[
    {
        "id": 206967,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1974",
        "page_number": 38,
        "title": "RAS-1974",
        "content_text": "32 \n\nH. J. LETHBRIDGE \n\nnot on his side. He had come to Hong Kong with an express aim - to obtain cash. His design was to persuade Hong Kong merchants to invest heavily in the exploitation of the territory he claimed to rule as soi-disant King of the Sedangs, a title he had assumed in June 1888 with the passive assent of an innocent montagnard people. There were rich men in Hong Kong - speculators, gamblers, risk-takers - and Mayréna hoped to interest them in the mineral wealth and natural products of his new kingdom. Thus he assumed that meeting Sir William and Lady Des Voeux at Government House would vouch for his respectability and provide an entrée into the social enclosure of the rich European merchant class. \n\nMorès, on the other hand, had no such motivation. He was in Hong Kong with William Van Driesche, and an engineer, a M. Thorel, en route for Tonkin. His visit to Hong Kong was an accident. The Calédonien, the ship he boarded at Marseilles, berthed at Saigon and Hong Kong but not at Haiphong, so Morès was forced to travel on to Hong Kong and transfer to another ship for Haiphong, the entry port for Hanoi and the Red River basin. He was in a hurry and bent on business. Hence he stayed in Hong Kong for only a week, leaving on 29 November by the small German steamer, the Clara. It was during this week that the alleged duel between the two adventurers took place; but to explain why they had both wandered into the East and why they clashed, we must first examine their previous careers. \n\nMarie-Charles David de Mayréna16 \n\nThe future King of the Sedangs was born into a bourgeois milieu at Toulon on 31 January, 1842. His father was a commander in the French navy, who died when Mayréna was a child so that he was reared entirely by a complaisant mother. He failed his examinations for the Ecole navale in 1857 but joined the Sixth Dragoons in 1859, transferring to the Spahis de Cochinchine in 1863. He served in Indo-China until 1868, when he resigned and returned to France. His career so far had been unremarkable. \n\nThe next year he married a colonel's daughter; but little is known about the marriage and it seems likely that they soon separated or divorced. Mayréna was a great womaniser. The Franco-Prussian War broke out in 1870 and he was recalled to the colours and procured the rank of captain. In February 1871 he was awarded the",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 206971,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1974",
        "page_number": 42,
        "title": "RAS-1974",
        "content_text": "36 \n\nH. J. LETHBRIDGE \n\nto organise the retail meat market in that state. This enterprise also failed, so the disillusioned Marquis, who had lost a large part of his private fortune, returned home to France in 1886. \n\nMorès' father, the Duke of Vallombrosa, advised his despondent son to take a long vacation and suggested a journey to India, a land the Duke had visited in his younger days. In November, 1887, therefore, Morès and his wife embarked at Marseilles for the journey out to Bombay. \n\nFrom Bombay Morès and his wife went by train to Calcutta, where they stayed with the Viceroy, Lord Dufferin, and where they met Prince Henry of Orléans. The Marquis and the Prince and a few friends at once organised an expedition into the interior to shoot game. Another expedition, to Nepal, was organised soon after they returned from their first chase, this time with Medora as participant. After five weeks the party returned with the skins of many wild beasts, including that of a tiger which the redoubtable Marquise had herself shot. In the spring of 1888, Morès and his wife returned to Europe. \n\nThe ship that took Morès and his wife back to France was also carrying a number of his old comrades, former Saint-Cyriens, returning from the campaign in Tonkin. Morès had long conversations with these French colonial army officers and learned much about conditions in Indo-China. On the voyage back he thus became deeply interested in the commercial prospects of this new French colonial possession. But to open up and develop the territory necessitated the construction of a railway system: Morès decided to pioneer such an enterprise. As soon as he reached Paris he hurried to see the Minister for Foreign Affairs and presented a plan for building without government aid a railway line from Hanoi to the Chinese border. He was given official permission to prospect the region of Tonkin. On 21 October 1888, as noted, Morès left Marseilles together with William Van Driesche and an engineer, M. Thorel. On 22 November 1888 he landed at Hong Kong en route for Haiphong, and the start of another adventure: the economic exploitation of the Red River basin, a scheme as grandiose as the one he had been engaged on in the Dakotas. \n\nMayréna's Odyssey in Hong Kong \n\nMayréna spent his first days in the Colony studiously cultivating members of the Roman Catholic hierarchy. He visited the",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077",
        "rank": 0
    }
]