success attended the manœuvre, for the Black Flags abandoned their formidable positions after little or no resistance. They were unable to remove the Krupp guns which were found in position, but this was the only spoil left in the hands of the victor. These guns were the first evidence that the Chinese had so far departed from their passive attitude as to assist the defenders of Tonquin. This was very far short of the open declaration of war which the Marquis Tseng had advised and threatened as the consequence of any attack on Sontay.

Bacninh was occupied in March, 1884, and then a lull followed on the scene of operations while diplomacy resumed in Paris and Pekin the task of concluding a pacific arrangement between France and China. The relations of the two States were still in name amicable. China had ostensibly done nothing, and in reality very little to invest her suzerain claims over Tonquin with reality. The party in power at Pekin showed that they did not attach any importance to those claims, that peace was their sole object, and that France might possess a free field for expansion in the Songcoi Valley. Whatever merit this course had on the score of putting off the evil day, it was certainly not the right policy to invest with actuality the shadowy pretensions of China in vassal states. These pretensions could only be maintained by the sword; as China did not intend to draw the sword, and as, moreover, its temper was brittle, they should have been promptly relegated to the receptacle for the abandoned claims of nations. The overthrow of the Black Flags at Sontay and Bacninh was quickly followed therefore by a treaty of peace negotiated by Commander Fournier with Li Hung Chang, who in this, as in many other similar matters of external policy, represented the Chinese Government. The treaty was signed on the 11th May, 1884, and while it waived all China's claims on the old Empire of Annam, it also assigned to France a larger part of Tonquin than she had absolutely acquired. The success of the French in establishing a definite protectorate over Tonquin seemed thus to have been attained with equal completeness and facility.

The Fournier treaty, instead of being a bond of union, was

One of its chief

to prove the cause of more serious discord. provisions was the surrender of the position of Langson to the French. After their retirement from Bacninh the Black Flags had established themselves here and made it their stronghold. The peace convention stipulated that Langson was to be surrendered to the French, but in the draft published in China no date was specified for the event, and the Chinese no doubt assumed that they would be given the time to make the necessary arrangements and to bring the desirable pressure to bear on the Black Flags to induce them to retreat without resistance or compromising the Government. Slow in all their movements, time was needed to enable the Chinese to carry out their own promises, and unfortunately the draft of the convention contained specific dates and conditions for the fulfilment of the arrangement. Commander Fournier declared on his honour that the dates named in his draft were in the original convention, and no one can doubt that this was the real truth. When, however, the French troops advanced to take possession of Langson the matter took a new and serious turn, for the Black Flags, ignorant of or indifferent to what Chinese diplomatists had promised, resisted to the full extent of their power and skill, both of which were for the work to be done far from inconsiderable. The French detachment sent to occupy Langson, under the command of Colonel Dugenne, was attacked in an ambuscade at the Bacle pass, and compelled to retreat after some loss. The principal provision of the Fournier treaty was therefore rendered null and void, and France and China were brought into direct collision.

The Chinese disclaimed all responsibility in the matter on the ground that the French advance was premature in that the Fournier Convention mentioned no specific date. Το that statement the French representative replied by declaring that his draft contained the dates, and the truth seems to have been that he had allowed himself to be circumvented by the more astute Chinese. However, France would not allow the Chinese Government to shake off its responsibility on this subterfuge. It demanded an instantaneous apology and an indemnity of ten millions sterling. The Chinese would have

given the former, and paid a reasonable sum by way of compensation, but the amount asked was so excessive as to prevent its even being discussed. Stormy events followed, but before entering upon them it will be clearer for the reader to record that France eventually accepted £160,000 in lieu of the £10,000,000 claimed for the Bacle outrage.

After the Bacle affair, military operations were resumed not only in Tonquin but against China. The French Government would not openly declare war, because by so doing England would have had to proclaim her neutrality, and France would then have lost the advantages of Hongkong as a coaling station. She maintained the usual relations of friendly states, and at the same time she resorted to open violence; a position of an exceptionally favourable nature for attacking the Chinese at a disadvantage was thus obtained, and the French quickly turned it to account. Foochow, a Treaty port, is situated a little distance up the Min river or estuary, and the Chinese, alive to some if not all of the military defects of their situation, had strongly defended its approach from the sea. While the peace was thought to be assured, several French men-of-war had proceeded up the river and anchored off Foochow, or, in other words, above the defences of the port. How far it was fair to utilize that position of advantage secured under the assumption of peace for the purposes of war is a question of ethics that we need not stop to examine here. It will suffice to say that the French menof-war, in accordance with instructions telegraphed from Paris to Foochow itself, attacked the Min forts in reverse, and, thanks to their favourable position, destroyed them with little or no loss. The destruction of the Min Forts was a complete set-off to the surprise at Bacle, and it was also the most complete success of the French throughout the struggle, but for the reason given it was not one in which the French can take undiluted pride.

