Pescadores Campaign

The Pescadores Campaign in late March 1885 was one of the last campaigns of the Sino-French War (August 1884–April 1885). Admiral Amédée Courbet, with part of the French Far East Squadron, bombarded the Chinese coastal defences around the principal town of Makung (Magong, 馬公) on Peng-hu Island and landed a battalion of marine infantry which routed the Chinese defenders and occupied Makung. The Pescadores were occupied by the French until July 1885 and Admiral Courbet, by then a national hero in France, died aboard his flagship "Bayard" in Makung harbour during the occupation.

Background

The Pescadores Islands were an important transit stop for Chinese reinforcements to Liu Ming-ch'uan's Army of Northern Formosa, which was confronting the French on Formosa around Keelung (Jilong, 基隆), and their capture would prevent further reinforcements from reaching Formosa. Courbet had wanted to mount an expedition to capture the Pescadores for several months, but the feasibility of the operation depended on the progress of the Keelung Campaign. Colonel Duchesne's defeat of Liu Ming-ch'uan's forces and capture of La Table on 7 March 1885 finally disengaged Keelung, allowing the French to detach troops from its garrison for a descent on the Pescadores.

French and Chinese forces

Courbet's flotilla consisted of the ironclads "Bayard" and "Triomphante", the cruisers "d'Estaing" and "Duchaffaut", the gunboat "Vipère" and the troopship "Annamite". His landing force consisted of an understrength battalion of marine infantry (400 men as opposed to the usual complement of 600 men) under the command of "chef de bataillon" Lange and a marine artillery section of two 80-millimetre mountain guns (Lieutenant Lubert). [Lange's battalion consisted of the 25th, 26th, 27th and 30th Companies, 2nd Marine Infantry Regiment (Captains Logos, Harlay, Cramoisy and Vaillance).]

The Chinese garrison of the Pescadores, which had been substantially reinforced at the beginning of 1885, was commanded by the generals Chou Shan-ch'u (Zhou Shanchu, 周善初) and Cheng Ying-chieh (Zheng Yingjie, 鄭膺杰), and numbered several thousand men. A number of foreign officers served with the Chinese garrison, including a British officer responsible for the defence of one of the Makung forts, whose diary of events was later recovered by the French. [Lung Chang, "Yueh-nan yu Chung-fa chan-cheng", 329]

The fortifications of the Pescadores were designed primarily to protect Makung and deny entrance to Makung Bay, and also if possible to cover the southern entrance to Peng-hu Bay, which would have to be traversed first by an attacking squadron. The most formidable obstacles were the two Makung forts, placed on either side of the entrance to Makung Bay. The Northern Fort, just to the southwest of Makung, deployed three Armstrong cannons, and was flanked by a number of subsidiary positions in which the Chinese had deployed a dozen rifled French Voruz cannon of various calibres. The Southern Fort, or Dutch Fort, was armed with two 22-centimetre and two 14-centimetre smoothbore cannon. A third battery, sited on Observatory Island just inside Makung Bay, also covered the entrance to the bay, which had also been blocked by a barrier of chains. The Observatory Island battery was armed with two Armstrong cannon and a Chinese 20-centimetre cannon. The Chinese had also built a battery armed with smoothbore cannon to sweep the plain to the east of Makung and a large entrenched camp to the north of the town to house the regular troops of the island’s garrison.

The outer Chinese defences were much weaker. The southern entrance to Peng-hu Bay was covered on the west by the Hsiaochi battery on Fisher Island (replaced in the late 1880s by the Hsi Tai battery, whose ruins can still be seen today), and on the east by a battery on Plate Island. The Plate Island battery was quite close to the Southern Fort, and could also cover the approach to Makung Bay. Unfortunately for the Chinese, both these batteries were armed only with a mixture of antiquated smoothbore pieces that offered little threat to the French squadron.

