[
    {
        "id": 206968,
        "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": 39,
        "title": "RAS-1974",
        "content_text": "ADVENTURERS IN HONG KONG\n\n33\n\nLegion of Honour for Bravery. That same year he published Souvenirs de la Cochinchine,17 an account of his life and adventures in Indo-China in the years 1863-1868. It is extremely difficult to decide what is fact and fiction in this chronicle for Mayréna had already matured into a remarkable mythologiser and phantasist—a monumental liar.\n\nLittle is known about Mayréna's life for some years after 1871, except that he set himself up as a banker in Paris, dabbled in journalism and led the existence of a boulevardier, ogling the girls at Tortoni's and the Napolitain. Then in July 1883 he was accused of swindling, a warrant for his arrest issued, and he fled to Holland. From Holland he embarked for the Dutch East Indies and arrived there penniless in September 1883. In August 1884 he was repatriated to France at the expense of the Dutch colonial administration. But only a few weeks after his return to France he was again on his way back to the East, this time as leader of a scientific expedition of exploration to Java, financed by the Baron Roger Seillière.\n\nMayréna did not proceed to Java as planned but stayed on in Saigon. The 30,000 francs, handed to him by the Baron for equipping the expedition, he spent lavishly in the cafés of Saigon, relating wild Munchausen-like tales of his previous adventures in the East. The police soon compiled an extensive dossier on this troublesome fellow, who was suspected of gunrunning, swindling, and a variety of other offences. In August 1885, the Commissioner of Police wrote of Mayréna and his brother, who had accompanied him on this last trip, that they were 'faiseurs et monteurs de sociétés à exploiter les naifs'.18\n\nMayréna made several expeditions into the interior of Indo-China in the years 1885 to 1888, but it was his last journey which concerns us here. In March 1888 he landed on the coast at Quinhon at the head of a semi-official expedition of exploration into the independent region of the Moï country. The expedition had the blessing of the Secretary-General at Saigon. On 21 April 1888 the party left Quinhon. It included a seedy adventurer from Saigon, Mercurol; a trader, Paoli; two Annamite women; a few Chinese; and a contingent of local levies and porters. Mayréna was amazingly successful in a short space of time. He signed a treaty with an important Moï chief and soon succeeded in welding together a number of disparate Moï tribes into a confederation.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 206969,
        "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": 40,
        "title": "RAS-1974",
        "content_text": "34 \n\nH. J. LETHBRIDGE \n\nMayréna 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. \n\nMayréna 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. \n\nMayréna 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. \n\nThe Marquis de Morès21 \n\nAntoine-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",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077",
        "rank": 0
    }
]