CO129-215 - Governor Sir Bowen - 1884 [1-4] — Page 254

THE WAR IN TONQUIN.

Enclosure

[FROM OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT.]

HANOI, 31st January, 1884.

#

Now that things have been pretty well tidied up at Sontay, the Frenck offer no opposition to any one going up to see the plane. A passage oan be easily arranged in a native boat, and if the wind is favourable and the boatmen not too laxy, the distance of thirty miles or thereabouts can be easily compassed in daylight, It is even. possible to get a passage in a Government steamer,! but as those oraft are always check full of soldiers and commissariat stores, the gain in time and dignity is hardly worth the absence of comfort. The country between Hanoi and Bontay is of the same general character as that farther down the delta. There are the same alternate high banks and low shelving flat lands, accordingly as the force of the current boats on the one shore or the other; the came wide stretches of paddy fields; the same abundance of bamboo and castus-fanced villages, with here and there the trumpery little jos-houses which the French call pagodas. At this sesson of the year the Song-koi is at its low.: est, and from the insignificant height of a native bout impossible to see any distance inland. Still, from what I could see during occasional trampe on the bank to relieve the monotony of the journey, it was apparent that the warlike operations so resently condnoted in the imme. diste neighbourhood had had but a very transient effect on agricultural doings. Ploughing was going on everywhere; the women and childrer. were levelling the surface with wooden mallets, and all were too busy aven to throw stones at me, sa they probably would have done in the neigh- bourhood of Haiphong. Near Soutayindeed it was different. On the right bank, at any rate, the fields were quita deserted, and the few people one saw seemed quite prepared to run, with or without resson. The beadless bodies, which still continue to come down the river, no doubt tend to shake a man's nerves,

From oursory view, Sontay seems a place which has no natural advantages of any kind. Take any level country with a slope upwards to s central point, so gentle that it is almost impos- sible to detect it, and you hawthe general appear- anse of Suntay. For the town, take s random collection of the ordinary, heavy, Chinese brisk house, Interspersed with the wretched, wattled. bamboo, mud-plastered, thatob-roofed shanties of the Annamese. The oitadel is a quartor sailo

#quare areotion built of big slaba at couglomerate, for defonsive purposes not helf

so good as decent bricks. For sur roundings there are the Song-koi, too far off to be of any use, except as a means of bringing up enemies; a little river running at a distance of six hundred yarde,pr so, round the western and northern faces, some low spars from the main range of hills to the wast, but too distant to afford anything like a secure place of retreat. Beyond this nothing but as cultivated country. But a closer examination shows how much can be done with the most unpromising material. The Black Flage have made the best use of their time «inue last May, though it seems soarsely credible that the whole of the earthworks now existing ean have been constructed in the short period of seven months.

Just now the river runs twenty fest under the level of the Bentay bank. At the time of the attack in December it was considerably higher, but still there was a fairly high river bank. A thonsand feet from thie are the lines of Phuo-ss, or Phue-the, These covers river face of trom half- -mile to three-quarters, and on either side run down to the water. They am of considerable height | and are formidably constructed with contreforts,

C. 0.

404252

RECD

or traverses, to afford protection against a flank

fire in the event of entrance being forood at any [MAR 84/ point. The bamboos which marked the whole face have been out over close to the ground by the French. Marsby land protects a good deal of the front, and these swamps were much more extensive at the time of the attack than they are now. A road running from the river-bank straight up to the citadel cuts the earth works at right angles, and it was round the gate-(now replaced by a large blockhouse, bailt of bricks obtained frem a pagods pulled down for the pur. pose)—that the fiercest fighting of the 14th De õember took place. The Tarcas were the first to be sent up, and they were beaten back time after time, while the Foreign Legion and the Infantry of Marins fared no better. It was particularly noticed that the Flagmen took steady aim every time they fired, and the loss of two hundred men and twenty-two officers in half an hour testified to their steadiness. The French are full of admiration for the pluck of thema Hak-kis, though they show thom but scant meroy when they get hold of them. Several times when the troops had almost forced their way into the lines, the Black Flags seized the bayonets with their naked hands, in regular Ghazi fashion, and toppled the hurly Algerians and Foreign Legion men down the slope. It was only at the end of the first day's fighting that the works were taken, and then every inch had to be fought for, Independent witnesses of the struggle maintaiu that it was not till their ammunition gave out that the Black Flags were driven from Phac-sa. However that may be, at midnight, animated by an offer from Lín Jóne-fu of two hundred thousand dollars to the man who would retake the works, they all came back again. The fighting was 50- newed with as ranch determination as over, and it is even asserted that the French ware mo- mentarily driven out, If they were, they forced | their way in again, but the straggle extended over several hours. The best evidenos of the desperate state of the French and the anxiety in which they were, is the recorded fact that no letter, soaled or open, from officer or man, was allowed to be despatched on the night of the 14th December," fins thing it would have bean, if we had had correspondents there!" a French officer romarked to me in an effusive mo- | ment, "They would have said it was a Frenchi defeat,"

Between the Phao-sa works and the "onter enceinte" is a distance of five hundred yards or more. The road leading up to the town was lined on both sides by bouses. These seem to have been tolerably substantial, but now nothing remains of them but a few heaps of ashes and the rectangular stone water tanks, which the Touquinese are fond of building, but hardly ever seem to use for their legitimate purpose. When there is water in them, it always appears to be covered with green slime, bat more fre. quently there is nothing but rank grasa, with an oasional sapling. To right and left of this is sultivated land, with here and there a jess honse or two. The psdy fields that are now dry would have been heavy going for a Pytchley man six weeks ago. The muddy patches of to- iday were sheets of water on the 15th December. This outer enceinte is an exceedingly strong earthwork roughly polygonal in shape and da fended in front by most fifteen or twenty feet wide. On the level ground between the walls and the ditch was a trable or quadruple fence of well-grown bamboos, covering depth of from four to six yards. At the gates the moal was studded with spiked bamboos. A stockade of high thick logs masked the front, and on the. approach to the slender plank bridge was a formid- Į able chevaus de frise of sharp-pointed stakes and bamboo salthrops. The lines themselves were solidly sonstructed and the shells which barst in them did but very little damage as far no effect. ing a branch was concerned. The main attack was made on the North-west front, and the num ber of empty cartridges lying about here, inside the works, showed the severity of the fire to which the French were exposed. The Chinese cannon, however, were of the most worthless kind. Not only were the pieces of old-world manufacture and honey-combed with age and neglect, but they were few and badly placed. The contreforts along the line of works were pointed out by the French offloors as conclusive proof that there had besa European guidance in Bon- tay. But the way in which the guns were mounted was far more conclusive proof the other

pl.