Cochinchina Campaign (sep 1, 1858 – jun 5, 1862)
Description:
The French believed that the Vietnamese emperor owed them a favor for the help French troops had given them in 1802 against their Tây Sơn enemies, but it soon became clear that the Vietnamese felt no debt to France. But the French were not prepared to be brushed off quite so easily and used religious persecution created a reason for intervention.
At the time there were perhaps 300,000 Catholic converts in Annam and Tonkin, most of the priests were either French or Spanish. Most Vietnamese disliked the sizable Christian community. The French, conversely, began to feel responsible for their safety. Harassment of the Christians eventually provided France with a respectable pretext for attacking Vietnam.
The tension built up gradually. In the 1840s, persecution of Catholic missionaries in Vietnam evoked only unofficial French reprisals. In 1857, the Vietnamese executed two Spanish Catholic missionaries. This was neither the first nor the last such incident, and on previous occasions the French government had overlooked such provocations. But this time, it coincided with the Second Opium War.
France and Britain had just dispatched a joint military expedition to the Far East to chastise China, with the result that the French had troops on hand with which to intervene in Vietnam. In September, a joint French-Spanish expedition landed at Tourane and captured the town.
The allies expected an easy victory, but the war did not at first go as planned. The Vietnamese Christians did not rise in support of the French, Vietnamese resistance was more stubborn than had been expected, and the French and Spanish found themselves besieged in Tourane.
However over the course of the next four years, the French and Spanish made a slow, yet steady, advance through Vietnam. Seizing their capital in 1862.
By the end the French were not in a merciful mood, what had begun as a minor punitive expedition had turned into a long, bitter and costly war. It was unthinkable that France should emerge from this struggle empty-handed, and so the Treaty of Saigon was signed.
This treaty required that;
1. Vietnam permit the Catholic faith to be preached and practiced freely within its territory
2. Vietnam cede the provinces of Biên Hòa, Gia Định and Định Tường and the island of Poulo Condore to France as the Colony of Cochinchina.
3. Vietnam allow the French to trade and travel freely along the Mekong River
4. Vietnam open Tourane, Quảng Yên and Ba Lac (at the mouth of the Red River) as trading ports
5. Vietnam pay an indemnity of 1 million dollars to France and Spain over a ten-year period.
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