In December 1883, the French army attacked the garrisons of the Black Banner Army and the Qing Army in Shanxi, Vietnam, and the Sino-French War officially broke out. The Sino-French War lasted about a year and a half and could be roughly divided into three phases:
(1) Early land warfare: In December 1883, the French army launched the Shanxi Campaign against the Black Banner Army and the Qing Army, and launched the Battle of Bac Ninh in March 1884. The Chinese side lost both battles, and on May 11, 1884, Li Hongzhang and the French representative signed the "Concise Treaty of the Sino-French Conference" in Tianjin, agreeing not to deal with the treaties between France and Vietnam.
(2) Medium-term land and sea battles and naval battles: In June 1884, France and Vietnam signed the Second Treaty of Hue. Soon after, the Northern Li conflict was launched, shelling the Qing troops stationed near Lang Son Mountain. At the same time, France expanded the war to the southeast coast of China, with a fleet led by Amédée Courbet to Fujian and Taiwan. In August 1884, the French army encountered resistance led by Liu Mingchuan in Keelung, Taiwan, and returned to the sea, and on August 23, it raided Majiang, Fuzhou, defeated the Fujian naval division, and destroyed the Mawei Shipyard of the Fuzhou Shipping Bureau. After that, the French army imposed a naval blockade on Taiwan, and once captured Keelung and Tamsui. In March 1885, the French occupied Penghu, but were repulsed in the Battle of Zhenhai, Zhejiang. In June, he died of illness in Penghu.
(3) Late land battle: In March 1885, after the French army captured Lang Son in Vietnam, it rushed straight to the Sino-Vietnamese border, and the nearly ancient Feng Zicai led his army to defeat the French army at Zhennan Pass, killing and wounding more than 1,000 enemy soldiers. At the same time, Liu Yongfu's Black Banner Army also won victories in the area of Lintao, recovering more than ten prefectures and counties. The war situation was greatly reversed after the Battle of Zhennanguan.
China and France are at loggerheads in Vietnam. In December 1883, the French army greatly increased its forces and set out from Hanoi to capture Shanxi. The Battle of Shanxi marked the official outbreak of the Sino-French War.
"Liu Tidu Town Guarding Bac Ninh", which contains the "Quang Xu Jiashen", that is, in 1884, depicts Liu Vinh Phuc leading the Black Banner Army to fight the French army in Bac Ninh, east of Hanoi, Vietnam. Before and after the official outbreak of the Sino-French War, the Black Banner Army has always insisted on resisting the French.
At the beginning of the war, the French army won successively in Shanxi and Bac Ninh. The Qing Dynasty, not wanting the war to expand, sent Li Hongzhang to negotiate with France on May 11, 1884, and signed the Concise Treaty of the Sino-French Conference in Tianjin (pictured), agreeing to the treaties signed between France and Vietnam, which was tantamount to recognizing Vietnam as a French protectorate. In June, France forced Vietnam to sign the Second Treaty of Hue, denying the Qing dynasty's suzerainty over Vietnam.
After the initial victory and the profit of the treaty, France took advantage of the victory to launch a larger offensive. In early August 1884, the French fleet attacked Taiwan under the leadership of Guba. On August 5, the French army attacked Keelung (see photo), but was repulsed by Liu Mingchuan, who oversaw Taiwan's military affairs, which was the first battle of Keelung.
The French invasion of Taiwan was frustrated and turned to attack Fujian. On August 23, 1884, French ships raided Mawei, Fuzhou, and fiercely bombarded the ships of the Fujian Navy Division, winning a complete victory.
The Battle of Mawei, also known as the Battle of Majiang, was the first large-scale naval battle between China's new naval division and a foreign navy during the Western Affairs Movement. The battle was short, and the Fujian naval division suffered a crushing defeat. The French also destroyed the coastal batteries and the Mawei Shipyard under the Fuzhou Shipping Bureau, seizing sea control along the coast of Fujian and the Taiwan Strait, and was able to threaten Fujian and Taiwan. The war meant that the Western Campaign, which began in 1860, was still failing to improve China's coastal defenses more than two decades later.
After winning the Battle of Mawei, the French army again invaded Taiwan and captured Penghu, once capturing Keelung, Tamsui and Penghu. The picture shows French ships storming Magong Island in Penghu in March 1885.
