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Mayréna was joined by Father Guerlach, a missionary who had lived in the Moï region for many years and spoke several local dialects. On 3 June 1888, the members of the confederation accepted a constitution drawn up by Mayréna, which made him king. It is suggested by Marcel Ner1 and other scholars that Mayréna owed much of his success to his skill at prestidigitation, for the Moï were extremely superstitious and accepted his tricks as a sign of moral excellence and divinity.
Mayréna by a surprising turn of fortune had become Marie, King of the Sedangs. The new kingdom was named after the Sedangs simply because this tribe formed the most populous element in the confederation of Moï tribesmen. He made Mercurol, the middle-aged, malaria-riddled adventurer from Saigon, the Marquis of Henoui, and created a number of orders of chivalry. His most fanciful creation was the Order of Merit pour récompenser les lettres, les arts, les sciences, l'industrie et le dévouement à la maison royale. It is difficult to understand for whom this order was intended since the Sedangs were totally illiterate. His Annamite mistress—Ahnaïa20—became Queen of the Sedangs, but although the official religion of the kingdom was now Catholicism, the young Ahnaïa resolutely refused to give up her pagan practices, much to the disgust of the missionaries who had foregathered at Mayréna's capital, Kon-Djeri, where the royal palace was a primitive hut above which, however, the royal standard fluttered.
Mayréna led his warriors into several campaigns against recalcitrant tribes with varying success; but his real problem was not one of warfare but of money. He lacked the means to live in the style which he now felt was his due. It was the search, therefore, for financial support which led him to Hanoi and Haiphong and in November 1888 to Hong Kong.
The Marquis de Morès21
Antoine-Amédée-Marie-Vincent-Manca de Vallombrosa, marquis de Morès et de Monte-Maggiore, was born in Paris in 1858. Unlike Mayréna, he was of noble blood. His ancestors, the Spanish Mancas, had been granted feudal estates in Sardinia in the fourteenth century. The family remained based in Sardinia until the early nineteenth century when the Marquis' grandfather settled in France. Morès received the conventional education of one of his class; he was first tutored by an abbé, then sent to the Catholic