard believed these actions to be the work of Vietnamese forces operating in Vinh Long so he began a campaign to seize it. On March 20th, his naval forces reached the fortress of Vinh Long and he quickly landed 700 French and 300 Spanish troops led by Lt Colonel Reboul to attack. Thomazi tells us "On 22 March they crossed two arroyos under fire and advanced into view of the enemy batteries, which had been fighting a violent artillery duel with the gunboats. During the night, after a seven-hour struggle, all the batteries were occupied, and on the following day we entered the citadel, where we found 68 cannon and considerable quantities of materiel" The defenders of Vinh Long had fallen back to some earthwork defenses 20 km's west of My Tho, so Bonard sent forces to attack them while he consolidated Vinh Long. As the forces marched to attack the defenders, the loss of My Tho, Bien Hoa and Vinh Long had severely demoralized the Vietnamese leaders. In April of 1862 Lu Duc announced he sought peace terms. In May, following some preliminary meetings at Hue, the French corvette Forbin went to Tourane to meet with a Vietnamese delegation. As Thomazi, a very faithful source for this entire episode it seems tells us after the French waited 2 days for the Vietnamese to show up. 'On the third day, an old paddlewheel corvette, the Aigle des Mers, was seen slowly leaving the Tourane river. Her beflagged keel was in a state of dilapidation that excited the laughter of our sailors. It was obvious that she had not gone to sea for many years. Her cannons were rusty, her crew in rags, and she was towed by forty oared junks and escorted by a crowd of light barges. She carried the plenipotentiaries of Tự Đức. Forbin took her under tow and brought her to Saigon, where the negotiations were briskly concluded. On 5 June a treaty was signed aboard the vessel Duperré, moored before Saigon." The result was the Treaty of Saigon which legalized the catholic faith in Vietnam and the secession of Dinh Tuong, Gia Dinh, Bien Hoa and some islands over to France. The ports of Tourange, Ba Lac and Quang Yen were opened and France was given trade rights. On top of all of that the Vietnamese were to pay an indemnity worth one million dollars to France and Spain over a 10 year period. And thus the colony of Cochinchina with its capital of Saigon was acquired by France, which would start a ongoing conflict only to end with the United States of American pulling out in 1975. I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me. I honestly thought I would be able to do the Sino-French war of 1884-1885 in a single episode, yet again I was mistaken. Thus next time we will continue the story of France and Southeast asia.

Last time we spoke about the imo uprising. Empress Min royally messed up when she allowed her nephew Min Gyeom-ho to be in charge of handing out the grain to the retired soldiers. His tossing of the job to a subordinate led to embezzlement and the soldiers were greatly slighted. The pissed off soldiers began a major riot threatening to kill Empress Min, her clan and those they thought had cheated them. The Japanese military advisor and other staff were attacked, some Japanese were even killed, thus bringing Japan into the mix. King Gojong panicked and allowed his father to return, only to be ousted by his own father. The Daewongun was back and immediately went to work trying to rid Korea of the Min clan. Now the Chinese and Japanese were bringing forces to bear in Korea, was war on the menu? #40 This episode is the Gapsin Coup Welcome to the Fall and Rise of China Podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about the history of Asia? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on history of asia and much more so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel where I cover the history of China and Japan from the 19th century until the end of the Pacific War. Now the Chinese had a sticky situation on their hands, the attempted coup d'etat had disposed of many officials who they had been working with and worse they had attacked Japanese nationals prompting Japan to perform military intervention. Ma Jianzhong ordered the Daewongun to meet with him and read him the riot act. Ma accused him of acting against the Qing emperor by unseating the approved King of Korea "your sin is unpardonable. Considering the fact that you are the father of the king, we will not press hard on you. Please go to Tianjin to receive whatever punishment is bestowed upon you". The Daewongun was then forced into a palanquin, whisked aboard the warship Weiyuan and sent to Tianjin. He was then interrogated by Li Hongzhang and sent into house arrest at Baoding until October of 1885. Li Hongzhang had this to say of it all ": "Our country regarded [Korea] as part of the empire and dispatched...troops. We arrested the evil ringleader, the Taewongun [Grand Prince Hungson], and detained him at Paoting. The [Korean] masses were awed. Now the entire world knows that Korea is our dependency."" Basically Li Hongzhang was playing a grand game of power politics, he was trying to show face to the western world that China was in charge of Korea. However this major show of face was also a large loss of face particularly to Korea and Japan who saw this as quite the lenient strategy. And thus China reasserted her suzerainty over Korea, her troops secured Seoul and the Qing officials began to aid the Korean-Japanese negotiations. The treaty of Chemuplo was signed on August 30th of 1882 to which Korea agreed to pay Japan in indemnities, sent an envoy to officially apologize and permitted a Japanese legation guardforce in Seoul. The Qing began training the Korean army and provided them with 1000 rifles, two cannons and 10,000 rounds of ammunition. The Korean military was to be trained by a Qing figure, one of the most important figures in modern Chinese history called Yuan Shikai, oh boy this guy. On my personal channel I think I have made at least 8 episodes related to him, but he will come a bit further in the story as a lead player. Korea was reduced to an official tributary state of the Qing with King Gojong unable to make many decisions without official Qing approval prior. China basically began to treat korea more like a colony. The Min clan came right back into their seats of power, albeit under Qing approval and Li Hongzhang began to perform puppetry work on the nation to make sure she served Qing interests. The Korean government then received two major advisers, Ma Jianzhong and a close confidant of Li Hongzhang, Paul von Molldendorff, formerly of the German foreign office, but now under Li Hongzhangs employment. The new Capital guard commander was Yuan Shikai. By 1883 Li Hongzhang was so pleased with his work he said this to an American minister in Beijing "I am the king of Korea, whenever I think the interests of China require me to assert the prerogative." The 1880s was a political maelstrom for Korea. As a result of the actions of the Qing and Japanese, Korea was literally being torn apart. Two major factions emerged within the Korean political scene, the first being the Gaehwa Party, known as the "enlightenment party". They can be seen as a leftist party, progressive liberal types. Their leadership came mostly from the Yangban class, those being the traditional gentry-ruling class of the Joseon dynasty. These were the highly educated types who joined the bureaucracy and military, the quote en quote "landed guys" the aristocrats. They were much akin to the Qing officials, those who took examinations to earn their place within the government, living by the principles of confucianism. The members of this faction included Kim Ok-gyun, who spent considerable time in Japan and was mentored by Fukuzawa Yukichi. Kim Ok-gyun would emerge the leader of this faction and he alongside his colleagues pushed for a more independent Korea that took steps to perform their own version of the Meiji restoration. They also wanted to end what they saw as Qing interference with their nation. They were greatly frustrated by the limited scale and scope of Korea's modernization efforts and reforms. Most of their leadership like Kim Ok-kyun were quite young, in their late 20's and early 30's and they were headstrong to be progressive, and progress at this time, to them looked like Japan. They basically saw the Qing as an arrogant imperialist power interfering with their nation rather than a protector. The other faction was known as the Sadaedang, the right side conservatives. This included the Min clan and many high government officials who were very pro-Qing. Its not to say they were against progress, in fact they championed many causes put forward by the Enlightenment party, but they favored gradual changes based on the Qing models. After the Imo uprising, the Pro-Chinese faction was greatly bolstered, obviously because of the interventions by the Qing within their nation. The Min clan advocated going about the modernization process via dongdo seogi "adoping western technology while keeping eastern values", it was not so different from the Meiji restoration, but they wanted to keep inline with the Chinese. In 1882 after getting rid of the Daewongun and his rioters, the Min clan pursued a pro-chinese policy. Instead of adopting major institutional reforms akin to the Meiji restoration such as legal equality, modern education and significant industrialization, they chose to direct the pathway of the nations reforms in piecemeal. This basically meant revamping the underlying social structure of Korea rather than replacing or changing. They began to block all appointments of the progressive to any important positions, particularly that of their greatest rival Kim Ok-kyun. They signed trade agreements with China that enabled the Qing to dominate the trade with Korea at the expense of other nations, specifically that of Japan. King Gojong basically looked like he was abandoning all the progressive policies that had begun before the Imo uprising. The Japanese were livid over all of this as they had planned to dominate Korea with their influence to soon import Korean grain and export products back, but now China dominated her. Then a major event occurred that drew conflict between Japan and China over Korea yet again. In 1880, Kim Ok-kyun had managed to secure a position in the high government office serving as a councilor in the foreign office and even became acquainted with King Gojong. He was the bulwark trying to get Korea to take the Meiji restoration path and in December of 1881 he went off to Japan and would be in Japan when the Imo uprising occurred. Since he was there, he was made the official Korean representative in 1882 to apologize for the ordeal and he would remain in Japan until 1884. While in Japan he was influenced heavily by Fukuzawa Yukichi. Through this Kim Ok-kyun became convinced Korea needed to severe its Qing domination by overthrowing the Min clan so they could commence a Meiji restoration program with Japan's help. "Korea is a country in which misgovemment and extortion have flourished luxuriantly for centuries, but under the recent MING [Min] administration a serious change for the worse has taken place." Now in 1884 hostilities broke out between the Qing and French over a conflict in Annam, this became the Sino-French War of 1884-1885, which will be its own episode. Needless to say, the Qing forces within Korea were moved to deal with the French and this represented a major opportunity for the progressives in Korea. Despite the name progressive, the pro-Japanese faction decided to fall back on quote "the old Korean method of political transformation by murder". Yes they were going to attempt a coup d'etat, with help from the Japanese. The Gaehwapa leadership, on December 4th staged their coup under the guise of a grand banquette being hosted by Hong Yeong-sik, the director of the Ujeong Chongguk, the postal administration. It was an inaugural banquet to celebrate the opening of a new national post office. The guests were to be King Gojong, commanders of the Seoul garrison, several foreign diplomats and high ranking officials, obviously many of which were members of the Sadaedang faction. They had help from the Japanese minister Takezoe Shinichiro who promised he would mobilize the Japanese legation guards to provide assistance. The plan was quite simple, get everyone to come and kill the commanders and officials; then hijack King Gojong to use him like a puppet to legitimize their pro-japanese reform program. They had a 14-point proposal which held conditions such as these; to end Korea's tributary relationship to the Qing dynasty; to abolish the Yangbang privileges and establish equal rights for all; to reorganize the governmental structure as a constitutional monarchy; to change the land tax laws; cancel the grain loan system; unify the internal fiscal administrations; promote free commerce and trade; create a modern police system, who would in turn severely punish corrupt officials in government, ie the Min clan. Now Kim Ok-kyun was obviously encouraged by Fukuzawa Yukichi, alongside other Japanese intellectuals and officials to seek a Meiji style reform in Korea. But the Japanese leaders did not support his plans for a coup. Count Iwakura, the same who led the Iwakura Mission and the foreign minister Inoue Kaoru both refused to support the coup as they still wanted to retain goodwill with China. Shibusawa Eiichi, the most prominent Japanese business leader in promoting Japanese business in other parts of Asia also refused to support the coup. Kim Ok-kyun had presented many in Japan his plans, but with 3000 Chinese troops in Korea he knew the coup had no chance, that was until the Sino-French war broke. So despite not having any real support from Japan, he went ahead with the coup thinking it was an opportunity too great to pass up. They began the banquet and Kim Ok-kyun sent some of his supporters to set fire to a nearby building causing some noise and confusion. While that occurred they seized King Gojong and brought him to his palace. Then they began to summon various Korean garrison commanders they believed might mobilize the military against them to the palace. Each commander came one-by-one only to be murdered by the Gaehwapa. So basically the coup amounted to the decapitation of 6 Korean ministers, the murder of military officials and other administrators, while occupying the royal police backed up by the Japanese legation force of around 170 men. The father of the murdered postmaster general, who had been duped into hosting the event was so applied by it and the stain upon his families honor, he invited all 18 members of his family to a dinner and killed them along with himself via poisoning, whoa. Now things did not go according to plan for the Gaehwapa. The Japanese minister, Takezoe, went back on his promise to provide military assistance as soon as word came that the Qing were sending forces into the city. Kim Ok-kyun seemed to believe with just under 200 Japanese troops he was going to somehow maintain power keeping the king hostage, but 1500 Qing troops was not going to let that happen. When the coup was found out, Queen Min secretly sent word to the Qing asking for help and they sent General Yuan Shikai. It took Yuan Shikai and his men all but 3 days to retake the palace, rout the Japanese troops and rescue King Gojong. During the fighting around 180 people were killed, including 38 Japanese troops and 10 Chinese. The officials who had been appointed by Kim Ok-kyun were all dismissed. Japanese citizens living in Seoul were viewed by the locals as exploiters, thus they became targets of attack, many of their homes were looted and burned. Kim ok-kyun and 8 of his followers managed to escape to Japan using a Japanese ship. Just prior to the failed coup, Kim Ok-kyun had met with King Gojong about some reform ideas and the king was in support of many of them. After the coup the king made a full 180 and publicly label Kim ok-kyun as a villain. King Gojong voided all the reform measures done by the coup leaders and sent an envoy to Japan to protest their involvement in the coup demanding repatriation of the conspirators. On December 6th, King Gojong telegraphed Li Hongzhang asking for reinforcements. Meanwhile Yuan Shikai who wanted to dethrone the king because he deemed King Gojong to be " a dim-witted monarch" who he believed was actually complicit in the coup but was overruled by the conspirators. A sticky political situation thus emerged between the 3 nations. As I mentioned, King Gojong demanded Japan repatriate the conspirators. The Japanese responded by demanding Korea pay them indemnity for the loss of life and property, to make formal apology and promise to punish the guilty. In a show of force the Japanese sent 7 warships and 2 battalions to Korea. On January the 9th of 1885, within the presence of 600 IJA and under threat of war if they did not cooperate Korea signed the "Seoul Protocol" also known as the Treaty of Hanseong. The Koreans officially apologized and paid Japan reparations in the sum of 100,000 yen for damages done to the Japanese legation, go figure that. This treaty however was really gimmicky, because the real trouble going on was not between Japan and Korea, but instead Japan and China. Ito Hirobumi and Li Hongzhang met in Tianjin in April of 1885 to discuss the matter. Tensions were very high between the nations and both men tried to defuse that tension. They called for bilateral troop withdrawal from Korea, a proscription against sending further military instructors and prior notification to another of any future troop deployments in Korea. King Gojong would be advised to hire military instructors from a third nation to train up the Joseon army, America the most likely candidate. Japan and China signed off on this and it became known as the Tianjin convention or "Li-Ito convention". It was a diplomatic victory for Japan in the end . Japanese minister Takezoe Shinichiro avoided punishment for his complicity in the coup which essentially was done to subvert Korea's tributary status with the Qing. China lost her exclusive claim to armed intervention in Korea, since Japan and her now we're even on that front. The treaty represented yet again another curtailment of Qing suzerainty over Korea. Now despite all of that, Japan also lost significant influence over Korea while China's influence only increased. Japan looked like the bad guy to the Korean populace. Also Li Hongzhang appointed Yuan Shikai as the "director General Resident in Korea of diplomatic and commercial relations". Basically Yuan Shikai was to look after Qing interests in Korea, but in a civilian capacity. Officially this was in line with the Tianjin convention, as Yuan Shikai was no longer a military leader, but both China and Japan knew at a hares notice he could called upon Qing forces whenever he wanted. Li Hongzhang instructed Yuan Shikai to prevent Japanese commercial dominance over Korea and promote Chinese commercial dominance which he did very well. After both the Chinese and Japanese withdrew their forces from Korea as per the Tianjin convention, China chose to garrison most of its forces along the Korean border. Likewise the the vast majority of telegraph lines in Korea were Chinese controlled while Japan had one going to Pusan, but when they requested it extend to Seoul this was rejected. Thus the Japanese could only communicate with Seoul using a Chinese controlled telegraph system. Yuan Shikai, despite being in his early 20s, exercised strong leadership and for all intensive purposes Japanese influence was simply drained. Now while many Koreans were happy to be rid of Kim Ok-kyun and his Japanese friends, many also complained about Yuan Shikai who was seen to be very overbearing and quite arrogant towards the Korean government. In June of 1885 China signed the final peace protocol with France and thus for the first time since the Russian conflict in Xinjiang, China was free of threat from war from Russia and France. This gave the Qing government the opportunity to be more aggressive in Korea. Yuan Shikai operated as if he was above the law. He replaced progressive officials with pro-chinese members of the Min Clan. He also began interposing in foreign matters, taking the place of Korean diplomats or envoys. He stopped all attempts at military reform and the development of modern industry. As for his personal reputation that was quite bad as well, he acquired a reputation for as one source puts it "kidnapping young korean women and making them his concubines, something akin to 19th century comfort women". The Qing and Min clan were using the two failed coup d'etats to virtually wipe out any and all political opposition. Yuan Shikai's tenure over Korea which lasted for a decade has been considered by some historians as "a dark age" for Korea's development. Japan had learnt its lesson after 1884 bitterly and they would not eschew in Korea for some time, but this did not mean forever. No, the lesson they learnt was not to leave korea alone, it was to make sure next time they would have a stronger position than China. King Gojong also learnt a lesson, that Korea was vulnerable and needed a protector, but who? Well King Gojong secretly began gravitating towards Russia. You know the Russian Empire was a coy player when it came to Asia and China in particular. The Qing had greatly miscalculated when it came to Russia in the 19th century. The Qing intelligence indicated to them that the Russians had crushed Britain and France during the Crimean War so when the Second opium war was raging on, China was wary of Russia. This had a large effect on the Qing as they basically gave up parts of Siberia to Russia assuming they had large forces at the ready when in fact their far eastern forces were scattered horribly. Had the QIng showed a stronger arm against Russia they could have retained more territory which would have helped them pay their large indemnities to the west after the Opium wars. From the Russian point of view they took full advantage of a golden situation. Honestly, imagine Britain and France fight a war against this grand Qing empire in the late 1850's and Russia just barges in making demands alongside them. With the treaty of Aigun, setting a new boundary on the AMur River, Russia gained 185,000 square miles of territory, that is the size of California and was the only livable part of eastern siberia. Russia followed this up with the treaty of Peking grabbing 130,00 square miles of territory, then again on October 7th of 1864 where she signed the treaty of Tarbagati grabbing another 350,000 square miles. That was like adding two Italies. The Qing at the time did not have proper knowledge of the territory they were handing away and when they figured it out later it was a national humiliation. Russia acquired all of this through a bluff, with some bravado and a brilliant stroke of diplomacy. As I will talk more about in the "great game" episode, Russia and China were in conflict for a long time because of Xinjiang. They remained on the verge of full scale war until 1881 when they signed a treaty, but until that point China had felt hamstrung when it came to Korea and the Russians. As the Korean situation went further and further to shit, the Russians eagerly watched, salivating as you can imagine. Russia's strategy for quite a long time at this point was to surround its empire with weak neighbors, to destabilize those who threatened to become strong. This was a very logical strategy for a large continental power, thus Russia wanted to do everything possible from a third power swallowing up and revitalizing Korea. They sent Karl Ivanovich Weber as consul to Korea and he carefully cultivated ties to King Gojong. Weber made it clear to the Korean officials Russia intended to support them in the event Korean territorial integrity or independence became threatened. A secret deal was made between Korea and Russia, to obtain military instructors in return for a lease at Yonghunghang, a port in Wonsan. When the British found out about this they were quite livid and they immediately occupied Komundo island near the southern tip of the Korean peninsula. Its not important just yet, but Britain and Russia being aggressive towards another with holdings in east asia would reek its ugly head in 1904. When Yuan Shikai found out about King Gojong's plans to secure Russian military assistance he was not too happy and tried to intimidate him. Yuan Shikai ended up quashing the Russian military adviser plan by leaking it to the diplomatic community which caused a large uproar. Yuan Shikai's influence over Korea was beginning to boomerang, as now the Korean sought out Russia aid even more so seeing Qing suzerainty even more overbearing. King Gojong approached Weber again in 1886 requesting to establish a Russian protectorship. This was leaked to Yuan Shikai, who began plans to depose the King, but Li Hongzhang overruled him. Russia would make two fateful decisions, the first in 1888 when they would try to facilitate Japan's attempts to undermine the Qing influence over Korea. Russia did this in order to weaken the Anglo-Chinese relations, but Russia had also greatly underestimated Japanese power and overestimated Chinese power. The second decision I have spoken about multiple times, the building of the trans-siberian railway. This decision altered the balance of power in the far east as Russia would be able to deploy troops at basically a whims notice to the CHinese and Korean borders. But Russia also needed something else vitally important, a warm water port. Russia had acquired vladivostok, a cold water port that freezes up for a few months of they and back then without icebreakers one could not keep their fleet at port year round. Russia eyed Korea or a Chinese warm water port in the Yellow sea as a future prize they must claim. Now I don't want to side track too much about Russia as that will come about much later in 1904. I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me. The Gapsin coup was yet again another mess that almost led China and Japan to war over their proxy fight over Korea. Things were heating up more and more, how long could the diplomats and politicians hold it all off?

