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Hall of Vietnamese Commanders
Trương Định
Led the guerrilla war against the French round Gò Công (1859–1864)
- 1820 – 1864
- Also called Trương Công Định
- Vietnamese Commanders · 28 of 41
Hall of Vietnamese Commanders
Led the guerrilla war against the French round Gò Công (1859–1864)
Fetching the article from Wikipedia…
Trương Định (1820 – 19 August 1864), sometimes known as Trương Công Định, was a mandarin (scholar-official) in the Nguyễn dynasty of Vietnam under Emperor Tự Đức. He is best known for leading a guerrilla army in southern Vietnam against French forces in defiance of the emperor. He refused to recognise the 1862 Treaty of Saigon that ceded Vietnamese territory to France.
The son of a military mandarin from central Vietnam, Định moved south when his father was posted to Gia Định as the provincial commander. Định grew up to lead a military colony, overseeing the settlement and economic development of his constituency. He gained a reputation for being an able leader and land developer who cared for his people. When France began its invasion of southern Vietnam in 1859, Định organised local militia to reinforce the imperial army. As the regular army units suffered defeats on the battlefield, its remnants joined Định's partisans, and by 1861, he had around 6,000 men under his command. Định built his own resistance base and organised guerrilla attacks against the French. His success led Tự Đức to grant Định command of the southern partisans and to order the regular commanders to coordinate their plans with him. Định's forces quickly gained the respect of the French. They focused on disrupting the French bureaucracy and military posts in addition to the transportation of rice. Their most notable attack was the sinking of L'Espérance in December 1861.
Amid growing military setbacks, Vietnam signed the Treaty of Saigon in June 1862, losing three southern provinces which became the French colony of Cochinchina. Tự Đức hoped that by abiding by the treaty, Vietnam could eventually negotiate the future return of the territory. He ordered the partisans to disband, but Định refused to recognise the treaty and disobeyed the monarch, fighting on in defense of his homeland. With the loss of imperial support, Định's forces began to struggle against the superior resources of the French. His men were gradually worn down and, following an ambush, Định committed suicide to avoid being captured.
Vietnamese and French historians have fiercely debated Định's choice to disregard the treaty. The effectiveness of Định's insurgency led French officials to claim that Tự Đức was secretly assisting him, thereby violating the treaty, a pretext the French used to seize three more provinces in 1867. Vietnamese records dispute this, contending that Tự Đức attempted to ensure Định's compliance with the treaty. Định's defiance of the emperor has led historians to debate whether his actions were motivated by a rejection of the monarch's authority or whether he disobeyed in an attempt to help Tự Đức. Định remains widely respected among Vietnamese of all political persuasions. During the Vietnam War, communist historians sought to portray the Việt Cộng as Định's modern successor.
Định was born in the Bình Sơn District in the Quảng Ngãi prefecture in Quảng Nam Province in central Vietnam. The son of a military mandarin named Trương Cầm, Định went south in the 1830s when his father was posted to Gia Định as the provincial commander. Định enjoyed a reputation among the locals for his martial skills and knowledge of the military classics. He married the daughter of a wealthy resident of Tân An in nearby Dinh Tuong Province, having moved there after his father's unexpected death. It was likely that he would have returned to central Vietnam if he had not married.
Định took advantage of his improved socio-economic status to recruit a group of impoverished people, whom he organised for clearing land and founding a đồn điền ("military colony") in Gò Công. This occurred after Emperor Tự Đức's 1854 order, which granted General Nguyễn Tri Phương permission to organise southern levies in this manner. In recognition of his achievements, the mandarin authorities gave Định the rank of deputy regimental commander. His success in developing đồn điền was attributed to his organisational ability as well as a genuine concern for the welfare of those under his protection, ensuring that they had enough to eat and something to wear. He was regarded as energetic, brave and compassionate. In gratitude for Định's land development skills, the peasants gave him the middle name Công, which means "great public service".
