Francis Garnier - Defeat and Death

Defeat and Death

On 21 December 1873 Liu Yongfu and around 600 Black Flags (French: pavillons noirs, drapeaux noirs), marching beneath an enormous black banner, approached the west gate of Hanoi. A large Vietnamese army followed in their wake. Garnier began shelling the Black Flags with a field piece mounted above the gate, and when they began to fall back led a party of 18 French marine infantrymen out of the city to chase them away. The attack failed. Garnier, leading three men uphill in a bayonet attack on a party of Black Flags, was stabbed and hacked to death by several Black Flag soldiers after stumbling in a watercourse. The youthful enseigne de vaisseau Adrien-Paul Balny d’Avricourt led an equally small column out of the citadel to support Garnier, but was also killed at the head of his men. Three French soldiers were also killed in these sorties, and the others fled back to the citadel after their officers fell.

Colonel Thomazi, the historian of French Indochina, gave the following detailed description of Garnier's last moments:

At midday on 21 December he was in conference with the ambassadors when an interpreter ran up, announcing that bands of Black Flags were attacking the town by the western gate. He immediately hurried to the spot, but some of his men had got there before him, and their fire had sufficed to force the bandits to retreat behind the bamboo hedges. A 40-millimetre gun arrived at this moment. Garnier rallied a dozen men, three of whom dragged this small cannon, and left the town at a run to pursue the enemy. As the gun could not move quickly enough across the fields, he left it behind with its gunners. He then divided the nine men who remained with him into three groups. The first two groups moved off to the left and the right, to rejoin one another further on, while he marched in the middle, followed only by two men. One and a half kilometres from the town he found himself in front of a dyke, and slipped and fell while trying to cross it. Some Black Flags hidden behind the dyke ran out, while others opened fire. At this moment the two men who were accompanying Garnier were 100 metres behind him. One of them was killed by a bullet and the other wounded. Garnier cried, 'To me, brave boys, and we'll give them a thrashing!' He then fired the six rounds from his revolver in an attempt to rescue himself, but the bandits surrounded him, pierced him with thrusts of sabres and lances, cut off his head, odiously mutilated his corpse, and ran away. The two other groups, rushing up to the sound of the shooting, were only able to recover his bloodied corpse and bring it back to Hanoi.

Garnier's death effectively ended the first French adventure in Tonkin. The French government disavowed Garnier's adventure and hastened to conclude a peace settlement with the Vietnamese, abandoning most of its claims in Tonkin.