Last time we spoke about the Dungan Revolt. Yes it was a grand little side story that only encompassed something that should have required at minimum three podcasts, but I do my best. Northwest China was a wild place and multiple groups on the frontiers of other nations saw an opportunity when the Taiping Rebellion kicked out to try and rebel themselves. Multiple muslim groups and some foreign leaders like Yaqub Bek fought the Qing, the Russians and other groups to try and consolidate control over key areas. However when the Taiping were finally quelled, the Qing sent Zuo Zongtang northwest to deal with the Dungan problem. Zuo Zongtang led a brutal campaign to reclaim Xinjiang and was successful, a large part to muslim chinese defectors. Now we need to venture back to the issue of Japan, China, Korea and a truly stressful situation for poor old Li Hongzhang. #39 This episode is the imo uprising Welcome to the Fall and Rise of China Podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about the history of Asia? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on history of asia and much more so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel where I cover the history of China and Japan from the 19th century until the end of the Pacific War. The 1880s were an extremely turbulent time for China, Japan and Korea. Each nation faced the same anxiety, that of western encroachment, the danger of colonization. Each of these nations would face challenges from the west and this would affect all 3 of them and in turn their relations to another. There were leading figures in each nation that sought to cooperate together to resist western colonialism. At the time the greatest threat was Russia. The Russian empire was beginning the process of building the grand trans-siberian railway. The railway would only begin construction in 1891, but by the 1880's settlers were being pushed east into Siberia and discussions were being held to push the process forward. Now when Japan pulled the sneaky maneuver of getting Korea to sign treaties acknowledging her independence from China, both Korea and Chinese officials were deeply concerned and no wonder. Japan had kept pressing the buttons and this was a major red flag moment. But the Chinese and Koreans had a multitude of problems at the time taking up much of their attention. Thus the Chinese and Koreans tried to ignore the implications of the Japanese treaties in the hopes they could be stamped down later thus easing Japan back into a passive role. You might be asking yourself why are the Chinese and Koreans backing down so much and allowing Japan basically to stomp over them, to put it simply, they had too much to deal with. You might remember when I barely talked about some of the rebels going on in China during and after the Taiping Rebellion. One of those known as the Dungan Revolt of 1862-1877, well that little guy was not such a little guy. If you go on wikipedia for example and look up the Dungan revolt you will notice a few things right off the bat, the first most likely the death toll which was in the millions, possibly up to 21 million. It hit Shaanxi, Gangsu and Xinjiang provinces very hard. But alongside the death toll, you would probably notice secondly the participants list which is extravagantly long and holds many surprising participants. The Ottomans, British, Russians, Uzbeks all hands their hands in the Chinese cookie jar. While the Dungan Revolt is certainly a big one, it gets even bigger, much bigger. The Dungan Revolt basically is part of "the Great Game". Now you're probably asking yourselves what game? The Great Game was this mashup of conflicts between the British and Russian empires of multiple territories spanning the middle east and Asia. They fought for and over numerous things, for example the British believed Russia had plans to invade India. The Russians thought Britain wanted to expand into central asia. This led to countless wars such as the 1st anglo-afghan war of 1838, the first anglo-sikh war of 1845, the second anglo-sikh war of 1848, the second anglo-afghan war of 1878 and theres even more than that. Now for China this cultivated the Dungan Revolt somewhat and Russian began encroaching in Xinjiang. From 1871 to 1881 the Qing dynasty and the Russian empire were on the verge of a massive war over Xinjiang. Now I am literally pulling out my hair as I write this series because I planned to write a single podcast explaining how the situation in Korea led to what will be one of the most important wars, the first sino-japanese war of 1894-1895 and as I do so I keep skipping over major events, such as the multitude of rebellions in China, and this "great game situation". Oh and its not just the great game, in the 1880s emerges another fantastic war known as the Sino-French War of 1884-1885 first involving Vietnam and France and then China gets mixed in. Needless to say I face two options, option number 1; I give a summary of these events and gloss right over them to carry on with my intended little narrow narrative about Korea, China and Japan. Option 2) I carry on as I am and write two separate episodes, "the great game" and "the Sino-French War of 1884-1885". I am electing to do option 2, so please bear with me for the time being I imagine those 2 episodes will come right after I am done with the Hermit kingdom. Stating that I keep glossing over major events, but its simply impossible to hit them all, so if there are some you just are dying to hear about, or simply other things you want to hear about that I can't hit here please let me know on the Pacific War channel discord, comment my Youtube channel or become a patreon, if ya do I promise I will make content just for you, that's why it's there. So needless to say, these major events were hitting China at an extraordinarily bad time. These were major variables thwarting China from seeking a firmer hand against Japan when it came to Korea. China was waiting for things to simmer before they confront the Japanese. And do remember despite Japan's actions, they still represented the greatest possible ally against the looming Russian bear to the north who were gradually expanding into Asia. The prospect of large numbers of Russians moving into East Asia concerned Korea, Japan and China all the same. On top of this the Russians began plans in 1882 to start a steamship line from Ukraine to Priamur, on the coast of Siberia and this also meant a large development of Priamur. Korea had the great misfortune of being what one author has called 'a shrimp among the whales". The whales being China, Japan and Russia. Korea had a long history of being fought over, in 661 the Japanese sent troops, then the Yuan Dynasty forces of Kublai Khan used Korea to try and invade Japan in the 1190's and in the 1590s Hideyoshi invaded Korea. So Korea had this unfortunate history of simply being stuck in the middle. In 1882 China still held suzerainty over Korea…well from their point of view, the Japanese certainly did not see it that way. Korea was grasping at straws, trying to avoid conflict, but she was playing a game between two tigers. Now in 1881 Korea began expanding its relations with all 3 major players, Russia, China and Japan. Awhile back I mentioned that Korea sent Kim Hong-jip to Japan and after his journey he strongly suggested Korea send more envoys to learn more from Japan. In 1881 this led Korea to create the Gentlemen's sightseeing group. These were 12 young Koreans who went to Japan to learn more about the Meiji restoration efforts. The mission was akin to Japan's Iwakura Mission, the Koreans inspected administrative agencies, military facilities, education facilities, everything they could. The Koreans were very impressed by what they saw and when they came back home they sought ways to push Korea onto the same path as Japan's modernization efforts. Amongst the 12 gentleman was one Kim Ok-kyun. After the tour had ended Fukuzawa Yukichi one of Japans top liberal minded intellects arranged for Kim Ok-kyun to remain an extra 6 months at Keio university. Kim Ok-kyuns stay convinced him that the Meiji restoration was the essential path for Korea to self strengthen and thwart western encroachment. Now Kim OK-kyun will be a key player in many things to come, but I bring him up now just to signify the efforts of Japan to win over Korea. People such as Kim Ok-kyun began championing Japan as Korea's savior and this prompted King Gojong to look to Japan for some assistance in modernizing, such as the employment of Lt Horimoto Reizo who trained the Pyolgigun. But while Japan was making inroads to circumventing China, China was not sitting idly by. Li Hongzhang had emerged probably as the most influential person in all of China by the 1880s. The Qing government authorized the man who was the Grand Minister for the Northern Sea, the governor general of Zhili province, Commander of the Huai Army, associate controller over the board of admiralty and Grand secretary, yes China was continuing the practice of placing as many titles as possible onto a single man. Above all else Li Hongzhang was responsible for Korea. As much as I have talked about Zeng Guofan's pupil I have not really talked all that much about the man himself. Li Hongzhang dominated Chinese foreign policy for nearly quarter of a century. He was 6 feet tall and quite a lot of western diplomats noted him to have a fine physique, a vigor to his nature, piercing eyes, a commanding presence and a no-nonsense approach. As a Qing official he wore multicolored silk robes, a large triangular hat with the traditional three-eyed peacock feathers. As noted by his mentor Zeng Guofan "Li Hongzhang possessed a bearing and manner of speech sufficient to bring men to their knees". Li Hongzhang was frankly a go-getter as we say in the west. George F Seward, a minister of the US to China called him "a giant among his fellow Chinese and the best foreigners who have met him in affairs will not hesitate to accord to him intellectual powers, which would command admiration in any cabinet or council". Russia's count Sergei Lil'evich Witte, the architect of the empires industrialization program for over two decades and a man not known to overstate others said this of Li "I have met many notable statesmen in my career and would rate Li Hongzhang high among them. In fact, he was a great statesman; to be sure he was Chinese, without any kind of European education, but a man of sound Chinese education, and what is more, a man with a remarkably sound mind and good common sense." The socialist French newspaper, Le Siecle, called him "the yellow Bismarck." I particularly like that last one, yellow Bismarck thats a flavourful one isn't it. Li Hongzhang was Han Chinese, from 6 of 7 generations that passed the imperial examinations, a scholar through and through. He passed the third highest out of 4000 other students for the highest imperial degree and built up the Huai army with help from Zeng Guofan quickly becoming one of if not the dominant military ruler in China. It was in fact his rule over the most powerful army in CHina that led to many of his appointments as the Qing needed to try and rein him in somehow. He and Empress Dowager Cixi would have a long-standing relationship. Li Hongzhang aided her in installing her nephew as Emperor in 1875, though in reality he would not actually rule anything it would be Cixi and Li was loyal to her. On the note of Cixi, Li Hongzhang was criticized heavily for corruption and indeed he became fabulously wealthy. Yet I do not think you can point fingers simply at Li, as it was not just him but the Qing bureaucracy that was corrupt. A foreign employee under Li had this to say about him and corruption "The Viceroy was a diplomat of world-wide fame; but to his countrymen - before the war - he was chiefly reputed as a great military and naval organizer. He was not nor could he be that; for the corruption, peculation and nepotism which infested his organizations had their fountain-head in himself, and to an extent which was exceptional even for a Chinese official. He was himself enmeshed in the national machine of organized inefficiency; to him also it was a normal condition, and any other, had it been indicated, would have been incomprehensible to him." You have to understand at this time in the Qing dynasty corruption was simply the status quo. Bribery was the normal source of political influence. The Qing salaries were insufficient, so all officials bribed and embezzled to make ends meet. To get anything done politically in China at this time one had to bribe whether it was for good means or bad, Li was no different. Li's activities were some of the largest in scope China would ever see and thus required enormous sums of money. None the less Li was a Han, and the Manchu were never going to let the Han simply run the show, so even if Li had idea's about reform to stop the corruption they would not allow him to do so as it would put a Han in the drivers seat. And so Li was a master operator within the corrupt system of Qing politics, he had to grease the corrupt wheels of power. Unlike the Meiji restoration which took daring reforms backed by the Genro of Japan, Li had major shackles. I think I already said this before, Li Hongzhang is one of my favorite characters of modern Chinese history, but he is also a terribly tragic character. One would call him a man before his time. He showed great foresight about how China could modernize but he was hampered by the system. Yet despite all of that he did an incredible amount to help modernize China nonetheless. He also never got a chance to really see the outside world until late in his life unlike most of his Japanese counterparts. He would also take the lionshare of the blame for the many humiliations CHina would receive, literally right until his death he just kept fighting bitterly. Many champion those who do great feats during good times, but we often forget those who lived in dire times who struggled to do great feats, and Li is one of those. Now as the man responsible for Korea Li Hongzhang advised his Korean counterpart in 1879 "There is no human agency capable of putting a stop to the expansionist movement of Japan: has not your Government been compelled to inaugurate a new era by making a Treaty of Commerce with it? As matters stand, therefore, is not our best course to neutralize one poison by another, to set one energy against another? You should seize every opportunity to establish treaty relations with Western nations, which you can use to check Japan." The advice was carried to King Gojong who in 1822 solicited Li Hongzhang to negotiate on Korea's behalf for a treaty with the United States. The Josen-United States Treaty of 1882 or Treaty of Peace, AMity, Commerce and Navigation would be signed in 1882 heavily influenced by Li Hongzhang. It was Korea's first treaty with a western nation, albeit an unequal treaty. It established mutual friendship with the US and mutual assistance in the case of attack. The treaty became the template for others as soon Germany signed one in 1883, then Russian and Italy in 1884 and France by 1886. The idea obviously being, Li Hongzhang trying to bolster up Korea so Japan would not try to invade her. Now despite the fact these treaties were intended to counterbalance Japan, they also indirectly undermined China. Combined with the Japanese treaties they all worked collectively to shatter Korea's isolation and severed China's suzerainty over her. To be blunt, while China could continue to scream about how Korea was still her tributary, now a collective group of other nations saw her as independent. This also began a process of creating pro-Japanese and pro-Chinese factions within the Korean political system. There were those who missed the times of the Daewongun reign. They believed the current actions of Korea were unfaithful to Confucianism. And then in 1882 a small problem would evolve into a larger one. Remember the Japanese military attache, Lt Horimoto Reizo? Well in January of 1882, his work ended up reorganizing the existing 5 army garrison structure into the Muwiyong "palace guards garrison" and the Changoyong "capital guards garrison". But alongside that he also created the Pyolgigun "special skills force" which was basically the yolk of a new modern Korean army. This is all fantastic and good fun, however Korea held a very tight budget and was forced to reduce the number of her old-style troops. For those of you who know your Satsuma Rebellion that occurred in Japan, here in Korea a similar event unfolded. In July of 1882 many Korean soldiers were retired against their will. They protested that for over a year after the forced retirement they had not received back