The campaign

The French flotilla concentrated off Tai-wan-fu (台灣付, modern Tainan, 台南) on 28 March, and approached the Pescadores from the west before dawn on 29 March. During the morning of 29 March the French warships bombarded and silenced the Hsiaochi battery and other Chinese shore batteries guarding the approaches to Makung. In the late afternoon Lange's battalion was put ashore on the southern cape of Peng-hu Island, at Dome Hill, where it set up a defensive position for the night. On the morning of 30 March Courbet's ships forced their way into Makung Bay. At the same time, Lange's battalion began to march on Makung, its flanks covered by "d'Estaing" and "Vipère" in Makung Bay and "Annamite" in Dome Bay. During the afternoon Lange's men cleared a force of Chinese infantry from the village of Kisambo. On 31 March Lange attacked the main Chinese defensive line, around the village of Siu-kuei-kang (modern Suogang, 鎖港). Although the marine infantry were heavily outnumbered, French naval gunfire tipped the balance in their favour. The Chinese were driven back from their positions and attempted to make a second stand before Makung, near the village of Amo. Lange attacked them again, with equal success, and occupied Makung late in the afternoon. Most of the defeated Chinese soldiers escaped to Amoy (Xiamen, 廈門) in mainland China or to Tai-wan-fu on junks and fishing boats under cover of darkness, though a number of soldiers were caught and handed over to the victorious French by the inhabitants of the Pescadores, who saw no reason to distinguish between two equally unwelcome sets of intruders.

French casualties in the Pescadores campaign were 5 killed and 12 wounded. Chinese casualties may have amounted to 300 dead and around 400 wounded. [De Lonlay, "Au Tonkin", 586–93; de Lonlay, "L’amiral Courbet", 55–6; Duboc, "Trente cinq mois de campagne", 295–303; Ferrero, "Formose, vue par un marin français", 109–14; Garnot, "L’expédition française de Formose", 179–95; "Histoire illustrée de l’expédition du Tonkin", 330–5; Huard, "La guerre du Tonkin", 723–31; Lecomte, "Lang-Son", 527–30; Lionval, "L’amiral Courbet", 181–4; Loir, "L’escadre de l’amiral Courbet", 291–317; Nicolas, "Livre d’or de l’infanterie de la marine", 423–6]

The Pescadores campaign was Courbet's last military victory. Although it was a minor operation compared with the Son Tay Campaign or the Battle of Fuzhou, in the eyes of his officers it was his most flawless military achievement. Significantly, Courbet directed operations in person, and chose to fight this brief colonial campaign in the traditional style, with ships of the French navy supporting the land operations of marine infantry and artillery. The decision reflected inter-service rivalries. Courbet was cocking a snook at the army ministry, which had long ago wrested the direction of the war in Tonkin away from the navy ministry. His timing was perfect. While the army ministry was struggling to explain away General de Négrier's defeat in the Battle of Bang Bo (24 March 1885) and the subsequent French retreat from Lang Son, Courbet presented the navy ministry with a splendid little victory in the Pescadores. The Sino-French War ended on a high note for the French navy and the "troupes de marine". The French bombardment of the Chinese positions on the Pescadores was heard in Tai-wan-fu (modern Tainan) on the Formosan mainland. The British missionary William Campbell described the impact of the battle on the town's inhabitants:

One quiet afternoon during the spring of 1885 the people of Formosa were startled on hearing what seemed to them the sound of distant thunder. It was not thunder, but the ponderous ironclads of "France" engaged in demolishing the fortifications over against Fisher Island and Makung. Those fortifications were mounted with good-sized guns of foreign make, and occupied by several thousands of soldiers who had been hastily called from various centres on the mainland. It all availed nothing. Fighting was to be conducted in a very different style from that of other days; and, sure enough, the large floating batteries of the French fleet loomed into sight.According to popular report, no time was lost with any kind of preliminary formalities. The Chinese commenced to fire on the advancing ships, which continued steadily and with ominous silence to press forward in the direction of Makung. When within about rifle-shot range, there burst from them such a tremendous discharge against the large fort outside of the town that many a heart must have been filled with terror and amazement. Indeed, some say that on witnessing the fearful havoc caused by this opening volley from the French guns, both officers and men began to scamper off from the entrenchments; a statement which, however, cannot be altogether correct, since the number of soldiers suffering from frontal wounds, who afterwards found their way to the mission hospital at Tai-wan-fu showed conclusively that not a few of those poor matter-of-fact Chinamen must have made a noble stand against the invaders of their country. [Campbell, "Sketches from Formosa", 172–3]

