THE FRENCH FAILURE IN INDO-CHINA.
THERE are few puzzles, either in history or politics, so entirely perplexing as the failure of the French people to found great dependencies in Asia. We have founded them, the Russians have founded them, the Dutch have founded them, even the Portuguese have founded them, though their empire was transitory and is now forgotten ; but the French, with all their splendid resources, have always failed. The popular explanation, repeated every day, not only in the English but the Parisian Press, is simple nonsense. It is said the French "cannot colonise" in Asia, as if any other Power could. We have never even tried to colonise in Southern Asia, nor has any other European State. Apart from the soldiers and officials, who take their pay and return home when their term of service has expired, England has probably not thirty thousand males in the whole of Asia, India included, and of them probably not two thousand have the slightest idea of remaining there for more than a fraction of their active lives. The total number of planters, not being the paid servants of Companies, who also return home, is exceedingly small ; and of cultivators there is, so far as we know, not a single one. The French in this respect are only on a par with their rivals ; and the problem is not that, but this,—Why can- not the French conquer in Asia, when other European races can ? They have tried four times, if we reckon Napoleon's invasion of Egypt as one, and twice under special advantages ; but their only success, the conquest of Cochin China, has been singularly infructnous. They ought, by every rule of logic, to have conquered Southern India when they made the attempt ; but their empire there, though splendidly planned and actually founded, withered away in a night. They ought to have coiaquered Anam and Tonquin, and to this moment the most experienced Anglo-Indian observers, familiar with such operations for years, declare themselves unable to understand why they failed. It is clearly not a general incapacity to keep conquests. France actually conquered Alsace-Lorraine, and practically conquered Nice, and Savoy, and Corsica, and she has kept the latter three ; nor will she lose Algeria or Tunis, which she gained by direct force. It certainly is not want of genius, for Bussy, who so nearly made Southern India French, was probably as able as any British Agent ever employed in India, Clive included ; and it is cer- tainly not want of force, for France has used, on the whole, larger means than any European country. Except in 1857, when we had all Northern India to reconquer—a whole Continent, in fact—no English General has ever led to Asia an army approaching in strength the one which was at the disposal of General Briere de l'Lsle when he commenced his operations ; and the British Government has never spent in any Asiatic campaign a greater sum than has been wasted first and last upon the Tonquinese invasion. Yet the failure is admitted by all French parties, and upon all hands. The Radicals, in the debate which, as we write, is still going on, declare that the work, if continued, must be recommenced from the beginning ; the Reactionaries assert that the French armies only hold the ground they stand on ; and the Opportunists only answer that evacuation would be humiliating, and that a portion of the Delta can be held, with due care and precaution, by ten thousand men. Ten thousand men ! Why, we held India for half a century with less than thirty thousand white soldiers ; and if we conquered Indo-China from end to end- Burroah, Siam, and Anna all included—the War Office would think a corps d'armee of ten thousand Europeans an amply sufficient garrison. We should have Native soldiers, it is true ; but then the ability to organise Native soldiers is in Asia part of the ability to govern ; and the French have at least as good a chance of doing that work as we have. They did do it in Southern India with success ; and French and Italian officers made the most formidable of all Asiatic armies, the Sikh force, which in 1846 and 1848 so nearly overthrew the Indian Empire. English officers would make capital Sepoys of the Tonquinese, who are personally brave ; and the objection raised by the best French officers that a native Anaraese army could not be trusted, would seem to Anglo-Indians to be beside the question, or rather to be merely part of it, the means of ensuring fidelity for long periods of time being an essential detail of the organisation.
It is useless to allege the opposition of China, for China might have been beaten like any other Empire ; while the Black Flags of Tonquin are no more invincible than Burmese "deceits," and not one-tenth as powerful as either the Sikh Army or the revolted Sepoys, whose failure, indeed, has never been studied as it deserved. It was one of the strangest and least explicable episodes that ever occurred in military history. The truth is, the French fail in Asia without being over- matched, and the problem is the cause of that result of great efforts repeatedly made by one of the first and most success fnl of military peoples.