pay. 1000 men, mostly the old and disabled were let go, and they were not paid their stipends of rice for 13 months. They began to protest, and who wouldn't. Hearing about this, King Gojong ordered that a months allowance of rice be given to the soldiers and he directed one Min Gyeom-ho, the overseer of the Joseon's government finances to see to it. Min Gyeom-ho was the nephew of Queen Min, and that is an important fact as the Min family would be seen as culprits. Well Min Gyeom-ho handed the job over to his steward who sold the rice he had been given for the soldiers and used that money to buy millet which was further mixed with sand and bran, the good classic old case of embezzlement, like cutting cocaine with baking powder. Well the the substance by the time it got to the soldiers had gone rotten and as you might imagine it really pissed off the already pissed off protesting soldiers. So on July 23rd of 1882 a riot broke out in Uigeumbu. Pissed off soldiers marched upon the residence of Min Gyeom-ho who they suspected was the culprit swindling them all. Min Gyeom-ho heard of the incoming rioters and ordered the police to arrest their ringleaders and have them executed the next day. The rioters received word of these orders and broke into Min Gyeom-ho's home, but by that point he had fled so they simply trashed the place. Without the man to exact their vengeance upon the rioters marched to the armory and began stealing arms and ammo. Then they went to a local prison, overwhelmed its guards and released the arrested ringleaders alongside other political prisoners. At this point Min Gyeom-ho was hiding at the Royal palace. He panicked and ordered the army to quell the revolt, but by this time the revolt was snow balling. The armed rioters then turned their attention to two different groups of people, the first were the Japanese and second Korean progressives aka the reformers supporting the new changes to Korea propped by Japan. A group of rioters headed to Lt Horimoto's quarters where they grabbed him and took turns stabbing him to death. Another group of over 3000 rioters marched upon the Japanese legation. Over at the legation were the minister to Korea Hanabusa Yoshitada alongside 17 staff members and 10 legation police. The legation was quickly surrounded prompting Hanabusa to order all the documents within to be burnt. As the smoke and flames increased, many of the legation staff used it as a cover to escape through the rear gate. The Japanese fled to the nearest harbor where they took a boat down the Han river enroute to Incheon. From there they thought they would be safe, but Korean soldiers continued to hunt them down, soon they were fleeing to another harbor, but this time the Koreans caught up to them. 6 Japanese were killed with another 5 severely injured. The survivors got onto a boat and made a break for open sea, eventually running into the British survey ship HMS flying fish which took them in. The rioters certainly did not stop at the Japanese legation, on July 24th they took to marching upon the royal palace still hunting Min Gyeom-ho. They got their hands on Min Gyeom-ho killing him alongside a dozen high ranking Joseon officials including Heungin-gun Yi Choe-Heung, the older brother of the Daewongun. It should be noted that while he was the brother to him, he was also publicly critical against his isolationist policies and could be seen as an ally to the Min clan. The rioters also hunted for Queen Min, intending to kill her as well. They saw the Queen and the rest of the Min allies as the main culprits behind the corruption going on in the government. Queen Min managed to escape the palace being carried literally away on a guards back dressed as a commoner. She fled for refuse in the home of Min Eung-sik in Chungju of Chungcheong province. Meanwhile the rioters managed to kill an official of the Min family and the entire ordeal became known as the Soldiers Riot of 1882 or the Imo uprising. Now the Imo uprising was sort of a symptom of something else going on in Korea. I had mentioned previously that the Korean politics had created sort of a faction situation. It was not necessary one side was Pro Chinese and the other Japanese, a lot more was going on, but I will try to summarize it as best as I can. During the reign of the Daewongun, many of the Korean literati, you know the political, scholar, high society types, well they considered a lot of what the Daewongun was doing to be unfaithful to confucianism. However when the Daewogun was kicked out, they began to see all the grand reforms and treaties emerging under King Gojong as even worse. In fact they never really saw it as "King Gojong's" but rather Queen Min and her entourage of family members in high positions taking Korea to hell in a handbasket. During the Imo uprising incident there was a rather important figure amongst the rioting troops, Prince Waneun, the illegitimate son of Daewongun and one of his concubines named Kyeseongwol. He was the older half brother to King Gojong. Now When the Daewongun was "forcefully retired" he actually did not go without a fight and attempted a coup, which just saw him getting deported to China, and this greatly upset Prince Waneun. But he bide his time, entering the Korean military as a low ranking officer. When the rioters struck in 1881, Daewongun had sent agents to instigate them, one of which was Prince Waneun. It seems the Daewongun was trying to replace King Gojong with his illegitimate son, but the riots failed. When they arrested the rioters many of their leaders were executed, one of which was Prince Wanuen. Who ordered his specific execution is unknown, myth has the Korean politician Yi Yun-yong being responsible, but there is also evidence he did so under orders from Queen Min and King Gojong. On October 28th of 1881 he was poisoned to death while in prison at Jeju. The reason I bring up this minor part of the story is to highlight that there were serious efforts being made by political factions to usurp King Gojong and steer Korea in certain directions. The Daewongun clearly supported the rioters and their cause. In fact it is known the Daewongun exhorted the rioters to specifically bring down the Min clan and expel the Japanese. Daewongun was very much in the China camp politically. King Gojong clearly did not support their cause, but he saw the writing on the wall. King Gojong asked his father to return to the palace, who promptly showed up with 200 of the rioters backing him up. King Gojong capitulated to their demands, one of which was to restore his father to power. King Gojong basically said this to his father when he showed up to the palace "put an immediate end to the wild melee and I will give power over the small and large matters of the government". And thus the Daewongun was back in power. His first order of business as you might imagine was to remove from office all officials of the Min family, he even had his own brother executed because he had allied to them! At the time it was believed Queen Min had been killed, thus he had a funeral process begun for her. Now in response to the killing of the Japanese officials, well Japan was not too happy about that. The foreign office under Inoue Kaoru ordered Hanasuba to return to Seoul to hold a meeting with senior Korean officials to get them to bring the rioters responsible to justice. If any more of these rioters were to attack Japanese, Japan was going to bear military force against them, regardless of whatever the Korean government did. Inoue instructed Hanabusa, that if he saw the Koreans making any attempts to hide the perpetrators and not punish them, or if they refused simply to comply at all with their demands this would constitute a breach of peace and thus the IJA would be rolling in. Japan also sent an official letter to the Korean government with an envoy, indicting it for the crimes that had been done to the Japanese and that Japan would be sending forces to occupy the port of Chempulpo. Hanabusa meanwhile was instructed that if China or another nation attempted to mediate on behalf of Korea, he should refuse this, but to reiterate none the less that Japan still believed her relations with Korea were friendly and that they best restore that friendly relationship. Thus Hanabusa was to go to Seoul with IJA and IJN forces to protect him and other Japanese officials. Now while Japan was doing all of this, in the background they were also calling up reserves for their military in advance and Inoue Kaoru made sure to notify western ministers in Tokyo they were sending IJA/IJN forces to Korea to "protect their citizens". He strongly emphasized this was all in good faith and that their intentions were peaceful, but when the Americans offered to mediate he declined this off the bat, not a great look. As for the Chinese reaction, Li Hongzhang who was in charge had left his post just before the crisis had broken out, taking a leave of absence because his mother had just died. How fate tosses the dice sometimes eh? Thus China's de facto foreign minister was left out of touch and Korea did not have a Chinese legation on hand. Li Shuchang, the Chinese minister in Tokyo received word of the situation and sent word home. On August 1st, Zhang Shusheng dispatched 3 warships of the Beiyang Fleet under the command of Admiral Ding Ruchang to Korea with the Qing official Ma Jianzhong to assess the situation. 4500 Qing forces led by General Wu Changqing arrived and they quickly aided the Korean government in quelling the rioters thus thwarting a full blown rebellion. The Qing forces took control over Seoul. This was the first time that China had military intervened in Korea since 1636 and constituted a major departure in her foreign policy over Korea. Would this situation ignite a war between the Qing and Japan? I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me. The imo uprising was going to escalate things for China, Japan and Korea, simply boiling the pot of war gradually over time. How long could the diplomats and politicians keep those rattling the sabers of war?

Last time we spoke about the modernization efforts of China, Japan and the Hermit Kingdom of Korea. China and Japan undertook very different paths to modernization, and little Korea was stuck in between them. Yet there was even another play joining the mix, the empire of Russia who was threatening all 3 of the Asian nations with her encroachment. The 3 Asian nations attempted to cooperate against the common threat, but Japan and China were growing ever more and more hostile towards another, particularly over the issue of who should influence Korea more. Yet today we are actually doing something a bit different, this will be sort of a side episode, for China had too many events going on during the 19th century to cohesively tell. One story goes often forgotten, yet it encompassed numerous groups, vast amounts of territory and a lot of bloodshed. #38 This episode is the Dungan Revolt Welcome to the Fall and Rise of China Podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about the history of Asia? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on history of asia and much more so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel where I cover the history of China and Japan from the 19th century until the end of the Pacific War. I am not going to lie, I have no idea where to even start with this one. Originally I wanted to write a single episode, perhaps a two parter, explaining how China and Japan find themselves going to war in the 1890's largely over Korea. Yet the late 19th century is probably one of the most jam packed time periods for Chinese history. So many uprisings, rebellions, wars with foreign states occurs for the Qing dynasty, there's simply no way to tell them all, but here I want to touch upon just a few. Now I keep bringing up but barely talk about, the Dungan Revolt of 1862-1877. If you go right now and please do, to the wikipedia article on the Dungan Revolt, check out the list of Belligerents. You will see the Qing, the Russian Empire, a short lived state called the Kashgaria, the British Empire, the Ottoman Empire and an unbelievable number of Muslim rebel groups from all over the place. Events like this do not live in a bubble, as we say in the research world of neuroscience, this requires multivariable analysis. Well that's what I hope to accomplish, in a single episode. Now I expect when I say the Dungan Revolt, the first question that comes to mind for many of you is, who are Dungans? Its complicated. They can be described as Turkic or Chinese speaking, Hui Muslim people who inhabitant Xinjiang province, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Mongolia, Tajikistan and parts of modern Russia. Now you are saying, wait are they Turks or Chinese, thats a very politically motivated question haha. Today you could call them, Hui, Uyghurs, Kazakhs, Kyrgyzs, Uzbeks, Tatars, etc. In essence they inhibit a part of the world that has so many different groups around and their history goes very deep, before the time of the Qing dynasty. When the Qianlong Emperor hit the scene in the early 18th century, he named the province Xinjiang, meaning "new frontier" and the people there were known by many as Hui, but specifically for those Chinese speaking muslims in the northwest, well they were often referred to as Dungans. Prior to the Qing rule, Xinjiang was ruled by the Oirat Mongols of the Dzungar Khanate. I am sure you veteran listeners before I came to this podcast know much of these peoples and their history, you probably could teach me a thing or two, as this is very much so out of my specialization. One thing you might remember that I touched upon I believe in the very first episode of this podcast series was the Dzungar genocide. As ordered by the Qianlong Emperor ""Show no mercy at all to these rebels. Only the old and weak should be saved. Our previous military campaigns were too lenient. If we act as before, our troops will withdraw, and further trouble will occur. If a rebel is captured and his followers wish to surrender, he must personally come to the garrison, prostrate himself before the commander, and request surrender. If he only sends someone to request submission, it is undoubtedly a trick. Tell Tsengünjav to massacre these crafty Zunghars. Do not believe what they say." It is estimated perhaps 80 percent of the 600,000 or so Dzungars were killed through war and disease between 1755-1758, enough to argue the annihilation of them as a people. Now with Xinjiang so devastated and depopulated, the Qing sponsored a large-scale settlement of Han, Hui, Uyghur, Manchu and other Chinese. Thus the demographics of the region changed dramatically, Xinjiang became mostly Uyghurs around 60% or so, followed by 30% Han and Hui and the rest of various minority groups like Manchu. The Qing did their best to unify Xinjiang, and one of their policies was to turn over 17,000 acres of steppe grassland over to Han Chinese to farm and colonize. Some historians point this out to be an attempt to replace Uyghurs, but in truth its messier than just that, as the Qing also banned Han Chinese from settled in Uyghur concentrated areas of the province. Now the Oirat Mongol's come back to the scene, this time in the form of the Kalmyk Khanate. They were mostly Tibetan Buddhists and in 1770, over 300,000 of them tried to seize control of parts of Xinjiang from the Qing. However when they began their great expedition, their traditional rivals the Kazakhs and Kyrgyz attacked them the entire way leading them to show up to Xinjiang, worn out, starving and ridden with disease. Many of them simply came and surrendered to the Qing upon arrival and managed to settle within Qing territory. Now these were nomadic people, but the Qing demanded they give up the nomadic lifestyle to take up farming, which was a deliberate policy to break them as a people. They utterly failed at becoming farmers and quickly fell into poverty, undergoing such horrors as selling their own children into slavery, becoming prostitutes, bandits, and such, terrible times. Alongside the terrible treatment of the new coming Kalmyks, Uyghurs were being abused by Manchu officials. It is said Manchu officials were gang raping Uyghur women, such as the official Su-cheng. A rebellion occurred, and the Qing violently quelled. There were reports of mass rape by Manchu troops causing even more hatred from the Uyghur population. Now fast forward to the Taiping Rebellion, during 1862 as Taiping forces approached Shaanxi province, the local population began to form militias known as the Yong Ying. The Yong Ying or "brave camps" were similar to our friend Zeng Guofans "Yung-Ying" Xiang army, just less well structured and