The process of Vietnam's colonisation began in September 1858 when a Franco-Spanish force landed at Da Nang in central Vietnam and attempted to proceed to the capital, Huế. After becoming tied down, they sailed to the less-defended south. The French and Spanish quickly captured the imperial Citadel of Saigon in February 1859—the fortress's commander committed suicide. The citadel was razed and the substantial supplies were confiscated. The leaderless and defeated imperial troops fled in disarray. The attacks were ordered by French Emperor Napoleon III. French diplomats, naval officers, merchants and missionaries had long advocated the expedition. The missionaries wanted the French administration to facilitate their work converting the Vietnamese to Roman Catholicism, while military and business figures saw strategic and commercial opportunities in Vietnam. Napoleon's motivations were primarily imperial, strategic and commercial, but he found it convenient to cite "freedom of religion" as his justification for taking action. The Nguyễn Dynasty was Confucianist and had restricted the activity of missionaries. The belief system of Christianity was incompatible with the Confucian belief that the monarch was the "son of heaven".
In response to the razing of the Citadel of Saigon, Định organized his local levies into a guerrilla force that initially numbered between 500 and 1,000 men, operating out of Thuan Kieu. They were armed with bladed spears, bow and arrows, fire lances, knives, machetes, sabres, swords, and a small amount of firearms, who were trained and ready at whatsoever moment. As a renowned local leader who was respected for his leadership and military prowess, Định naturally assumed a lead role in the partisan movement that responded to Tự Đức's appeals for popular resistance against the French aggression. In the initial phase of the conflict, the local militias concentrated on evacuating the populace from areas that had been taken over by the French, while urging those who chose to stay to not cooperate with them. Snipers were deployed into French areas to assassinate isolated soldiers.
In 1861, Định moved his men to Tân Hòa sub-prefecture in the Gò Công area. Tan Hoa was an ideal location for a resistance base. It was close to newly formed resistance groups led by Nguyễn Trung Trực, Tran Xuan Hoa and others in the Gò Công and Mỹ Tho area, yet was also close to Saigon. In February of that year, the French besieged the citadel of Ky Hoa, quickly seizing the fort due to their advanced weaponry, along capturing a large quantity of the citadel weapons, artillery and food supplies. Having fought at Ky Hoa, Định knew he needed more fighters to at least have a fighting chance against the French's, so he decided to incorporate any soldier who wanted to protect their homeland, from the defeated Southern Army into his ranks. Who many have been astray after their commander of the fallen Saigon Citadel in 1859, Governor General of Gia Dinh and Bien Hoa Võ Duy Ninh committed suicide after their defeat. In May 1861, Admiral Léonard Charner ordered the dissolution of the đồn điền of Gò Công. He went about confiscating the land of those Vietnamese who remained loyal to the monarchy, giving it to his collaborators. French impositions against the trade of rice via nearby waterways caused a further backlash from the locals of Gò Công. In 1861, the resistance leaders in the Gò Công area delegated Định to travel to Biên Hòa to seek permission from Imperial Military Commissioner Nguyen Ba Nghi to "turn around the situation".
Appointed to the rank of lieutenant colonel, Định began to stockpile foodstuffs, manufacture weapons, and recruit forces from the populace with the help of officers from the imperial army. His forces grew to around 6,000 men by June 1861. The French began to report that junks from Singapore and Hong Kong had arrived in Gò Công with shipments of European-made weapons. Định's forces began inflicting substantial damage on the European troops, largely because of their intimate knowledge of the terrain, skill in hit-and-run guerrilla tactics, and popular support from the local villagers. Định's men focused on targeting French soldiers stationed around the countryside and ambushing military installations that weren’t well concentrated as a consequence of their guerrilla pursuit. Learning of Định's role in support of the Nguyễn dynasty's call for popular resistance, Tự Đức promoted him to the rank of lieutenant colonel for the Gia Định region. Later in 1861, the imperial regulars were defeated at Biên Hòa, and the commanding Vietnamese officers were ordered by the royal authorities to meet Định at Tan Hoa to develop a plan for retaking Biên Hòa. As a result, the number of troops under Định's direct authority grew. Early in 1862, the Nguyễn court granted Định command of all the southern nghĩa quân (righteous soldiers), the term that Huế used for the partisans. Định continued to lead raids on enemy forces from his base in Gò Công. Friction developed between the regular army and Định's partisans as to whether to stage aggressive sorties from Tan Hoa, as was Định's strategy, or to bide their time and engage in military buildup.