Our own belief is that the cause is revealed in the very occurrence of this debate on Tonquin, and is neither more nor less than this, that the French people of all grades do not at heart care to make Asiatic conquests, do not feel pleasure in governing them, and will not, therefore, either in the aggregate or in detail, make the necessary efforts. They do not care to succeed, and therefore they do not succeed. A few of their rulers, whether hereditary or elective, do care, and therefore at intervals use the magnificent machine at their disposal in Asiatic enterprise ; but the body of French- men, the entity we call France, does not. The people are as willing not to have Tonquin as to have it, and would, if a plebiscite were taken, evacuate it just as readily as they evacuated Mexico. Their pride does not fasten on sway beyond seas. They do not see what Tonquin is to bring them, do not care for the kind of prestige its possession yields, do not feel any humiliation at its loss. If it is gone, so much the worse for the dealers in Colonial produce. They are not interested in governing subject-races ; not concerned about their fate ; not tempted at all by the work it is pro- posed to them to do. They want to be great in Europe, not in Asia ; pardon Napoleon's flight from Egypt, as if it were a mere resignation of a command ; and resent any demand, whether of money or men, for Tonquin, as an oppression inflicted on them by self-seekers in Paris. This feeling, openly avowed throughout the debate, penetrates all classes, and makes all half-hearted. The officers do not care for the service, which seems to them an unhappy exile worse than service in Africa ; while the conscripts think they are unfairly used in being sent away from Europe, sicken at the hot climate, the new diet, and the hardships, and die, whenever they are ill, from mere want of energy. We very much doubt if they fight well. Occasionally a battle occurs in which they display their usual valour and their national élan ; but if they were up to their normal level, they would not insist as they do on tolerable equality in numbers, or compel their chiefs to demand reinforcements at such a terrible rate. We believe that for two years past nothing has surprised the French War Office like the number of men asked for Tonquin; and as the Generals have every interest in pleasing the War Office, the explanation must be their conviction that without visible numbers the conscripts can- not be relied on to do their beat. The Generals, again, hate the country to which they are despatched, a feeling shared by many civil officials. Nothing can be more curious than the utter despondency of much of the evidence before the Tonquinese Committee, the entire want of the English feeling that an Asiatic Delta must be a great estate, and that governing it is highly pleasant and acceptable work. The Army would, in fact, be glad to be at home ; and in that feeling, spread through all ranks and influencing every movement, except, perhaps, the actual fighting, all hope of
success disappears. An Englishman does not lose force from being out of spirits, and an English brigade will go on when officers and men are half crazy with dis- appointment and annoyance ; but a French army, to do its best, must be a cheerful army. The soldiers of all ranks. who would do any work in Europe, regard the scene of an Asiatic campaign as a hateful scene, and long only to be out of it at any sacrifice, or with any loss of a prestige which neither they nor their countrymen feel to be a real renown. It is not what they are seeking, and they give up almost from the beginning. It is simply ridiculous, with oar hundred years of experience in India and Indo-China, to suppose that a good French General, with forty thousand men, could not conquer the rotten Kingdom of Allem, and reduce it to habitable order ; and the failure betrays a want of will exactly akin to the want of will shown within the Chamber- The Deputies do not want Asiatic " Colonies," and neither do the officers nor the con- scripts, and consequently they do not get them. We do not know that the weakness is any injury to France, for
concentration may be her truest policy, and a people rarely misunderstands its own interest completely ; but the weakness exists, and has repeatedly modified the history of France. She could colonise if she liked, for her single temperate Colony, French Canada, has been a fair success, and is still intensely French ; and she could conquer if she liked, for she has con- quered an Empire in Northern Africa ; but, as a rule, she does not like, only attempts the work under over-persuasion by false representations, and therefore regularly fails.
Previous page