terribly under equipped. If they were lucky the Qing government would hand over some Jingalls, but more or less the old sword and spear were their choice of weapon. Now the Yong Ying's being propped up by the Qing were Han Chinese, but around them were large populations of Muslim Chinese who, well lets just say were having PTSD episodes from the countless atrocities performed upon them by these same people for centuries now. So the Muslim groups formed their own Yong Ying's and this is where our story really begins. In 1862 sporadic conflicts such as skirmishes between groups, riots, smaller uprisings and such. They ran the gambit for reasons, could be just a barroom brawl as they saw, trivial type of stuff. During this time any rebel groups that emerged drew attention from the Qing and by proxy association were believed to be possibly working with the Taiping. To add some more chaos to the situation, the Green Standard army as you would assume took its recruits from populaces all over China. Their job much more as a police force than a real army was to keep things running smoothly in all the provinces of the Qing dynasty. In northwest China this meant numerous Hui and other muslim chinese groups were amongst their ranks and thus training for combat and armed, so keep that in mind. There were numerous incidents that sprung the Dungan revolt, but one in particular involved of all things the price of bamboo poles. Some Han merchants were overcharging Hui and this led to a major fight. Bamboo poles were traditionally used to make spears. During a time of major conflict and open rebellion suddenly the Hui communities began to buy large quantities of bamboo poles and this led to the belief they were planning to set up an Islamic state in northwestern China. Organized mosques run by popular mullahs in Shaanxi were purchasing more and more bamboo poles, which they were indeed making into spears. The Hui communities were worried about their safety, seeing all these local militias pop up meant there would be fighting over resources and such. Well the non muslim merchants, mostly Han saw the paint on the wall and were obviously worried about selling bamboo poles to people who might attack them, or better said might defend themselves. Thus many merchants began to increase the prices on bamboo poles and this led to a major uprising known as the Shengshan bamboo incident. Manchu general Duolongga, the same man we talked about during the Taiping Rebellion was leading a cavalry unit in the north when the Hui revolt suddenly turned into a siege laid against Xi'an in Shaanxi province. Duolongga led a campaign against the muslim bands and by 1863 the siege was lifted and the rebels were pushed out of Shaanxi into neighboring Gansu province. In Gansu the Muslim leaders began to spread rumors of an impending Qing crackdown on muslims. They spread fear that the Qing would soon massacre many and this allowed them to organize another siege, this time against Ling-chou, a large city 40 miles north from Jinjipu. Jinjipu happened to be the HQ of a major Muslim leader named Ma Hualong, more about him later. While Lingzhou was laid siege, another strategic city was also attacked by Muslim forces, the city of Lanchow. The Governor General at Lanchow, En-lin reacted by trying to apply a policy of reconciliation. He advocated to the Qing court to not alienate the Muslims and began sending edicts in Gansu reiterating non-discrimination policies towards Muslims. His efforts seem to have been all for naught, as the rumors of a Qing massacre upon the muslims won out the day and large scale violence just grew. Within Eastern Gangsu, many of the Shaanxi Muslim refugees formed the what became known as the "18 great battalions". Their purpose was to train and arm themselves to take back their homes in Shaanxi. Now while Gansu and Shaanxi were kicking off the beginnings of the Dungan revolt, this also opened the door to more groups to join in. Yaqub Bek, was born in the town of Pskente in the Khanate of Kokand, today's Uzbekistan. There region he lived in was drawn into conflict continuously with outsiders like the Russian and from within as it was deeply factionalized. Yaqub Bek claimed to be a descendant of Timur Gurkani the Turco-Mongol conqueror of the Timurid Empire, probably a ruse to give himself more credibility as a great ruler. He conspired against factions such as the Qipchaqs, taking part in a horrible event known as the Qipchaq massacre. Eventually in the 1860's he fought for the Kokand khanate as a General against the Russians, but they defeated them in 1866 resulting in the major loss of Tashkent. The ruler of Khokand, Sadik Beg dispatched Yakub Beg to Kashgar to raise and find new troops amongst Muslim allies. Yaqub Beg instead invaded Kashgar, defeated its Chinese defenders and declared himself ruler. Now Yaqub Beh was stuck between the forces of the Russian, British and Chinese empires who were all vying for control of the surrounding area, this was part of something called "the great game" which I simply cannot get into for it is too great, pun intended. Thus Yaqub Beg began a campaign that basically saw him conquer Xinjiang province, and this drew the ire of the Qing as you can imagine. So the Qing were now dealing with multiple Muslim rebel groups in the northwest and on top of this some of them were foreigners, who held considerable backing. The Qing dynasty sent one of their most formidable Generals, Zuo Zongtang in 1867 to Shaanxi to pacify the region. Zuo Zongtang as you already know was instrumental in the downfall of the Taiping, working closely with Zeng Guofan. Zuo Zongtangs task was to restore the peace, promote agricultural output particularly that of grain and cotton and to promote Confucian education. As we have seen throughout the series, northwestern China is a rough place to live, stricken with poverty and thus Zuo Zongtang would not be able to rely on the resources of the territory he would have to look elsewhere. This led Zuo Zongtang to immediately demand the Qing court help fund the expedition as he personally began to take out major loans worth millions of taels from foreigners. Zuo Zongtang wanted to prepare massive amounts of supplies before going on the offensive, a smart move. Zeng Guofan likewise helped his subordinate by allocating him 10,000 Xiang forces, led by General Liu Songshan to bolster Zuo Zongtang's 55,000 man army. Zuo Zongtang's forces were mostly Hunanese, but there were also men from Henan, Anhui and Sichuan as well. Because of the Taiping Rebellion, Zuo Zongtang was a proficient army raiser now and he did his best to train the men in a western fashion and outfit them with western arms. As I had mentioned, Zuo Zongtang was one of the champions of modernization and established the Lanzhou arsenal in 1872 which produced Remington breech loading type rifles for his forces alongside artillery and munitions. Now that name, Ma Hualong I had mentioned comes up here a bit. He was the leader of the Jahriyya, known also as "the new teaching". They were something of a Muslim sect in Gansu province and had been around since the 1760s.They periodically rebelled as a group and caused conflict with other groups, including muslim ones. When Ma Hualong took the leadership position in 1849 he gradually began to build up their forces and to do so he created a vast trade network using a caravan trade through Inner Mongolia and Beijing. His group became extremely wealthy and when the Dungan revolt heated up he began to use his trade network to purchase guns. Zuo Zongtang understandably was suspicious of the gun purchasing activity and deduced Ma Hualong sought to conquer parts of Inner Mongolia and rebel. Ma Hualong began collaborating with Muslim refugees fleeing Shaanxi for Gansu and this led to conflicts with the Qing. General Liu Songshan ended up dying in combat while campaigning against multiple Muslim militia groups, some of which were controlled by Ma Haulong. Meanwhile Zuo Zongtang was finishing up suppressing Shaanxi and establishing control over the province when he finally had a free hand to deal with Ma Hualong who had heavily fortified Jinjipu into a stronghold. Zuo Zongtang's forces erected a siege upon Jinjipu using Krupps field guns, the good old fashion sappers tunneling with mines tactic and the age old classic of starving out the enemy. After 16 months of siege, starvation took its toll upon the defenders prompting Ma Hualong to surrender his forces in January of 1871. Ma Hualong hoped to save the majority of his people, but Jinjipu saw a massacre, thousands lose their lives and the town was rape, plundered and raized. Zuo Zongtang ordered the execution of Ma Hualong, his son Ma Yaobang and 80 Muslim rebel leaders via "Lingchi / death by slicing". This was a horrible form of execution where a sharp object like a knife was used to slowly remove portions of ones body over long periods of time until the person died. Once done with Ma Hualong, Zuo Zongtang set his eyes upon another Muslim rebel leader named Ma Zhan'ao. Ma Zhan'ao worked loosely with Ma Hualong, but his stronghold was at Hezhou, present day Linxia. He controlled the region west of Lanzhou and benefited from Ma Hualong's vast trade network managing to arm his rebel forces. Unlike Ma Hualong who was of the "new teaching" sect, Ma Zhan'ao was of the "Khafiya / old teaching" sect and they proscribing trying to peacefully exist amongst the non muslim Qing population. When the Dungan revolt began, Ma Zhan'ao escorted numerous Han Chinese to the nearest safe area of Yixin and he did not attempt to conquer the area nor molest them. Regardless he was one of the major muslim leaders purchasing arms and earned the attention of Zuo Zongtang who began an offensive against his forces in 1872. Initially his muslim defenders inflicted heavy losses upon Zuo Zongtang's army much to the frustration of Zuo Zongtang. But Ma Zhan'ao did not want war and he dispatched his General Ma Chun to try and negotiate with General Zuo Zongtang. He offered to surrender his stronghold to the Qing and provide assistance to the Qing dynasty in quelling the Dungan revolt. Zuo Zongtang suspected this all to be a ruse, but the Qing ordered him to abide by the mutual assistance and indeed Ma Zhan'ao did assist the Qing. Zuo Zongtang began to pacify other areas, while Ma Zhan'ao basically saved his people from annihilation. To this very day the area he controlled holds a muslim population who control the Linxia Hui autonomous prefecture. Many of Ma Zhan'ao's generals like Ma Qianling and Ma Haiyan defected to the Qing, including his son Ma Anliang who proved themselves instrumental to helping Zuo Zongtangs campaign. As Zuo Zongtang pacified the areas he was soon awarded governor generalship over Shaanxi and Gansu. At this point Zuo Zongtang loosely followed a strategy of divide and conquer. Those Muslim groups part of the New Teaching he violently massacred, but those of the old teachings he tried to persuade defection to the Qing. The Qing government likewise began to make edicts stating the Muslim rebels did not represent all muslim chinese, just as all the White Lotus rebels back in the early part of the century did not represent all buddhists. They advocated the Muslim community take up the old teachings over the new teachings. With the help of the Dungan people of Hezhou Zuo Zongtang then turned his gaze west towards Xinjiang to defeat the forces of Yaqub Beg. Zuo Zongtang was now joined by defected Dungan armies led by Generals like Ma Anliang, Dong Fuxiang. By 1875 Zuo Zongtang had assembled men and supplies along the Gansu corridor and the next year began his campaign by attacking Urumchi where he massacres their garrison. Next he besieged Manas for over a month until they surrendered. Allegedly the garrison were allowed to march out of the city with weapons, but it seemed to Zuo Zongtang's commanders in the field they were planning an armed break out so they were all put to the sword as well. The women and children were spared luckily. Zuo Zongtang established a HQ at Gucheng while the Russian Empire annexed the Khanate of Kokand, squeezing Yakub Beg further. In September of 1876, Yakub Beh received reports a Chinese army was on the march 700 miles to the east and he began to prepare his defenses. He built up fortifications at Turfan and in 1877 he was visited by Aleksey Kuropatkin. Kuropatkin was sent on a diplomatic mission to Yaqub Beg to try and resolve some Russian border claims over the Fergana Valley. Kuropatkin told him he had around 17,000 troops spread over the Fergana Valley region and that he could not hope to match them. Yaqub Beg was in a very bad situation. The Chinese army had entered Urumqi pretty much unopposed, many of his eastern forces were defecting over to the Qing and in the west they were defecting to the Russians. In the spring the Chinese attacked the fort of Davanchi which lay between Urumchi and Turfan. Simultaneously an army led by Chang Yao seized Pichuan just 50 miles east of Turfan. Yaqub Beg's forces were shrinking from lost battles, desertions and defections. The Qing forces attacked Turfan where Yaqub Beg's men were beaten badly, so he fled to Toksun. At Toksun the Qing pursued him quickly and defeated him again, so he fled to Karashar, and then Korla. All of the fleeing demoralized his troops causing further desertions and defections. It would be at Korla where Yaqub Beg died and historians are uncertain as to exactly how or when. The Qing claimed he died on May 22, while Aleksey Kuropatkin claimed it was May 29th. What he died of is a bit of a mystery. The Russians state he died of illness, multiple historians think it was poisoning. Some modern historians think it could have been a stroke. Regardless with Yaqub Beg dead this pretty much closed the curtain on his forces control over the area. In autumn of 1877, Zuo Zongtang had kept his forces around Turfan as it was the hot season and he wished to gather further supplies, when he received news of the death of Yaqub Beg. Yaqub Begs forces disorganized into multiple rebel groups without a real leader consolidating anything. Zuo Zongtang sent advance parties to occupy Karashar and Korla meeting limited resistance. Zuo Zongtans army pushed the rebels further west until he eventually seized Kashgar with barely a fight and this led notable cities like Yarkand and Kohtan to submit. Xinjiang was officially reconquered by the Qing. The rebel groups dissolved gradually and no large scale revolts would occur for some time in the northwest. In 1884 Xinjiang was established as a province officially again. Zuo Zongtangs Xiang army and other Han Chinese troops began purchasing Uyghur girls from their parents to take as wives, relying often on their Hui allies to work as translators. Countless Uyghur muslim women would be married off to Han Chinese in Xinjiang during the late 19th to early 20th century. This was not limited to Han Chinese under the Qing as plenty of Hindu, Armenians, Jews and Russians also did the same. A large rationale for the situation was the amount of male depopulation from the area which caused a vacuum of single women. The punishments for the leaders who caused the Dungan revolt were harsh. Many of the songs of the Muslim leaders were castrated by the Qing imperial household department once they hit 11 years of age and they were sent to work as eunuch slaves for Qing held garrisons in Xinjiang. Many of the wives of the Muslim leaders were likewise enslaved. To give you an idea of how prevalent this was, the Muslim leader Ma Guiyuan had 9 of his sons castrated by the Qing. The Muslim leaders themselves were mostly executed by Lingchi. Yaqub Beg and his son Ishana's corpses were burned in public view. Yaqub had 4 other sons who died imprisoned at Lanzhou, Gansu or were killed by the Qing authorities upon discovery. Even Yaqub Beg's grandchildren were hunted for, many of which were caught and executed or castrated. The Dungan revolt led to mass migration all over the place. Some Hui people fled to Russia, settling in places like Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Within the Qing dynasty, the Hui Generals who defected were all promoted by the Emperor such as Dong Fuxiang and Ma Anliang. The power of these pro Qing Hui forces would become quite important to the Qing military further down the road, particularly during the Boxer Rebellion. I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me. Well I hope you enjoyed my butchering of the Dungan Revolt, again I did my best to tell it in regards to its significance to the history of China. In reality it was part of something known as the "great game" that had had a long lasting impact on many other nations history.

