The tragic history of the Vietnamese people has not changed because of the variables of the Ming Dynasty, and if there is one change, it is more tense than in history. Pen | fun | pavilion www. ｂｉｑｕｇｅ。 ｉｎｆｏ

Why did France start the war against Vietnam, the first blame the Vietnamese, the second blame the Western powers.

In 1873, after the Second Franco-Vietnamese War, France seized a number of privileges in Vietnam, mainly including the construction of a railway from Vietnam to Da Ming and the right to trade freely on the Red River.

However, the Vietnamese did not have the will, or perhaps the ability to guarantee the privileges of the French, and the construction of the railway in Vietnam was always progressing slowly, and the local government intentionally or unintentionally encouraged the common people to obstruct the construction of the railway, forcing the French to finally give up the plan to start building the road from Saigon, and instead build a railway north of the Red River, where the French local power is weak, from the port of Hanoi to the iron ore area of Shanxi, and finally into the territory of the Ming Dynasty.

But security on the Red River was always a major problem, and the Vietnamese were not willing to watch the French ships roam the Red River, nor were they able to stop the bandits scattered in the area from harassing the king's caravans.

After the Franco-Prussian War, the French, who had endured for ten years, became more and more dissatisfied with the Vietnamese government, especially the status quo of the development of interests in the Red River, so they did not declare war, sent troops into Hanoi, and began to intend to directly control North Vietnam.

The second stimulus was the expansion of the influence of the Western powers in Vietnam, which made France, which had always regarded Vietnam as a forbidden country, feel a sense of crisis.

Although France forced Vietnam to sign the second Treaty of Saigon through the war of 1873, further seizing the privileges in Vietnam, other powers also wanted a piece of the pie.

France wants to exercise a broader and more intrusive protectorate over Annan and monopolize Vietnam's interests. Other countries raised all kinds of protests, the British took the lead in forcing France to give up the exclusive consular jurisdiction in Vietnam, Germany immediately followed suit, and also said that it would set up a consulate in Vietnam, exercise consular jurisdiction, with the Philippines as a base, Spain, which had tried against Vietnam many times in history, began to contact the Vietnamese government in 1879 to negotiate a new treaty of commerce.

The Ming Dynasty in the north made a fortune in Vietnam, and expanded very strongly in northern Vietnam, almost monopolizing the power of coal and iron mining here.

This series of international diplomatic situations made the French government worry about losing its exclusive advantage over Vietnam, so it began to seek to further strengthen its control over Vietnam.

Another purpose of controlling Vietnam is to use Vietnam's geographical location as a springboard to expand its interests in China, and Vietnam's natural waterways are connected to Yunnan, which is a huge advantage for France, so they value the Red River extraordinarily.

The construction of the British Bridge and the Great Asia Railway was in its final stages, but the French could not control the Red River and could not open a trade route to Yunnan.

This series of pressures and pulls eventually led France to make up its mind to defend its special interests in Vietnam.

France's own politics have also changed, the crisis of war with Germany in 1875 made France understand that they are not yet capable of confronting Germany, and they still need to be patient, the moderate leader Republican Grevey came to power, began to implement the improvement of Franco-German relations, and devoted the main energy to the direction of overseas expansion, the German government presided over by Bismarck, gave support to France's strategy, on the one hand, trying to divert France's attention, on the other hand, it also hoped that France's expansion to the sea could cause contradictions between Britain and France.

France temporarily solved Germany's constraints behind the scenes, and the time was ripe for the use of troops overseas, in addition to expanding its colonies in Africa, the biggest direction was Vietnam.

On January 10, 1879, the French Minister of Naval Colony Peddouau wrote a letter authorizing the French Governor of the colony of Cochinchina, Luo Feng, to conclude an "agreement on the establishment of a protection system in Beiqi" for the Nguyen Dynasty. On 1 October, Petúdouo's successor, Liejubury, wrote to Foreign Minister Flecine, endorsing the policy proposed by his predecessor and arguing that diplomatic negotiations were no longer useful and that military intervention was the only viable option.