Although the French navy won in Fujian and Taiwan, it was repulsed at the Battle of Zhenhai, Zhejiang. At the same time, the Taiwan and Penghu soldiers and civilians resisted vigorously, which also caused many casualties to the French army. In addition, the French army was hit by the epidemic, and the naval commander Gu Ba and several French troops contracted cholera during the occupation of Penghu. In June 1885, he died of illness in Penghu, and his body was returned to France.
The French navy was victorious, and the army also made progress, gradually advancing north from Vietnam to threaten southern China. The Qing court urgently summoned the retired veteran Feng Zicai to save the emergency. After being ordered, Feng Zicai carried the coffin to the war to show his determination to die against the law.
Feng Zicai had already been disbanded in 1882, but due to the critical situation during the Sino-French War, Zhang Zhidong, the governor of Liangguang, asked for the veteran to be reinstated. Feng Zicai, at a near-ancient age, was ordered to carry the coffin and made an oath, seeing death as if it were home, and his subordinates were moved, and their morale was greatly boosted.
On February 13, 1885, the French army, led by the famous general Nigri, captured Lang Son Lang Son in the north of Vietnam, and directly forced the Sino-Vietnamese border fortress town Nanguan. Before attacking Zhennan Pass, Nigri had not suffered a defeat in his leadership career.
From left: Feng Zicai, Zhennanguan, Nigrí. Zhennan Pass in the Qing Dynasty was the main pass on the Sino-Vietnamese border, known as the "South Gate of China", and its strategic position was extraordinary. After Nigri led the French army to capture Langshan, he advanced towards Zhennan Pass, and Feng Zicai was waiting for it, and the war was about to break out.
On March 23-24, 1885, the Chinese and French armies fought bloodily at Zhennanguan. Feng Zicai personally fought hand-to-hand in battle and defeated the French army. The great victory of Zhennanguan reversed the unfavorable situation of the Qing army throughout the war. The Qing army could have taken advantage of the victory to go south, but the Qing court was afraid of war, anxious to make peace, and wasted a good fighter.
On March 23, 1885, the forty-six-year-old Nigri took the lead in shelling the town of Nanguan. The next day, the French attacked in three ways, and Feng Zicai, who was more than twenty years older than Nigrly and sixty-seven years old, and his two sons risked death to enter the enemy in hand-to-hand combat. The Qing army officers and men saw that the commander was the first soldier, and they all bravely rushed to kill. After successive victories in Vietnam, Nigri thought that he could easily capture Zhennan Pass and attack the territory of Guangxi, but unexpectedly, the Chinese army fought extremely heroically, and after two days of fierce fighting, the French army was in danger of being besieged. To avoid siege, Nigri led his army to retreat and suffered defeat for the first time in his leading career. After the new defeat of the French army, they fled south, and the Qing army withdrew from Lang Son before it arrived, and on March 29, the Qing army recaptured Lang Shan. At the same time, Liu Yongfu's Black Banner Army also won in the area of Lintao, recovering more than ten prefectures and counties. France suffered a series of military defeats, especially at Lang Son that led to the fall of the cabinet of its prime minister, Jules François Camille Ferry. Just as Feng Zicai took advantage of the victory to mobilize a large army to prepare to advance into Hanoi, the Qing court decided to negotiate a peace contract, causing the Qing army to stop moving.
Fujian shipping administration and navy division are both products of the foreign affairs movement, what does their fiasco portend?
The foreign affairs movement that began in 1860 attached great importance to the establishment of a new navy, and the major achievement in the early stage, namely the Fuzhou Shipping Administration Bureau founded by Zuo Zongtang in 1866 and continued to be operated by Shen Baozhen, was an important reliance for the Fujian Admiralty. As a result, in the Sino-French War, this achievement of the Western Affairs Movement was seriously destroyed, and only later was the establishment of the Beiyang Naval Division in 1888. The disastrous defeat of Fujian's shipping administration had already exposed the fundamental weakness of the foreign affairs movement, that is, it only sought to learn from the West in military science and technology, rather than thorough reform, but the successors did not make a profound reflection, so the entire army of the Beiyang Naval Division in the future Sino-Japanese naval battle was destroyed.