Last time we spoke about the modernization efforts of Big Brother and Little Brother, aka China and Japan. Both nations went about the process of modernization in vastly different ways. Japan began its Meiji restoration, an incredible hyper modernization process done to thwart colonization by western powers. Yet China was hampered by hardline conservatives like Empress Dowager Cixi who sought instead to restore the Qing Dynasty's symbolic grandeur over technological innovations such as railways. China's greatest leaders like Zuo Zongtang, Zeng Guofan and Li Hongzhang did all they could to usher in some form of modernization. Li Hongzhang emerged as the champion of modernization efforts for China, but he kept butting heads with stubborn conservatives wishing instead to reclaim the Qing's former symbolic glory.. It would not only be the conservatives in China he would have to face, for the Empire of the Rising Sun was growing, and forcing China into the shade. #37 This episode is China & Japan & the Hermit Kingdom Welcome to the Fall and Rise of China Podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about the history of Asia? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on history of asia and much more so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel where I cover the history of China and Japan from the 19th century until the end of the Pacific War. In the early 1860's, before Emperor Meiji took to the throne, the Japanese sought to establish diplomatic relations with China. The Japanese regarded China as an enormous nation that could provide markets for their merchants, but more importantly, China could cooperate with Japan in the face of Western challenges. Who better to help thwart off the west, than Big Brother? In October of 1870, the Japanese official Date Munenari went to Tianjin to meet Li Hongzhang to see if they could open formal diplomatic relations. Li Hongzhang believed in the value of establishing relations with Japan and the importance for China to modernize and self-strengthen. Li Hongzhang admired Japan for preventing westerners from invading their nation and limiting the activities of westerners within her borders. The meeting was a cordial one, both sides saw common interest in working together to resist the west. In 1871 on September 13th, Li Hongzhang and Date Munenari signed the Friendship and Trade Treaty, the first diplomatic document between China and Japan in modern history. Li Hongzhang agreed that the two nations would not launch aggression against another and that if either nation were involved in a conflict with an outside power the other would come to their assistance. It sounded a lot like Pan-Asia unity was atleast on its way, but before the treaty could be ratified the Japanese tried to eliminate the clause to provide assistance and added a new clause, that Japan would be given most favored nation, thus giving Japan the same rights that the western nations had forced upon China, yes it was an unequal treaty clause. As you can imagine Li Hongzhang was greatly annoyed by this and delayed the ratification to try and get the Japanese to back down. By May of 1873 the Japanese yielded, accepting the mutual assistance clause and abandoned the most favored nation clause. Leaders of China and Japan than expressed that their nations shared common culture and were a common race "Tongwen, Tongzu - Dobun, Doshu" and thus they shared an interest in working together to respond to the threat of the west. When this treaty was signed, the Iwakura mission had not yet returned to Japan, but Emperor Meiji had assigned Japans foreign minister, Soejima Taneoimi to go to China to learn about her position on the issue of the Ryukyus and Taiwan. Japan had interests in them and knew this would lead to conflict with the Qing. Soejima was an expert on the Chinese classics and skilled at Chinese poetry. Thus when he went over and the Chinese hosts began to make it clear Japan was in a supplicant relationship with China because she held the Chinese emperor, Soejima used his knowledge to wedge Japan into a special position. He came to Tianjin and met with Li Hongzhang. Famously when they met, Li Hongzhang was in traditional clothing, while Soejima was in western attire and Li criticized him for this. Soejima then went to Beijing and waited several days trying to get an audience with high level Qing officials. The Qing were greatly angered by Japanese attempt to get most favored nation status in the treaty. Thus they were really trying to hammer in that Japan was the supplicant to China. Soejima was upset at the condescension with which he was treated. He quoted the Duke of Zhou stating to the Qing "If you treat [foreigners] as barbarians, they will be just that, but if you treat them as true gentlemen, they will indeed become true gentlemen." Soejima was the first Japanese person in modern times to meet the Qing emperor. Prince Gong greeted him and told Soejima he would not have to kowtow before the emperor. The kowtow issue had actually been resolved because Western diplomats had made too many problems of it, by proxy Japan would not have to either. The Qing made an effort to show respect to Soejima by seeing him before other foreign diplomats and allowed him to bow just 3 times. Soejima was wine and dined by Li Hongzhang in Tianjin later, it was extremely cordial and there was goodwill between the men. Soejima's experience in China had him returning to Japan confident that China would not stop Japan from expanding her trading activities in the Ryukyus and China. Japan then prepared a legation staff to China and established a formal diplomatic office in Beijing with Mori Arinori as the ambassador. Li Hongzhang advocated that Beijing should establish a legation in Japan, arguing that if China had had a legation there they could have prevented Japan from attacking Taiwan in 1874. China's legation staff would arrive in Tokyo in december of 1877, again slow to the mark. Li Hongzhang was cautious about Japanese intentions now and in 1876 met with Mori Arinori. They shared concerns over Russian advances and Li Hongzhang suggested to Mori Arinori that their nations should cooperate on matters in Korea. Japan was focusing efforts to strengthen its northern island against possible Russian threats. They viewed Sakhalin, Manchuria and Korea to be regions of national security concern. While Japan worried about Russia encroaching on Hokkaido from the sea, China worried about Russia encroaching on its northeast region. Although the trans-siberian railway only began construction in 1891 their efforts to settle people across Siberia in preparation for its construction began much earlier. The Qing had not allowed non Manchu people to reside in their homeland of Manchuria since conquering the Ming dynasty centuries before. To strengthen resistance against Russia, in 1878 the Qing changed their immigration policy to allow and even encourage non-Manchu to come to Manchuria. Within a few years many migrants came from various parts of China to settle in Manchuria. Japan likewise was sending settlers to develop Hokkaido, but unlike Japan, the Qing had no real development plans to modernize manchuria. Soon after Hokkaido began being developed the Japanese next move was to gain control over the Ryukyu islands south of Japan's 4 main islands. This would be the first real tension between Japan and China. From 1862 to the mid 1870s Japan had concentrated on defense and thus things revolved around her 4 main islands. After the mid 1870s however, Japan gained in strength and began to expand their defensive perimeter. The Ryukyu, in Chinese "the Liuqui Kingdom" was led by indigenous peoples who oversaw the small islands stretching between Kyushu and Taiwan. The Ryukyu kingdom tried to fight for its independence by showing good will to both China and Japan and this brought Qing and Tokugawa presence. The Ryukyu kingdom maintained Chinese and Japanese emissaries who came regularly, but never at the same time. The Ryukyu kingdom paid tribute to China and traded with her, thus was influenced heavily by her. However culturally the Ryukyu were closer to Japan and Satsuma domain in particular had a large influence on her. From 1871 to 1874, Japan used a shipwreck incident involving some Ryukyu fisherman off the coast of Taiwan to strengthen her rights to govern the Ryukyu islands. In 1871 Ryukyu fisherman in 4 small boats got stuck in a typhoon sinking 1, shipwrecking 2 and 1 remained afloat. The survivors made their way ashore on Taiwan where 44 of them were killed by Taiwanese aboriginals. 12 fisherman survived and escaped aboard their last boat back to the Ryukyus. At this time Taiwan was under the control of Fujian province and the Japanese government demanded China compensate the fisherman. This inherently was also the Japanese government claiming the Ryukyu islands to belong to them. For two years the issue went unresolved and in 1874 Japan launched a punitive expedition led by Saigo Tsugumichi, the brother to the famous last Samurai Saigo Takamori. If you are interested in the story of Saigo by the way over at the Pacific War channel I have an episode dedicated to the Satsuma Rebellion, what inspired the film the Last Samurai, though that movie is sort of a mix between the Boshin War and the Satsuma rebellion, still good movie just not historically accurate. Well the Qing officials explained to the Japanese that the Taiwanese were not technically under Qing control and that the Ryukyu islands were actually under Qing jurisdiction. The Japanese expeditionary forces remained on Taiwan, intentionally to intimidate China. Soejima and the official Okubo Toshimichi went to China to discuss the issue and under pressure the Qing officials agreed to pay compensation to Japan for the Ryukyu sailors, but later stated they were unaware the payment would also provide Japan with support for her claim over the Ryukyu islands. Li Hongzhang was livid over this betrayal and stated that while the Europeans were at least honest in their negotiations, the Japanese were duplicitous. By the mid 1870's the Japanese and Chinese militaries both increased their presence in the Ryukyus. Then in 1879 during the process of abolishing the old feudal domains to replace them with prefectures, Japan officially recognized the Ryukyu islands as the prefecture we know today as Okinawa. Japan followed this up by ordering Okinawa to stop sending tribute to China. Now Li Hongzhang had supported relations with Japan, even with their incursions in Taiwan in 1874 and their swindle of treaty deals, but in 1880 China refused Japan's official proposal concerning the Ryukyus. China however did not follow this up militarily. The problems between China and Japan would only worsen and it would be Korea stuck in the middle. Japan's interests in Korea were both for security and economic. Of all the territories near Japan, Korea was the most significant strategic area. She was in the vortex of Russia, China and Japan. Korea had also been the crux of two military clashes between Japan and China in 661-663 and 1592-1598. Alongside that Korea had been the staging area for the failed Mongol invasions of Japan in 1274-1281. The German military adviser to Japan, Major Jacob Meckle stated that Korea was "a dagger thrust at the heart of Japan" and this had a profound effect on Japanese strategists. Japan was concerned other nations, like Russia, would use Korea as a base from which to attack Japan. Yet if Japan could establish a military presence on the peninsula, well that would prevent this from ever occurring. Historically Japan had dealt with Korea, better called the Joseon dynasty through the Tsushima islands and Pusan island. Both Korea and Japan took up isolationist policies and much like Nagisaki acted as Japan's open port for so long, Korea kept Pusan as its open port. During the Sakoku period, Japan gave the Tsushima domain the responsibility of dealing with Korea. There had always been limited trade between the two nations, but things certainly changed after Japan kicked off its Meiji restoration. Japan had looked to nations like Britain as an example of how to build a strong economy. This led Japanese officials to seek a relationship like Britain had when it came to economic activity. To manufacture products, sell it to its colonies and build up its own economy. Their idea for this was to import soybeans and wheat from Korea and sell Korea industrial products. Initially Japan's only major export was raw silk, so they decided to try exporting silk textiles. In late 1869 a Japanese representative from Tsushima was sent to Pusan to announce Japan was to have a new emperor, standard stuff. What was not standard however was in the letter sent to the Koreans the term for the Japanese emperor used the Ko character rather than Taikun. The Ko character was used to refer to the Qing emperor, implying the Joseon Dynasty's emperor was inferior. By using the Ko character for the Japanese emperor, Japan was trying to establish the same relationship. And so the Korean officials refused to receive the new representative and his mission as a result. The Koreans wanted to remain in the sinocentric world as tributaries to the Qing. This fiasco led to the legendary Seikanron debates, in which Saigo Takamori argued Japan should perform a punitive expedition against Korea, again if you want to hear more about that hilarious tale check out my Satsuma Rebellion episode on the Pacific War channel. Long story short, the Japanese leadership knew they were not yet strong enough to embark on such a venture so they blocked Saigo's motion. Now Japan did not simply give up on the Korean situation, they kept trying to send envoys to force Korea to recognize the equality between Japan and China. In the meantime in 1875, the steam gunboat Un'yo under the command of Inoue Yoshika was dispatched to survey the Korean coastal water. On the morning of September the 20th, Inoue put ashore a party on the island of Ganghwa to request water and provisions and here came a major conflict. Ganghwa had quite recently been the place of two major conflicts, a French expedition against Korea occurred in 1871 and an American expedition the same year. Thus the men manning the fortifications at Ganghwa were trigger happy with fresh memories of what foreign ships could do to them. When the Japanese came ashore, the Korean shore batteries fired upon the Un'yo. The Japanese as you might imagine were really pissed off and they quickly dispatched 32 men, 10 marines, 19 sailors and 3 officers to attack Yeongjong fort. The men landed near the eastern gate of the fortress and immediately white coated Joseon defenders began firing their antiquated matchlocks and some arrows down upon the Japanese. A Japanese sailor was wounded by a matchlock ball and another was hit in the groin by an arrow. The Japanese pressed their attack climbing over a wall to open the gates as their marines rushed into the fort. The Un'yo fired its 6.3 in and 5.5 in deck guns to support the assault. The Koreans tried to flee through their western gate only to run into 6 Japanese sailors who ambushed them. Kawamura Kwanshu, a Japanese officer present had this to say "they clambered down the steep bank on the south-eastern side, and in hopes of escaping to the opposite island … they stripped off their clothes and plunged into the sea. Unfortunately, the tide was high and too deep to wade across. Many of them hesitated and we fired on them without mercy ― 24 Koreans were killed on the rocks and many more drowned trying to swim to safety. Only six or seven were seen making it safely ashore on the distant island." The commander of the fort, Yi Min-dok managed to escape as the Japanese plundered the fort which Kawamura tells us " We took 36 bronze cannons and a drum nearly 6 feet in diameter. In addition to this there were four drums three feet in diameter. Their trumpets were very like toy trumpets used by children in Japan. Their bows also were very like the Japanese. Their arrows were exactly like those in Japan. The swords were numerous, but they must have been bought in Japan. The guns were all matchlocks. Among the booty was a French book on gunnery translated into Chinese." Many Koreans were captured and they were forced to carry the plunder to the Un'yo as the Rising Sun flag was raised over the fort. The Japanese held the island awaiting a challenge from Korea, but none came. The next day the Un'yo returned to Japan leaving Yeongjong in ruins. The entire ordeal turned into an implicit threat to Korea, if they refused to recognize Japan's claim and open up relations Japan would use its military might. Within Japan, the Korea incidents had gone hand in hand with the Satsuma rebellion of 1877 to push the Japanese public to support military action in Korea. The Meiji leadership were under pressure, but they hoped to avoid conflict by resolving such problems through diplomacy. Li Hongzhang perceived that if Japan were to invade Korea, this might provoke Russia to respond and thus China also wanted to resolve such issues through diplomacy. The Qing dynasty officially held suzerainty over the Joseon Dynasty, thus they held the right to approve Korea's foreign policy decisions but not to interfere with her domestic affairs. For centuries China held this right, but did not exercise it. Then in 1875, Mori Arinori was sent to Beijing seeking Qing support to open trade between Japan and Korea. Mori Arinori met with the Qing office for general management of affairs concerning the various countries, what a mouthful, known as the Zongli Yamen. The Zongli Yamen officials stated while Korea was a Chinese dependency, China still could not interfere with her domestic affairs and thus could not demand she open up trade with Japan. So the next year Mori Arinori met with Li Hongzhang over the issue and both men sought a peaceful agreement. Mori Arinori advocated for Korea to be treated under international law as a sovereign state. Now Ito Hirobumi the rising political leader of Japan during this time believed progress could not be made opening Korea up by working with the Qing. He urged his colleagues that Japan should work with Korea directly instead. Korea at this time was going through some major changes as well. The young Emperor Gojong turned 21 years old in 1873 and replaced his father Yi Ha-eung who was the Heungseon Daewongun, basically a regent ruling the dynasty. His father was a conservative with a very simple foreign policy it went like this according to the American Historian Bruce Cummings "no treaties, no trade, no catholics, no west and no Japan". Yes the Daewongun liked his isolationist policy and he was not wrong about doing so. By keeping Korea as bottled up as possible he was able to keep the western powers arguably out for quite some time. However the problem with this was while keeping the west out you were also hindering chances at modernization and an industrial revolution. Korea was known as the Hermit Kingdom and while she tried her best to keep the world out, the world eventually would come crashing in. When Gojong came into power in 1873, unlike his father he was much more willing to consider opening up and working with the Japanese. Now alongside Gojong was his wife, the famous Empress Myeongseong, also called Empress Min. She was born to the Yeoheung Min Clan in 1851. They were a noble clan who historically held high positions in the Joseon dynasty. She lost her father at age 7 and was raised by her mother and other Min relatives. When Gojong turned 15, his father sought a wife for him. He wanted someone with no close relatives so she could not harbor much political ambitions, but came from a noble lineage. He rejected many, until he found the orphaned Min who was beautiful and of ordinary level of education. She was married to Gojong and after Daewongun realized the empress had political ambitions. Daewongun had this to say of her "she was a woman of great determination and poise", despite this he paid little mind to her and things moved on. Empress Min would quickly ruffle feathers so to speak. She showed herself to be very assertive and ambitious. She did not toss lavish parties for the nobles nor participated in the normal extravagant lifestyle, you know wine and dining, tea parties with the princes and princesses all that jazz you see in the Crown. No instead she spent a lot of her time self educating, reading books reserved for men. She studied history, science, politics, the works. By the age of 20 she began trying to play an active role in politics in spite of the Daewongun and other officials trying to stop her. She then bore child prematurely who died 4 days after birth. This prompted the Daewongun to state publicly that she was unable to bear a healthy male child, which became quite a public scandal. Queen Min even suspected her father in law had slipped her ginseng to cause her pregnancy issues. Daewongun proceeded to push his son to conceive a child through a concubine called Yi Gwi-in and she soon gave birth to Prince Wanhwa. Daewongun quickly tossed the title of crown prince upon the child and it looked like the jig was up for Empress Min. However Empress Min secretly began to form a powerful faction against the Daewongun. The faction included high officials, scholars, members of the Min Clan and they made a move to remove the Daewongun from power. Empress Min's adoptive older brother, Min Seung-Ho along with the Joseon court scholar Choe Ik-Hyeon formally impeached the Daewongun arguing that