Định's nghĩa quân quickly earned the respect of the opposing French naval officers. Léopold Pallu de la Barrière, who defended the posts at Gò Công from Định's attacks, was surprised by their ferocity. Unaware of their nationalist feelings, de la Barrière had expected the Vietnamese to live submissively under any ruler that would allow them to sow their crops. He wrote:
The attack on Gò Công by a group of armed, skillfully led men surprised everyone. We thought that the Annamites were still submerged in fear, that the masses were enslaved, cowardly, the dregs of empire ... incapable of any act of resistance.
He went on to recognise the popular nature of the partisans' efforts, stating that the "centre of resistance was everywhere, infinitely subdivided"; he regarded every peasant as a centre of resistance.
From the middle of 1861, Định's Gò Công guerrillas focused on three objectives: to disrupt the newly created French bureaucracy, to disrupt their military outposts and to disrupt the transport of rice to Cholon, the main commercial hub of southern Vietnam. The first major attack against the French administration in the area targeted the Gò Công district office on 22 June 1861. At 05:00, 600 rebels under the command of Do Dinh Thoai stormed the military post in the town, engaging the French troops in hand-to-hand combat with lances, bayonets, knives and bamboo sticks. The French were surprised by the attack, losing one soldier and having 100 wounded. By the time reinforcements and naval cover had arrived from Mỹ Tho, Định's men had fled. Thoai—who had been the district chief until the French invasion—was among the 14 killed.
On 27 September, the guerrillas assassinated the French-installed chief of Gò Công, displaying his severed head in the town market. The chief's servant, who was an informant for Định, aided this operation. The killing had the effect of intimidating the chief's designated successor into submitting to the rebels and ceasing his service for the French. In November 1861, Định's men went into the town of Mỹ Tho to recruit militants and collect food supplies. During this time, they attacked and burned pro-French villages and their leaders.
Định's Gò Công insurgents attempted to stop rice from being shipped to Cholon by attacking the French lorchas and apprehending the trading vessels on the local waterways. A French report in November 1861 noted that shipping had been severely disrupted and restricted, despite high levels of French naval protection.
The most notable of the seaborne attacks was the burning of the French Navy lorcha L'Espérance on Nhat Tao Canal on 10 December 1861. Around 150 guerrillas commanded by Nguyễn Trung Trực ambushed the vessel, killing all but 3 of the crew before burning and sinking the boat. The attack buoyed Vietnamese morale and instilled confidence among the freedom fighters that they could fight against French naval forces. The sinking earned the specific praise of Emperor Tự Đức, who described the incident as "most outstanding".
However, the overall Vietnamese military performance was not as successful as Định's guerrilla activities. On 5 June 1862, Định broke with the Nguyễn army after the court's plenipotentiary Phan Thanh Giản and another official, Lam Duy Hiep, signed the Treaty of Saigon. This agreement ceded the three southern provinces of Gia Định, Định Tường and Biên Hòa to France; they became the colony of Cochinchina. The treaty was accompanied by financial payments to France, religious concessions to missionaries and commercial opportunities for European merchants. Militarily, the withdrawal of the Nguyễn army deprived the resistance of the logistical support that could be provided by a regular force. It also permitted the French to concentrate their efforts against a single antagonist. Politically, the treaty provided, for those Vietnamese who needed one, a legal basis to collaborate with the French on Cochinchinese soil. As a result, the colonial forces found it easier to recruit militia and administrative personnel among Vietnamese who had been too afraid or too embarrassed to serve the French openly before the 1862 treaty. Định then allied himself with Võ Duy Dương to form the Movement of Popular Self Defense (Phong Trao Nhan Dan Tu Ve), creating an operations base in Đồng Tháp.
Text from the Wikipedia article “Trương Định”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.