The French continued also to derive all the advantage they could from the fact that there was still no formal declaration of war, and by using Hongkong as a coaling station they practically made England an ally in the operations against China. This situation would soon have become

intolerable, and Sir Harry Parkes, who had succeeded Sir Thomas Wade in the post of British Minister at Pekin, in the autumn of 1883, wisely decided to clear it up by issuing a proclamation to the effect that as the hostilities in progress between France and China were tantamount to a state of war, the laws of neutrality must be strictly observed at Hongkong and by all British subjects. The French resented this step, and showed an intention to retaliate by instituting a right to search all coasting steamers for rice, but fortunately this pretension was not pushed to extremities, and the war closed before any grave international complications had arisen.

After the destruction of the Min forts, the war was carried on chiefly in the island of Formosa, whither the French sent a strong expedition. The port of Tamsui was occupied without much difficulty; but at Kelung the Chinese resisted with great determination, and, although Admiral Courbet succeeded in capturing one of the forts, the Chinese erected a line of entrenchments, and batteries that effectually prevented the French force making any advance. Nor did the fortune of war shine on the French in Tonquin, where a certain number of Chinese troops were sent to co-operate with the Black Flags at Langson, and from before which, in March, 1885, the French were compelled to beat a retreat. This reverse was not quite of the same magnitude as an absolute defeat, but it was a revelation of the difficulties of the task, and a warning not to tempt fortune too far. Very soon after the open declaration of war between France and China the French Government was brought face to face with this position, that its arms were making no progress in either Formosa or Tonquin, and that, to retain the fruits of the earlier success, a special effort was necessary. In these circumstances it became necessary to choose between the despatch of a large expedition to attack Pekin, and the resorting again to diplomacy to effect a pacific arrangement. The former was costly, uncertain, and affected by many extraneous considerations; it is not surprising that the French Government adopted the latter. On the 9th of June, 1885, a new treaty was signed by the respective plenipotentiaries, M. Patenotre and Li Hung Chang. It reiterated the terms

of the Fournier agreement with the simple addition of a moderate indemnity for the attack on Colonel Dugenne in the Bacle defile.

The teaching of this war, the first in which China had engaged with an European antagonist since the march of the allies to Pekin, was inconclusive. On the one hand, the Chinese had shown no great military capacity, and their general conduct of the war had not been marked by any real grasp of military problems. On the other hand, their soldiers had shown admirable tenacity of purpose at both Langson and Kelung, while on no occasion did they absolutely disgrace themselves. The organization was bad, the policy of the Pekin Government was timid and uncertain, but the conduct of the army in the field seemed to justify the assumption that the day of tame submission in China was passed. We now know that this view of the case was too favourable, and that the faults and crimes of the Government and the ruling classes in China far outweigh and nullify the good qualities of the Chinese people. The time seems now remote, but it must inevitably come when the Chinese people, whether of their own volition or under foreign guidance, will secure a government adequate to their needs, and that will at the same time make itself respected by its neighbours.

But in one obvious particular the Franco-Chinese war marked an epoch in modern Chinese history, and it also marked it as a point of decline. The St. Petersburg Treaty with Russia had given back a long-lost possession. It had set the seal, as it were, to the contention that China never waived her rights, that she regarded her inherited pretensions as inalienable, and that what she had once possessed she reserved the right for ever to reclaim. Such was the proud and confident pretension to which the world was asked, in 1881, to pay heed. The war with France over Tonquin taught a different lesson. As a military experience it was far indeed from being a humiliating event for China, but toc narrow a view must not be taken of such passages in the life of a nation or empire. The Chinese Government had taken up a very different position on the subject of Tonquin from that it had maintained in the case of Kuldja. Tonquin was