Gojong, then age 22 should rule in his own right. The royal council agreed to this and Daewongun was forced to retire. The second he was out of the picture, Empress Min banished Yi Gwi-in and her child to a village outside the capital and stripped them of royal titles. The child also died on january 12th of 1880. Now Empress Min had control over the Joseon court and quickly appointed trusted family members in high court positions to assert her dominant role as Queen consort. So yeah she was a firebrand of a woman, a very interesting character, I do apologize my knowledge of Korean history is limited, but I do recommend if you are into Korean tv series there are quite a few on her like Empress Myeongseong from 2001. Now just a few months after the Un'yo incident, Japan sent an emissary to Korea to push a treaty. It was the exact same type of situation Japan faced when Commodore Matthew Perry's blackships, gunboat diplomacy. King Gojong signed what became known as the Ganghwa Treaty: this opened up 3 Korean ports to Japan, one at Pusan right away, one Wonsan in 1880 and another at Inchon and 1883. The treaty was an unequal treaty, very much in the same light as the ones forced upon Japan by western nations. The treaty had ended the Joseon dynasties tributary status under the Qing dynasty now she was an independent state. The Chinese were now suspecting Japan sought a presence on the peninsula and Li Hongzhang openly expressed fears that Japan might develop territorial ambitions on the mainland. The Chinese and Japanese continued talks about cooperation against the West, especially Russia, but they were also now quite wary of another. Now Korea was not idle during all of this and her officials sought a way to secure her. King Gojong sent a mission to Japan headed by Kim Hong-jip. Kim Hong-jip was presented a plan by a Chinese diplomat named Huang Zunxian there called "a strategy for Korea". It warned that if Korea was threatened by an empire like Russia, Korea should maintain friendly relations with Japan, China and seek an alliance with the United States to counterweight Russia. Kim reported this to King Gojong who was impressed with the plan. Then in 1880 following the Chinese advice King Gojong established diplomatic ties with the US. Negotiations began between all the nations in Tianjin and the Treaty of Peace, Amity, Commerce and navigation was signed by Korea and the US. However during the negotiations, issues rose up. The Chinese insisted that Korea was not independent and still a dependency of China. America firmly opposed such a thing, stating the new treaty should build upon the Treaty of Ganghwa which stipulated Korea as an independent state. A compromise was made between China and the US stipulating that Korea held a special status as a tributary state of China. Now as of 1879, China had given Li Hongzhang responsibility for relations with Korea. Li Hongzhang urged Korean officials to adopt China's self-strengthening program to do the same for their nation in response to foreign threats. Korea after all had just opened herself to the world and now would pursue modernization under a doctrine known as tongdo sogi "eastern wars and western machines". To modernize Korea would incorporate western technology while trying to preserve her culture, it was much alike to the Meiji restoration. In 1881 Korea established the T'ongni kimu amun "office for extraordinary affairs" modeled on the Qing administrative structures. That same year a mission was sent to Japan to see their modernized factories, military, and education system. Korea then hired a Japanese military attache, Lt Horimoto Reizo to help create a modern army for Korea. This led to the Pyolgigun "special skills force", where around 100 men of Korea's aristocracy were given Japanese military training. I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me. Trouble was brewing between the Qing dynasty and the Empire of the Rising Sun. It seemed the Hermit Kingdom of Korea was a continuous source of conflict for the two empires, and perhaps might drag them into a war that would change the balance of power in Asia forever

Last time we spoke the Heavenly Kingdom of Great Peace, Tianjing had finally fallen to the forces of Zeng Guofan and his Xiang army. Hong Xiuquan, the self proclaimed brother of Jesus was dead. All the remaining Taiping Kings and Hong's son were hunted down and executed. History's bloodiest civil war was over, claiming the lives of 20-30 million people. Yet this civil war was just one event amongst many simultaneously occurring in the Qing dynasty. Foreign encroachment and internal strife were breaking down the dynasty brick by brick. China was facing an uncomfortable situation, she had to modernize to survive against threats abroad and within. Another nation, just across the sea, faced the same cataclysm, but would undergo a vastly different approach. Henceforth the two nations, China Big Brother and Japan, little brother, would never be the same again. #36 This episode is China & Japan: Big Brother & Little Brother Welcome to the Fall and Rise of China Podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about the history of Asia? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on history of asia and much more so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel where I cover the history of China and Japan from the 19th century until the end of the Pacific War. Now I want to say this right off the bat, for those of you who are fans of my Youtube channel and have seen my content, you already know my background from the beginning was more so the history of Japan. It was in fact my love of Japanese history that led me to the history of China and I think that says something about these two nations. You simply cannot speak about one's history without the other. I could delve deeply into the opening of Japan, its turbulent Bakumatsu period, my personal favorite, the Boshin war, the Meiji restoration, the Satsuma rebellion, etc etc. But this podcast is about the Fall and Rise of China. While my personal channel deals with both nations trying to give an equal amount of narrative to explain both their developments, I want to try my very best to keep it to the hip so to say. If you want more details about the historic events of Japan from 1600-1890 or so, check out my personal channel or perhaps become a Patreon over at www.patreon.com/pacificwarchannel and scream at me to do some podcasts in depth on those subjects, I certainly would love to dabble more into it, like for example a podcast dedicated to the Shinsengumi, the samurai police who fought to the bitter end to defend the Tokugawa shogunate during its death throes, just an idea. The last time we spoke, I went over the end of the Taiping Rebellion, a momentous part of the history of Modern China. I literally sighed with relief upon completing that large series….then I stared at a blank page. Where do I even begin now? The first thing that came to my mind is how to explain what occurred to both China and Japan in the mid 19th century. Both nations were forced to modernize lest they become colonized by foreign powers. For China this was brutal, she was quite literally being carved up, but for Japan who had spent 265 years almost completely isolated under her Sakoku policy, she was opened up, went through hyper modernization and thwarted colonization as a result. Japan's story is quite different for numerous reasons, major ones being that she got the enormous benefit of seeing what was happening to China and learnt directly from China's predicament. After the west defeated China during the Opium Wars and Commodore Perry opened up Japan in 1853, Asia could no longer maintain a separate existence. Both nations were forced to begin the process of becoming part of the world. Japan had many natural advantages over China. She was made up of 4 islands, very compact, sea transportation was widely available, her communications did not have to link very far. China would only get its first telegraph in the 1880s, and it took their governmental communications nearly a month to travel from one end of the country to the other. Japan being an island had always felt vulnerable to dangers from the sea. This sense of danger prompted Japan to seek knowledge of the outside world to protect herself. Chinese leaders had to worry about enemies coming over land from multiple directions, thus they were less concerned about the seas. Japan, had isolated herself for 265 years, while China had become the literal pinnacle of civilization, hoarding the worlds silver. Thus as you can imagine Japanese leadership were not as confident as the Chinese who saw themselves on top of the world, and you know that saying or the game, king of the mountain? Well its hard to sometimes see people coming after you when your on top. Japan was also more homogeneous, whereas China had hundreds of differing people, Han, Manchu's, Mongols, Uighurs, Tibetans, etc. Unifying such people and maintaining domestic harmony was pretty much impossible. China was also undergoing a population boom in the 19th century alongside massive food shortages. This led to the terrible rebellions such as the Taiping Rebellion, I think we covered that one pretty well, the Nian Rebellion which we talked about a little bit, but of course there were others. So I think we all know now the Taiping Rebellion encompassed many issues ongoing in China. For the Nian rebellion, it occurred mostly in the north and was basically peasants banding together to survive. Natural disasters had taken a toll, food was scarce and when bad times come, especially in China, bandits begin to roam. To fight off the bandits the Nian formed militias, but as you might imagine the Qing saw this and freaked out. The main purpose of the Nian was survival and resisting taxation, something I personally can subscribe to haha. Inevitably the Nian looted and raided as a means to keep their group going on, clashing with bandits, the Qing and other rebel groups like the Taiping. Much like the Taiping, the Nian failed to topple the Qing dynasty and were quelled gradually through the Qing ruthless campaigns that used scorched earth tactics. The Nian also were in the north and thus faced the forces of Mongol general Senggelinqin. Seng defeated the Nian and killed their greatest leader Zhang Lexing in 1863 from which the never recovered. After the 2nd opium war was done, the Qing simply were more able to deal with the internal rebellions, and the Nian unfortunately were close to Beijing and not as formidable as the Taiping. Now while all that was going on, multiple muslim rebellions occurred. There was the Hui Muslim backed Panthay Rebellion in southwestern China, mostly in Yunnan province. Panthay is the Burmese word used by Burmese for Chinese muslims who arrived from Burma to Yunnan. They were fighting discrimination and like many other rebellions during this time, they saw the Manchu weakened as a result of the opium wars and decided there was an opportunity to become independent. By the way while I am referring to this as a quote muslim rebellion it was not at all exclusively muslim, many non-muslims joined them such as the Shan and Kachin people of Burma. Once the Taiping were dealt the Qing had a stronger hand south and gradually quelled them by 1868. To the northwest of China came the Dungan revolts led mostly by Hui muslim chinese in Shaanxi, Gansu and Ningxia provinces. These revolts raged from 1862-1877 and they began from conflicts between Hui and Han chinese. It was a terrible time leading to massacres, famines, massive migrations of people, plagues, simply awful stuff. In northwest China its estimated something like 21 million people died. Zuo Zongtang, a subordinate of Zeng Guofan rose to prominence and created his own army based on the Xiang model called the "chu army". He largely was responsible for quelling the Dungan revolts. So ye China was dealing with a lot. The 1860's in general were a turning point for China and Japan. Both nations gained new governing structures and resumed official contacts with another for the first time in over 2 centuries. For Japan the 1860's were part of what is called the Bakumatsu period, its this very messy point in their history where the leadership of Japan was frantically trying to figure out how to save themselves from colonization. Over in China the 1860's leads us into a period known as the Tongzhi restoration named after the new emperor. The Taiping by the early 1860's were on a steady decline and this gave the Qing leadership finally a moment to try and rebuild national strength. For Japan this period saw the Shogun being overthrown in 1868, and this also led to a bitter war called the Boshin war of 1868-1869. One of my personal favorite wars by the way, I have an episode on it over on my personal channel the Pacific War channel if you want the full rundown and a ton of Chimbara film clips to give it flavor. To brutally summarize, there was a call to end the Tokugawa shogunate, they even gave the Tokugawa family a great severance package, but the Shogun did not go down without a fight. Loyal hans and the Shinsengumi fought to retain the SHogunate while the hans of Satsuma/Choshu and Tosa rose up and defeated them. After the shogunate was dissolved Japan went into the Meiji restoration, which I also have a full episode on sorry for the plug ins over at my Youtube. I perhaps will get into it later, but to summarize the Meiji restoration is the greatest feat of Modernization I would say in human history. Its a hyper modernization process where Japan took the very best aspects of the outside world, while trying to retain important parts of their own culture to mold Japan into a modern state. They were extremely successful and as a result achieved the number one goal of the Meiji restoration, thwarting colonization. The Japanese had resolutely responded to the challenges from the west. As for China, with the death of Emperor Xianfeng in 1861 came the enthronement of Emperor Tongzhi at the age of 5. The Qing leadership were eager to restore the social order that had been severely damaged by the Taiping Rebellion, the Second Opium War and countless other rebellions. Xianfeng who died at the age of 30 was considered a failed emperor and I mean I would have to strongly agree. The guy spent all his time getting high, messing with his harem and fled the capital, never returning to it. China had been left in a disastrous state, but with the defeat of the Taiping came new leadership. That leadership was not Emperor Tongzhi, but rather a mix of Prince Gong and Empress Dowager Cixi. The Empress Dowager proved to be very skilled in managing court politics and quickly became the dominant power during the Tongzhi period and that power would last basically until her death in 1908. Prince Gong and other officials realized that to cope with the foreigners, new skills and new technology, especially that of shipping and weaponry would be required. But many Qing officials remained focused on cultivating the moral qualities that they considered essential for national vitality. Empress Dowager Cixi and many Qing officials believed that the essence of China's problems stemmed from the loss of a true confucian spirit. To address this problem, they sought to restore the importance of the imperial examination system and to eliminate the major corrupt issue that had emerged, that of buying and selling offices. As I had pointed out in the Opium War series, while in the past the integrity of the Qing dynasty and the other dynasties before it lay in officials being appointed by the merits after taking the imperial examination, starting around the 19th century this kinda fell apart. Officials were gradually purchasing their appointments and other high ranking officials began selling appointments, such as the Cohong merchants who basically inherited an incredible debt upon taking their role and were expected to extort funds back to their backers. The Qing dynasty was extremely corrupt and would just keep getting worse and worse. Cixi valued the importance of symbolism and undertook the building of the new summer palace after it was burnt down during the 2nd opium war. Her name would infamously be attached to the building of the summer palace which was unbelievably expensive. Many accusations and myths for that matter would involve Cixi utilizing funds for necessities of the empire instead for the palace. Now in 1861, China launched a self-strengthening movement. This focused upon training troops, building their ships and producing their own weaponry. Self-strengthening movements were not new to China, they had been seen countless times such as when the Ming began seeking foreign aid to fend off the Qing invasion all the way back in the 16th century. Now as we saw during the end half of the Taiping rebellion series, Zeng Guofan tackled self-strengthening head on. One of Zeng Guofans scholar colleagues was a man named Feng Guifen who had sent him a series of essays in 1861 highlighting the issue of self-strengthening. Feng spent considerable time focusing on studying warfare against the Taiping, specifically in the east around Shanghai. He was very impressed by the western military technology present there and would often write to Zeng Guofan about it. Likewise Zeng Guofan wrote in his diaries about self-strengthening and how western technology could be used to defend China's sovereignty and territorial integrity. Zeng Guofan's second hand man, Li Hongzhang likewise wrote of self strengthening during this time period and identified how Western power lied upon their technology and that China must learn to construct the same machines they did. He advocated first to apply this to the military, but gradually it must also apply to industry at large. As we saw during the Taiping Rebellion, there was a large struggle by both the Qing and Taiping to get their hands on western arms. Zeng Guofan purchased many western arms for his Xiang army and the Qing famously employed the EVA forces. By 1860 the majority of Qing leadership types including the scholar class were aware they had to move with the times and study western technology. By 1861 China officially began a self strengthening movement which can be seen to have three phases the first going from around 1861-1872, the second from 1872-1885 and the third from 1885-1895. The first phase focused on training of troops, building ships and the production of arms. With support from Prince Gong, Zeng Guofan, Li Hongzhang, Zuo Zongtang and other officials began major projects. Zeng Guofan established a arsenal in Shanghai, Li Hongzhang built one in Nanjing and Tianjin and Zuo Zongtang built a dockyard at Fuzhou. The arsenals were created with help from foreign advisors and administrators who also set up schools for the study of specific sciences like mechanics. The Qing government likewise created the "Tongwen Guan" "school of combined learning" in Beijing. The purpose of the school was initially to teach foreign languages, but it would gradually expand course curriculum towards astronomy, mathematics, chemistry, medicine and so on. The school would begin a transformative process and lead to the construction of similar schools. Li Hongzhang for example would go on to create language schools in shanghai, Guangzhou and Fuzhou pioneering western studies. Zeng, Li and Zuo initially used foreign workers to build up their factories and arms, until their own native chinese could learn the skills necessary to replicate the processes. At Li Hongzhangs Jiangnan arsenal they began producing Remington breech loading rifles. They began production in 1871 and by 1873 produced 4200 rifles. The rifles were expensive to make and inferior to actual remington arms, but it was a start. The naval dockyards at Fuzhou amongst others had a much more difficult job ahead of them. By the time they began producing ships, they turned out to be twice as expensive than simply purchasing ships from Britain. This led China to purchase more ships to meet the demand and by the 1880s China would be purchasing and creating more ships than Japan. Also in the 1880s Li Hongzhang established the CHina Merchants steam navigation company to help China create its own commercial shipping, something necessary for modern trade. Another big process of modernization in the 19th century was of course, trains. Chinese laborers famously traveled to north american to help build the great railroad systems in both the United States and Canada. This prompted Qing officials to advocate for the same thing in China, famous figures like Lin Zexu and Hong Rengang called for this. However the hardline conservative types, most notably Empress Dowager Cixi were very reluctant about steam engine technology and that of trains. There were various reasons they were wary over railroad development. In 1865 a British merchant built a 600 meter long railroad outside Xuanwu Gate in Beijing to demonstrate the technology to the Qing imperial court. The courts reactions was mixed, they were certainly impressed by its functionality, but also found it very noisy and strange, so they had it quickly dismantled. It would not be until 1876 when the first railroad was established known as the Woosung road. It went from the American concession in Shanghai to Woosung, present day Zhabei district. It was built by Jardine Matheson & co, the nefarious company that had sunk its teeth into China since the first days of opium smuggling began under it. The construction of the railroad was done