Courbet's flotilla in the Pescadores campaign

The occupation

Makung became the main base for Courbet's Far East Squadron for the remainder of the war and during a brief period of occupation in the summer of 1885. The Sino-French War ended in April 1885, and under the terms of the peace settlement the French continued to occupy the Pescadores until July, as a surety for the withdrawal of the Chinese armies from Tonkin. Makung Bay was a superb natural harbour, and many of the squadron's officers had hoped that France would retain its recent conquest as a counterweight to the British colony of Hong Kong. This was never a realistic prospect. France had fought the war to oust the Chinese from Tonkin, not to make colonial conquests in China itself, and the French punctiliously evacuated the Pescadores on 22 July 1885.

Courbet issued strict instructions that his troops should pay for everything they needed, and the islanders seized the opportunity to make as much money as possible out of the occupying forces during their brief sojourn in the Pescadores. The French were particularly interested in buying exotic reminders of their stay in the Far East, and local entrepreneurs hastened to satisfy their demand for bronze Buddhas, carved screens and other characteristic souvenirs. During the occupation the French surveyed the coastal waters around the islands and considerably improved the rudimentary facilities of Makung harbour. Meanwhile, during the summer of 1885, nearly thirty French warships of the Far East Squadron rode peacefully at anchor off Makung, in the largest concentration of French naval power in the Far East in the history of the French Navy.

Several dozen French soldiers and sailors succumbed to cholera during the occupation, including Admiral Courbet himself, who died aboard his flagship "Bayard" in Makung harbour on the night of 11 June 1885. Courbet's body was taken back to France for a state funeral, but the other French dead were buried in two cemeteries at Makung, one for the marine infantry of Lange's battalion and the other for the sailors of the Far East Squadron. Two commemorative obelisks erected in the summer of 1885 in these cemeteries can still be seen. One is in Makung itself, the other at Dutch Point, on the tip of the southern cape that encloses Makung harbour. Both bear almost identical inscriptions: "A la memoire des soldats [marins] français décedés à Makung". A third obelisk, erected by Admiral Sébastien Lespès as a monument to Courbet's memory, was removed in 1954, but its marble inscription has been preserved: "A la memoire de l'amiral Courbet et des braves morts pour la France aux Pescadores en 1885". The bodies of two marine infantry officers who died of cholera in early June 1885, "sous-commissaire" Dert and Lieutenant Jehenne, were originally buried in front of Courbet's monument (Courbet had attended their funerals only days before his own death). In 1954, under an agreement reached between the French and Republic of China governments, their remains were exhumed with full military honours and transferred to the French Cemetery at Keelung aboard the national frigate "Commandant Pimodan", where they rest today alongside their old comrades in the Formosa Expeditionary Corps and the Far East Squadron. [Rouil, "Formose: des batailles presque oubliées", 149–68]

Notes

References

* Campbell, W., "Sketches from Formosa" (London, Edinburgh and New York, 1915)
* Garnot, "L'expédition française de Formose, 1884–1885" (Paris, 1894)
* Loir, Maurice, "L'escadre de l'amiral Courbet" (Paris, 1886)
* Lung Chang [龍章] , "Yueh-nan yu Chung-fa chan-cheng" [越南與中法戰爭, Vietnam and the Sino-French War] (Taipei, 1993)
* Rollet de l'Isle, Maurice, "Au Tonkin et dans les mers de Chine" (Paris, 1886)
* Rouil, Christophe, "Formose: des batailles presque oubliées" (Taipei, 2001)
* Thomazi, A., "La conquête de l'Indochine" (Paris, 1934)