without approval from the Qing government and thus would get dismantled the next year. Then in 1881 another railway was created, the Kaiping Tramway and Imperial Railways of north china. British engineer Claude William Kinder spearhead the project with the support of Li Hongzhang, creating a line from Tangshan to Xugezhuang. It would expand eventually to Tianjin in 1888 and Shanhaiguan by 1894. It got the name Guanneiwai railway and was met with multiple attempts by conservative Qing officials to be dismantled. Famously Empress Dowager Cixi fought against Li Hongzhang who persisted to tell her railways were necessary to advance China. She was against their construction because she believed their noise would disturb the emperors tombs. Li Hongzhang tried everything he could to get her on board and at one point she tried to compromise with him asking if the train carts could be horse drawn instead. Yet despite her rather hilarious attempts to thwart railway construction by the 1890s great railways were created to link up eastern and central China. Now over in Japan, after the Boshin War was over, Japan famously sent a mission out to the west known as the Iwakura Mission of 1871-1873. The purpose of the mission was to study the most important aspects of the west from the most powerful nations. The diplomats and students that went on the mission would become key leaders in the new Meiji government of Japan driving the restoration. China also performed its own Iwakura Mission, but it was not as large in scale, and those who went on it did not exactly end up being the great drivers of modernization like their Japanese counterparts were. Three years before the Iwakura mission, a Chinese delegation known as the Burlingame Mission arrived in the United States. The delegation extended its journey to Britain, France, Prussia, Russia and visited smaller nations briefly before returning to China in 1870. The purpose of the delegation was to investigate how westerners conducted diplomacy so the Qing could figure out a means to get rid of the unequal treaties. It was the very same reason the Japanese would send their Iwakura mission. Anson Burlingame, a US minister and envoy to Beijing was appointed by the Qing to lead the delegation. Around 30 members attended the mission, and in 1870 Burlingame died of Pneumonia forcing two of the Chinese delegates, Zhigang and Sun Jiagu to take the reins of it. They met with heads of state, visited factories, shipyards, mines, all things big industry. They got to see electricity, machinery many scientific wonders, but also the plight of their own people. Yes they got to witness the conditions Chinese workers went through on the railways in places like California. They saw Chinese going into mines and not coming back out. This prompted some delegates to ask the question "why do Christian missionaries who do such good work in China, bully Chinese workers in California?". The delegate Zhigang would publish some of these observations in a book giving very harrowing accounts. Another delegate, Zeng Jize, the eldest son of Zeng Guofan came back with extremely positive opinions of everything he saw in the west and was met with harsh criticism from conservative officials for being too sympathetic towards foreign customs. Li Hongzhang and other officials however grabbed the delegates when they got back to China, extremely eager to hear all about what they had seen. Li Hongzhang was particularly interested in the political and economic aspects of the west. Empress Dowager Cixi personally met with some delegates when they got back asking questions about things happening aboard. Even the conservative types were gravely concerned with how things were moving in the west. But the end result did not lead to a Meiji restoration. While Japanese leaders were investing in industry and infrastructure, Chinese leaders were looking to restore their national spirit instead. Its hard to blame the Qing leaders, unlike Japan who largely avoided conflict with the west, though there were a few fights in Satsuma against the British for example, well the Qing was like an old boxer who just got KO'd a few times too many. The opium wars and internal rebellions had destroyed the Chinese public's faith in their government, the fabric of the mandate of heaven was unraveling. So instead of putting all the money into industry, many projects were enacted to re-envigorate the grandeur of the Qing.As I had said, the Empress Dowager Cixi famously invested incredible sums of money to renovate the Summer Palace in Beijing. Infamously she took funds intended for modernizing the navy and used them to build a marble boat pavilion at the summer palace. Li Hongzhang believed in addition to the factories, arsenals and shipyards, China needed to update its school system and wanted to send students abroad just like Japan was doing. He also advocated that the civil service exams should offer technical knowledge alongside the cultural knowledge and he was met with large scale protest. By 1885 conservatives in Beijing began cracking down on the modernization. So while Chinese students stayed for the most part in China, Japan sent countless aboard to learn everything they could from the west. Now the Iwakura mission that went to the west also came to China on its way back. After witnessing 15 nations and all their wonders, they came to Shanghai where they spent 3 days. They were hosted by the Shanghai official Chen Fuxun and they were shocked by what they saw in the city. That shock was at the lack of change, the travelers who had grown up in a world where China was Big Brother were shocked that big brother seemed to have fallen behind. Kume Kunitake, the chief chronicler of the voyage said this of his first impressions of Shanghai "There are no sewers, and urine flows along the streets. Amid all this, the inhabitants seem quite unconcerned." Believing that the Japanese were harboring illusions about Chinese sophistication based on the past, he tried to correct the view of his countrymen who "regarded every Chinese to be a refined gentleman well versed in literature and the arts. Thus [in Japan] the custom still persists of holding any curios, calligraphy, paintings, poetry or literature from China in high esteem. . . . Under the Qing dynasty, learning has been stagnant in China." The members of the Iwakura mission had all studied history and knew of the great Tang dynasty and the greatest of China, but now in 1873 they thought there was very little to learn from her anymore. They shared a kinship with China, wished she could resist the western encroachments and remain a great civilization, but it looked to them China had no great leadership. China, Japan and even Korea had young emperors, but only Emperor Meiji would acquire real authority. In China emperor Tongzhi took the throne at 5, but it was Cixi who really ran the show. In Korea Emperor Gojong took the throne at the age of 12 in 1864, but his father Taewongun really held the power. Both Gojong and Tongzhi would be hampered by their relatives and isolated from advisors who might educate them on western advances. Emperor Meiji meanwhile was tutored by senior advisers starting in 1868 preparing him for his role in leadership. Lack of leadership led to a lack of ability to reign in certain aspects of modernization necessary for progress. In Japan key individuals working with Emperor Meiji grabbed the reigns of foreign affairs gradually dismantling the unequal treaties the west had forced upon Japan. The key individual in China who would undertake foreign affairs was Li Hongzhang who was for the most part doing everything on his own initiative and had to fight off conservatives. In Japan, foreign affairs specialists emerged, but this was not the case in China. Even emperor Meiji himself took an interest to learn about foreign affairs. Japan hired many western specialists in all aspects of governmental bureaucracy to help train the Japanese. When Chinese officials went to Japan in 1877 to set up a legation, they were astonished to find the Japanese bureaucracy for foreign affairs, unlike that in China had completely adopted European procedures and protocols. One of the Iwakura missions delegates was a man named Ito Hirobumi and he would serve in the foreign office before becoming prime minister in 1885. He studied in England, learning quickly that Japan was weaker than her and that Japan needed to learn from her to become strong. With his ability to speak english, Ito became the key man responsible for negotiations with other nations. He was to be Li Hongzhangs Japanese counterpart, and helped negotiate the Treaty of Tianjin in 1858 with Li. Both men would have a special relationship that was long lasting. The first time Chinese and Japanese officials met after two centuries was when the Senzaimaru arrived in Shanghai in 1862. The officials were strangers without precedents, they had no idea how to move forward. The Japanese members of the first Senzaimaru trip were carefully selected for their ability not only to learn about potential markets for Japanese goods, but also to investigate the political situation so Japan could open formal relations with China. 51 Japanese took part on the mission which lasted 2 months. The highest Chinese official in Shanghai, was our old friend Wu Xu. Since no Chinese were in Japan prior to notify about the mission, they literally just showed up to Shanghai and this certainly perplexed Wu Xu as to what he should do. Wu Xu reported the delegations arrival to Beijing but received a reply with no clear directions, thus he acted with caution. The Dutch helped the two sides speak and assured Wu Xu that the Japanese were reliable traders and this prompted Wu Xu to accept selling their goods. The Japanese brought things they already knew the Chinese market most likely desired, sea products, lacquerware, paper fans, nothing too fancy. Trade was slow, no treaties or relations were established, but the Japanese gathered great intelligence on the status of the Qing dynasty. They had not yet recovered from the Taiping Rebellion, to the Japanese China looked like chaos. They were shocked by the poverty, filth, the lack of hygiene. They were disappointed to find what their ancestors considered the greatest civilization seemed to be in rubles. They were outraged to find out how mistreated the Chinese were at the hands of westerners. They thought westerners extremely arrogant, mistreating Chinese like slaves in their own country it was so shameful. They worried what the British and French had done to the Chinese during the Opium Wars might come to Japan and indeed the British made a minor attack in Satsuma in 1863 and Choshu in 1864 raising concerns. I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me. China and Japan went through their own processes of modernization, which were dramatically different to say the least. Li Hongzhang was emerging at the forefront and he desperately was trying to help China modernize, but he was but one man amongst many.

Last time we spoke Cholera spread like a plague taking countless lives on either side of the conflict. The loss of so much life hurt the Xiang armies positions, and Zeng Guofan worried dearly for the life of his brother fighting at Yuhaitai. Zeng Guofan desperately tossed any men he could to help his brother and it proved effective as Li Xiucheng was forced to flee for the safety of Nanjing's walls. The EVA force lost Ward and gained Chinese Gordon as its leader. But it was to be a short lived command as Gordon and the British became outraged with their allies atrocities and slights against them and thus took back on the stance of neutrality. Yuhaitai was taken and now Nanjing was under siege by the Xiang army, it was only a matter of time for the Taiping to finally fall. #35 This episode is The Taiping Rebellion part 12: The Fall of the Heavenly Kingdom Welcome to the Fall and Rise of China Podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about the history of Asia? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on history of asia and much more so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel where I cover the history of China and Japan from the 19th century until the end of the Pacific War. The populace of Nanjing were terrified, with only two gates left open, provisions were becoming very limited and there was almost no way to get out. Roughly 30,000 people were inside the city, 10,000 of which were soldiers. After the fall of Suzhou to Li Hongzhang in December, Li Xiucheng returned to Nanjing pleading with the heavenly king, to simply abandon Nanjing and take the entire movement into Jiangxi province. The heavenly king was livid, saying Li Xiucheng lacked faith in the cause. Without much choice, Li Xiucheng began to prepare the city for a bitter siege. Meanwhile the heavenly king was becoming more and more paranoid and angry. His anger led him to cruelty and he began punishing the people in horrifying ways. For example the new crime of communicating with those outside the walls of the city saw people pounded to death between rocks or flayed alive in public. The people would have fled the city, but they knew the fate of what happened to those who did, as was the case when Anqing fell. By late December they heard the rumors about the fate of Suzhou thus sealing their fate to Nanjing. Zeng Guofan sent reports to his brother in spring of 1864 not to even let women and children escape the city, so their fear was well founded. Zeng Guofan justified this by stating, to force the Taiping to support the entire population within the city would accelerate their starvation. With Chen Yucheng dead, Li Xiucheng spread too thinly, Hong Rengan found himself yet again thrust into the role of military commander. Hong Xiuquan told his cousin he had to go out of the city to rally troops from nearby territories to help relieve Nanjing. But it was not possible to head north or west, nor was it possible to traverse the river. Hong Rengan set out the day after Christmas of 1863. His first destination was Danyang around 50 miles east of Nanjing which was commanded by an uncle to the late Chen Yucheng. The commander told Hong Rengan he could not spare any troops to help Nanjing, so Hong Rengan continued on to Changzhou. While enroute he found out Li Hongzhang had taken the city, forcing him to winter in Danyang. When spring came, he took his force south into Zhejiang, where Hangzhou was still holding out. Back in 1861 when Hong Rengan went out to get recruits, the work was much easier. This was no longer the case, in the cities of Danyang and Huzhou he found people too afraid to leave their garrisons to go back to Nanjing. Meanwhile the Xiang army was exponentially growing, by 1864 Zeng Guofan had 120,000 troops, Zeng Guoquan 50,000, another 30,000 garrisoned Anhui, 13,000 moved around with Bao Chao and 10,000 were in the area between Anhui and Suzhou. Li Hongzhang's Anhui army followed up its conquest of Suzhou by marching upon Nanjing from the east. They seized Changzhou and Wuxi with ease as Zuo Zongtang battled Taiping in Zhejiang province. All these armies would eventually converge upon Nanjing. Zeng Guoquan's forces managed to take the Fortress of Heaven on the Dragon's shoulder, pitting it against the Fortress of Earth. With the vantage point upon Dragon's shoulder the Xiang forces were able to create stockade camps at the Shence Gate and eastern Taiping Gate, thus cutting off the city completely. By the end of March, Hangzhou fell to Zuo Zongtang forcing its survivors to flee to Huzhou seeking refuge with Hong Rengan. With the loss of both Suzhou and Hangzhou, the Taiping no longer held any significant cities in the east. There were no more avenues for rescue for the Taiping capital, all that was left was a siege. Zeng Guoquan's siege army was running dry on provisions, the devastation of the countryside was hitting his men as bad as it was the Taiping. Even though they held the Yangtze, by spring of 1864 there was no longer much food coming from it. His men ate rice gruel and basically nothing else. He confided to his secretary, "If we don't break this city in a month, our whole army is going to crumble to pieces." Within Nanjing the garrisons first crop of wheat was breaking the surface in april. Zeng Guofans men atop forts and mountain lookouts could see within the city the crops growing with bitterness. They held into the early summer, but Beijing's patience was wearing thin and so were their stomachs. Zeng Guoquan wanted the glory of taking Nanjing for himself, so he resisted the advice of Li Hongzhang to come supplement his forces. Zeng Guofan was torn by this, he understood his brothers ambition, but it was terribly unwise. He wrote to his brother "Why must you have sole credit for conquering Nanjing? Why should one person be the most famous under heaven?" Li Hongzhang realized the family predicament and offered to save face for the Zengs by forming an excuse that he was unable to come help after all. Zeng Guoquans siege had been enlarged, they built a 3 mile road for supplies through a bog, connecting the river to Yuhuatai. While on the surface it looked like the Xiang forces were loafing around, this was far from the truth, the real siege work was being done under the earth. They did not have large enough cannons to break the walls of Nanjing, so they had to tunnel and mine, the good old fashion way as they say. They would even have to tunnel under moats some 90 feet underground. Each tunnel was made hauling out dirt and rock by hand, but the spotters in Nanjing were always watching. A cool fact I did not know before writing this series, when sappers begin tunneling for long periods of time, the grass on the ground level above them turns brown leaving a kind of path the tunnellers are taking towards a wall. Spotters looked for this and for ventilation holes, after all if you are digging far you have to get air into the work space. Inside Nanjing Taiping sappers dug their own counter tunnels to thwart mines. They often did this by exploding their own mines, flushing gas into the tunnels or flooding them with boiling water or sewage. Imagine dying in a tunnel full of sewage, horrid. At one point a Xiang miner exploded a mine close enough to a wall, but the explosion failed to make a breach and the Taiping quickly went to work building more parts to the wall near it. By June, the Xiang had mines exploded up in over 30 areas of the walls, but their results were nothing less that 4000 dead sappers. Then on July 3rd, after they captured the Fortress of Earth at the base of the Dragon's shoulder they had a vantage point so close to part of Nanjing's walls they could fire cannons over. Throughout the night and day they fired cannons into part of Nanjing thwarting the Taiping tunnelers while their own worked. The most ambitious tunnel yet was dug, around 70 yards out, digging at a rate of 15 feet per day. It lead to a part of Nanjing's walls 50 feet thick. The Taiping knew what was coming, but the bombardment never ceased, and even the noise from the cannons prevented spotters from figuring out precisely where the tunnel was. By the 15th of July Li Xiucheng was forced to launch a night sortie to try and attack the tunnel opening, but the Xiang army forced them right back into the city. Three days later the tunnel had just about reached its target for the explosives. Zeng Guoquan was impatient, pressured by Beijing, so he ordered his men to pack 6000 cloth sacks under the wall containing over 20 tons of gunpowder. The explosion went off at noon on the 19th, as 400 hand picked veterans crouching hiding on the ground to launch themselves through the breach. The explosive experts lit the fuse and waited, 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 20, 30 the fuse took that long to travel the tunnel. Then a tremendous blast was heard forming a convulsion sending part of the wall to go up blasting outwards and skyward raining parts of the rubble everywhere killing tons of the 400 men hiding on the ground. When the smoke cleared, a 200 foot wide breach could be seen. The Xiang forces sounded the drums and stormed down the Dragon's shoulder towards the breach screaming. The clambering over dead bodies and rumble surging forward, many of them holding maps of the inner city. The first troops to breach the hole specifically dodged the defenders rushing further into the city with maps in hand as they had the specific mission to rush to the palace of the Heavenly King to kill the self proclaimed brother of jesus. But Li Xiucheng beat them to their mission and he spirited away Hong Xiuquans son, before they could capture the would-be future monarch. When the Xiang troops entered the palace they found nothing but an eerie silence. Hong Xiuquan the heavenly king, the self proclaimed brother of Jesus was already dead. Going back in time, to the spring of 1864, Li Xiucheng said to the heavenly king "There is no food in the whole city and many men and women are dying. I request a directive as to what should be done to put the people's mind at ease." Starvation was hitting the people, but the heavenly king did not seem to pay any notice. Hong Xiuquan began to talk to Li Xiucheng about the 16th chapter of Exodus, how god would preserve the Taiping faithful, just as he preserved the children of Israel for 40 years as they wandered the desert, by scattering manna on the ground amidst the dew each morning. Beginning in 1862, Hong Xiuquan had begun ordering his subjects to emulate the lives of the israelites, storing 10 bushels of manna every year to see them through their times of trouble. What exactly manna is, hard to say, if you read the bible it says it was a small, white flower with the scent of coriander that tasted like honey. The Chinese Taiping bible describes it as "Tianlu and Ganlu" which means sweetened dew. Hong Xiuquan said to Li Xiucheng "everyone in the city should eat manna. This will keep them alive" he then issued an order "Bring some here, and after preparing it I shall partake of some first." Li Xiucheng states "the Sovereign himself, in the open spaces of his palace, collected all sorts of weeds, which he made into a lump and sent out of the palace, demanding that everyone do likewise, without defaulting. He issued an edict ordering the people to act accordingly and everyone would have enough to eat." Thus Hong Xiuquan began to eat the weeds he called manna within his palace. In April of 1864 he began to fall ill with his 50th year of life. He seems to get better in may, but then becomes sick again. The cause of his illness is not understood, but Li Xiucheng account states "its from him eating manna, and when this man was ill he would not take remedies". Hong Rengan account states "a lingering illness of 20 days took him". Tiangui Fu the son of Hong Xiuquan said "my father succumbed to sickness". On May 30th, Hong Xiuquan or one of his aides announces it is time for the Heavenly king to go to Heaven where he will request the Heavenly father and Heavenly Elder brother to send a celestial army to defend Nanjing. There is no grand funeral for the heavenly king. On June 1st he is wrapped in a shroud of yellow silk by his palace women and buried in the bare ground, which was the regular service for the Taiping. No coffins were necessary, because he was expected to rise soon to go to heaven. Hong Xiuquan had ordered coffins to be abandoned prior and that the word "death" to be taboo, because they were all going to ascend to heaven. Five days after his death, his son Tiangui Fu takes his fathers throne. While the Qing forces are busy sieging the city, for 6 weeks the Young monarch reigns. He is basically at the mercy of Li Xiucheng and Hong Rengan. Li Xiucheng gives this account "After the Young Sovereign came to the throne,there was no grain for the soldiers, and there was chaos in the armies. . . . The Sovereign was young and had no ability to make decisions, no one, civil or military, in the capital, could think of a solution." When the explosion went off on July 19th and the slaughter and chaos began within the city, Tiangui Fu stood bewildered in his palace beside his 4 wives. They tried to grab him, to stop him from fleeing, but he broke away from them and ran into the crowds with his 2 younger brothers heading for Li Xiuchengs palace. They grabbed the nearest horses and their bodyguards clustered around them. During the chaos they try to escape through the different gates in turn, each time turned back. Li Xiucheng eventually finds the royal group and whisks them to a safe location. They hide for some time in an abandoned temple on the western side of the city, perched atop a hill from which they can see the Qing forces scattering into the city. The Young monarch and his comrade put on Hunanese clothing as a disguise, something that had been prepared weeks before. They seize the cover of darkness as the Xiang army are busy raping and plundering the city. Li Xiucheng bids a tearful farewell to the Young monarch as he and his small party charge through the breach Zeng Guoquans sappers made, with the sun against their backs they vanish. The horse of Li Xiucheng collapses and his guard leaves without him. Dazed and confused, Li Xiucheng climbs back to the abandoned temple on the hill. He wakes up to find peasants robbing him of his valuables, when he is left with nothing to take, they grab him and bring him to Zeng Guoquans forces. No one knows where the Young monarch is, but Zeng Guoquan has Li Xiucheng in his hands and interrogates him. Without the leadership of Li Xiucheng the Taiping forces might linger on in the rest of the country to form some small kingdom, but they would never be able again to become a large movement. With the capture of Li Xiucheng, the Taiping rebellion was pretty much dead. Li Xiucheng writes a very lengthy confession before his execution. Before his death he begs the Qing officials to stop the slaughter of Nanjing, to spare the old Taiping veterans who had marched from Guangxi and Guangdong, to give them permission to go back home. "engage in some trade. If you are willing to spare them, everyone will hear of it, and everyone will be willing to submit." He even provides his captors with some advice, to buy the best cannons from the foreigners, alongside efficient gun carriages and other weapons, so that the best Chinese craftsmen could reverse engineer them and teach the people of china how to make their own. "one craftsman can teach ten, ten can teach a hundred and everyone in our country will know. . . . To fight with the foreign devils the first thing is to buy cannon and get prepared early. It is certain that there will be a war with them." "Our Heavenly Kingdom is finished . . . and this is because the former Heavenly King's span was ended. The fate of the people was hard, such a hard fate!" Li Xiucheng speaks to his captors believing the Young Monarch is already dead, but Tiangui Fu was safe accompanied by a few hundred loyal soldiers. Tiangui Fu and his small force circle the shore of Lake Tai, fleeing for Huzhou where Hong Rengan commands a small Taiping garrison. Yet before talking about that I want to talk about the horrors that befall Nanjing. The Xiang army's discipline broke at Nanjing, they were starving when they stormed the great city, filling their stomachs for the first time with food and the achievement of their ultimate goal, ending the war. After bitter years of campaigning, far away from their homelands, they began to break ranks and laid waste to the capital in an orgy of rape and plunder. Zeng Guofan issues proclamations forbidding troops from murdering civilians, rape of looting, but his commanders ignore this. The bloody occupation of Nanjing sees the fanatical death of many Taiping, refusing to surrender who fight to the bitter end. As Zeng Guofan reported to Beijing "On the 17th and 18th, Tseng Liang-Tso and others searched through the city for any rebels they could find, and in three days killed over 100,000 men. THe Ch'in-huai creek was filled with bodies. Half of the false wangs, chief generals, heavenly generals, and other heads were killed in battle, and the other half either drowned themselves in the dikes and ditches or else burned themselves. The whole of them numbered 3000 men. The fire in the city raged for 3 days and nights…Not one of the 100,000 rebels in Nanjing surrendered themselves when the city was taken but in many cases gathered together and burned themselves and passed away without repentance. Such a formidable band of rebels has been rarely known from ancient times to present". The slaughter of Nanjing was the combination of fanaticism from the Taiping and the policy of Zeng Guofan who was determined that the surrender from the veterans Guangxi/Guangdong Taiping was not to be accepted. His goal was the extermination of the whole movement, via the death of its core leadership. He wanted no residue of any successors to try and carry on the Taiping ideology. He performed a ruthless extermination, thus forcing many of the Taiping to fight to the very end or commit mass suicide. Zeng Guoquan's aides reported to him that mass looting, murder and rapes were occuring. Soldiers could be seen running off with gold, silver, furs, jade and any other valuables. At first soldiers burned palaces, but then they moved onto homes, eventually the entire city was aflame. Only when a heavy rainstorm occurred on July 25th did the fires go out. On the 26th, Zeng Guoquans secretary entered the city and was overwhelmed at the sight. All the male Taiping still alive were being used by the Xiang soldiers to carry loot or dig up buried treasure. It seemed like many of them were being set free to flee the city after, but many were also slaughtered after. Countless, elderly who could not perform labor were killed outright. Countless children lay dead in the streets alongside the old, as the secretary wrote in his diary "Children and toddlers, some not even two years old, had been hacked up or run through just for sport. There wasn't a single women left in the city under 40 years old. Sometimes they had ten or twelve cuts on them, sometimes several times that. The sound of their weeping and moaning carried into the distance all around." A female Taiping survivor named Huang Shuhua was 16 years of age during the capture of Nanjing. She had this to say about when the soldiers came. "They killed my two older brothers in the courtyard, then they went searching through the rooms of the house. One of the strong ones captured me and carried me out. My little brother tugged on his clothing, my mother threw herself down before him, weeping. He shouted angrily, 'All rebel followers will be killed, no pardons—those are the general's orders!' Then he murdered my mother and my little brother. My eldest brother's wife came out, and he killed her too. Then he dragged me away, so I don't know what became of my other elder brother's wife. I was grief-stricken, sobbing and cursing at him, begging him to kill me quickly. But he only laughed at me. 'You, I love,' he said. 'You, I will not kill.' " The soldier tied her up and took her aboard a boat back to his home in Hunan. The soldier was from the home county of Zeng Guofan, Xiangxiang. She would spend the rest of her life as the wife of a man who had murdered her entire family. She wrote down her story on two slips of paper one evening while traveling and when at an Inn she secretly slid the papers to someone at the inn before hanging herself. Zeng Guofan took possession of Nanjing, arriving from Anqing on July 28th, 9 days after his brother's forces breached its walls. Apparently officers from his brothers forces took him around the city in a sedan chair, telling him tales of the battles fought and won, showing him the scenes of the destruction. Poetry, plays, banquettes, song and wine, celebrating was made by the victors. Soon honors would be poured over said victors from Beijing once Zeng Guofan sent news of the fall of the Taiping capital. Zeng Guofan sent inflated numbers of Taiping killed, as you may have noticed when I read those quotes, there was absolutely not 100,000 dead in Nanjing. He was inflating the glory of his family, that of his armies prowess, and he masking over the rape and plundering of the second capital of the dynasty. He was very careful with what information got out. When he came face to face with Li Xiucheng, he had direct orders from Beijing to send the man alive back to Beijing, instead he executed him where he was making sure to overlook the interrogation process himself so he could make sure the writing of Li Xiucheng was exactly the way he wanted it. Now Hong Rengan was in Huzhou during the downfall of Nanjing, helplessly trying to find help for the capital. When news came that Nanjing had fallen and Li Xiucheng was dead, Hong Rengan found himself in possession of the Young monarch who fled to Huzhou for safety. At this time Huzhou was being attacked by Li Hongzhang's Anhui army and remnants of the EVA force. Not the Ever victorious army, no this was the Ever triumphant army. Basically the remnants of the EVA force were taken by some French officers who continued to work alongside the Qing. The roads to leading to Huzhou were strewn with corpses and severed heads to ward off the Qing/Anhui/EVA forces. The coalitionary forces are too much for the defenders of Huzhou who at the end of August of 1864 flee south. Hong Rengan intends to take the Young Monarch to Guangdong where the Taiping movement started. They rode for 3 months making it to the Meiling Pass, searching for safety. Their escapade left them in a mountainous country 15 miles northeast of a town called Stone Wall where they were finally attacked. Qing soldiers came upon them during the night before the Taiping loyalists could even mount their horses. Hong Rengan fled alone on foot wilding running through a forest where he is captured on October 9th. He is interrogated by the local Qing officials, where he tells them "The heavenly King was nine years older than I and gifted with extraordinary powers of intelligence. A glance at anything was all that was required to impress the subject on his memory. The uprising at Thistle mounted undoubted evidence of the display of divine power throughout those years,and despite the ultimate collapse of the Taiping movement, among those who have enjoyed the smiles of fortune for the longest time the Heavenly King stands pre-eminently forward,". Hong Rengang is executed in Jiangxi's capital of Nanchang on November 23rd. As for the Young Monarch, Tiangui Fu, he manages to slip away with 10 followers. His band crosses a small bridge and climbs a nearby hill to hide, but they are discovered by their Qing pursuers. Somehow Tiangui Fu manages to evade them, hiding out in the hills, afraid and alone. He shaves off his long hair and finds work with a local farmer pretending to be a man named Zhang from Hubei. After the harvest for that year, he travels onwards but is finally caught and arrested on October 25th by a Qing patrol. He throws himself at the mercy of the state, confessing "The old Heavenly King told me to study religious books, and would not allow me to study ancient books, which he said were all demonic. I managed, however, to read secretly thirty or more volumes, and still retain some recollection of their subjects and contents. The conquest of the empire was the ambition of the old Heavenly King, and I had no part in it." He tells his captors if they release him, he will study the Confucian classics and try to gain the lowest degree, that of Licentiate. Instead the Young Monarch is executed on November 18th, a week before his 15th birthday. The Heavenly King is dead, the Young Monarch is dead, all the kings, north, south, east, west, flank, shield, loyal, brave and countless others are all dead. The day Zeng Guofan took control of Nanjing was a triumph, not for the Qing dynasty but for him. He was at that moment the most powerful man in all of China. His Xiang army was dominant, he was that of a military dictator controlling the vast eastern and central parts of China. He was not fully under the Qing courts control, in fact the Qing relied upon him almost entirely to retain their own control. Until the Taiping menace was defeated, the Qing court watching his efforts without dread, once it was done that all changed. Rumors spread like wildfire, some said Zeng Guoquan told his brother the time was right to abandon the crumbling Qing dynasty and to start a new dynasty from his base in Nanjing. But Zeng Guofan did not do this. In truth, by the time Nanjing was under its last siege, Zeng Guofan began a process for disbanding his grand Xiang army and to relinquish his power. He sought to hold onto his positions as governor general over Anhui, Jiangsu and Jiangxi, and help rebuild Nanjing to its former glory. Many watched expected him to take his army and march upon Beijing, to rid China of the Manchu, but he sent his soldiers home. And thus Zeng Guofan remained a loyal subject, to a child emperor and the Empress Dowager Cixi. If you are bewildered by this, you are most definitely not alone, countless historians and contemporary figures were confused. Zeng Guofan's ruthlessness and brilliance led him to possess basically unlimited power. All of his top ranking commanders were people he knew, they all had strong personal ties to him, their loyalty was set in stone. What could have possibly stopped him from taking over China? Well, according to his closest family members and friends, they say Zeng Guofan was a man wrecked by anxiety and depression. He was reluctant from the very beginning to be given command, quite uncertain of himself. He was a true scholar and sought nothing but to go back to his books and to lead a life of moral scholarship. He was deeply influenced by Confucian beliefs, but many also think he was influenced by the horrible levels of corruption, greed and incompetence he saw within the Qing bureaucracy. He was never heard to question the legitimacy of the Emperor, and being very devout to Confucianism, he probably really believed in the mandate of heaven. There are also those who point out, to such a brilliant mind, was ruling China a desirable thing? He say how tumultuous the era they lived in was, was it a good era to rule over? Perhaps his uncertainty about himself, left him thinking he could not live up to the task. Regardless, the Xiang army demobilized in August of 1864, less than a month after the fall of Nanjing. In May he gave a notice for sick leave, which as he told his brother was just an excuse to go into hiding after the war was done. He wanted to escape all of his critics who were growing suspicious of his power. He recommended his brother should do the same, but it seems Zeng Guoquan resented this advice. Zeng Guoquan apparently was beginning to expand his economic powers and Zeng Guofan had this to write to his brother, "Military commanders who have usurped fiscal power have never brought anything but evil to the country and harm to their own families. Even if you, my brother, are a complete idiot, surely you cannot be ignorant that you have to distance yourself from power to avoid being slandered." Well the Qing court went to work on Zeng Guoquan and his subordinates accusing them of corruption and usurpation. Likewise they hounded Zeng Guofan by proxy, and for the 8 years left of his life they tormented him, not allowing him to retire or pause from duties. Zeng Guofan's dreams of returning to scholarship, his homeland, a quiet life, would never come to be. In 1867 he wrote on the issue of his looming death "I would be happier there, than I am in this world". The estimates on the death toll of the Taiping Rebellion are simply impossible to gauge fully. If you go to wikipedia, or pick up any book they all fall on 20-30 million people. There were no reliable censuses at the time, the estimates are based mostly upon demographic projections on what the Chinese population should otherwise have been in later generations. In an American study performed in 1969, by the year of 1913, almost 50 years after the fall of Nanjing, China's population had yet to recover to its pre 1850 levels. In 1999 it is estimated the provinces hardest hit by the Taiping Rebellion, Anhui, Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Hubei and Jiangxi suffered a population loss of around 87 million people between 1851-1864. Around 57 million of them dead from war, the rest never born due to decreased birthrates. The projection for the full scale of the war in all provinces is around 70 million dead with a total loss for the population at 100 million. As you might imagine there is a large amount of skepticism over such unbelievable numbers. Regardless the scars of the event were most definitely felt for decades as attested by countless travelers and inhabitants of China. It was frankly one of if not the deadliest civil war in human history. What is rather incredible is the fact the Qing dynasty did not fall then. Don't get me wrong, it was a mortal wound, but the Qing dynasty would limp on for another 5 decades. Did the Qing dynasty win the war? Not entirely, its safer to say the efforts of Zeng Guofan, foreign intervention and the Qing defeated the Taiping movement. The Qing dynasty was basically put on life support by Zeng Guofan and foreign interests if you really think about it. The Opium wars linked the Qing dynasty to nations like Britain and France who had financial stakes in China and wanted the devil they knew rather than the Jesus they didn't to ensure the flow of unequal trade, see what I did there? Zeng Guofan, was simply in my opinion a strong conservative. I told you bits and pieces about his reluctance to work with foreigners and utilize their technology. He came around to it all of course, but he did so gradually and begrudgingly, there are countless tales of him butting heads over the issue. That issue being modernization, something his successor Li Hongzhang will become a champion of might I add. Zeng Guofan was devout to Confucianism and traditions, honestly he is a large part as to why the Taiping were unable to destroy much of Chinese culture. Zeng Guofan would be villainized by many as a traitor to his race, someone who held up the Manchu. In the end China suffered immensely, this was after all occurring during the century of humiliation. I will end with this to say about the intertwining years of the Second Opium War and the Taiping Rebellion. These years were a time of chaos and change for Asia as a whole. China would end up slowly moving towards modernization, but another nation would take the opposite route and usher in hyper modernization. The balance of power in Asia was turning, leaving more room for conflict on an unprecedented scale. I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me. Sheesh, 12 parts my god, would you believe it if I told you there was a lot more left out? Remember there were other rebellions like the Nian and Dungan, and perhaps given a audience desire I might talk about those as well.