On June 8, 1879, the French consul in Haiphong, Türk, publicly shouted to a group of French missionaries: "France must occupy the northern ,...... Because it is an ideal military base, because of this base, we will be some of the first to be in the heart of China when the European powers try to carve up China. ”

At the private level, although France's industrial development lags behind that of Britain, the United States and Germany, bank capital is highly concentrated, and its capital output ranks second in the world, second only to Britain. Between 1869 and 1880, France's foreign investment increased from 10 billion francs to 15 billion francs, three times the amount paid to Germany. Founded in 1875, Crédit Agricole CIB gradually monopolized Vietnam's finances and finance, relying on usury exploitation, making a lot of profits every year, and the currency issued became the currency in circulation in Vietnam.

From high-level politicians, the navy, the colonial department, diplomats, and even religious and private capital, there is a unanimous attitude towards the exclusive dominance of Vietnam. Driven by political, economic, military, and religious interests, pressure from foreign powers to enter Vietnam to compete for rights, and irritating resistance from the Vietnamese, France was the only option to start another war against Vietnam.

Last spring, the French colony of Cochinchina dispatched an army of 600 men from Saigon to enter the Red River by sea and occupy Hanoi in Vietnam.

This was the third Franco-Vietnamese war in history.

The attitude of the Ming to this war was to protest.

On the one hand, the Ming Dynasty came up with the agreement reached with France in 1874, when the Ming no longer insisted on the demand for law and order in northern Vietnam, but the Ming reserved the right to take practical action in the case of national security.

On this basis, the Ming Dynasty demanded that the French colonial government immediately end the occupation of the Red River region.

At that time, the treaty signed between the Ming and Vietnam stipulated that the Ming also had the right to free navigation on the Red River, which was equal to France. France has never been able to use this waterway, it does not mean that the Ming Dynasty cannot use it, the bandit armed in the Red River area is mainly the peasant armed forces from the territory of the Ming Dynasty, and the largest one is the Black Flag Army. Obviously, the merchants of the Ming Dynasty had a way to establish relations with these armed forces, so that they could safely cross the Red River.

Now France's encroachment on the Red River Valley has also affected the commercial interests of the Ming Dynasty, and the forces behind this commercial interests immediately set off public opinion against France in China, and published articles in newspapers, demanding that the government come forward to protect the interests of the people.

The French delayed and perfunctory the demands put forward by the Ming Dynasty, and on the one hand they promised that they would not affect the interests of the Ming Dynasty, but on the other hand, they continued to maintain control, built fortresses, stationed soldiers, and sent armed forces to fight against the armed separatist forces that obstructed France's control of the Red River waterway, such as the Black Flag Army.

On the other hand, the Ming Dynasty urgently negotiated with the British.

In 1873, when the Ming Dynasty and France had a tense confrontation in northern Vietnam, when the war was about to break out, Britain was worried that France would be contained too much power by Vietnam, and let Germany continue to occupy the French territory, causing the balance of the European continent to be broken.

Britain promised the Ming not to support any country in military action in northern Vietnam, especially north of the Red River near the Ming border, otherwise Britain would fully support the Ming operation in this area.

Because Britain made a commitment at that time, Daming expressed its willingness to compromise with France, and now France took the lead in violating the agreement, Daming asked Britain to fulfill its commitments and support Daming to put pressure on France.

Britain also had ambitions on the issue of expanding Vietnam's interests, otherwise they would not be the first to pressure France to accept British consular jurisdiction in Vietnam, but out of the consideration of supporting France to balance Germany, Britain was unwilling to directly conflict with France.

Therefore, history tacitly acquiesced in the annexation of Vietnam by France, but now it is involved in a Ming Dynasty, and Britain also made a promise to the Ming Dynasty that year, and once France controls Vietnam, it is bound to use Vietnam as a springboard to compete with Britain for interests in southwest China, and in the long run, Britain does not want France to occupy northern Vietnam.

The British, out of respect for their commitments and out of restrictions on France, sent a note to France in accordance with the requirements of the Ming Dynasty, hoping that France would refrain from its actions in North Vietnam, so as not to provoke the Ming Kingdom and cause a conflict in the region.

France showed respect for the British note, but it was also limited to words, ten years after the Franco-Prussian War, France's military strength has basically recovered, although the overall national strength has lagged behind Germany, but France really does not take the Ming seriously.

Because whether it is military or economic strength, France believes that it has absolute superiority, and does not take the larger Ming in its eyes, because the Ming is only an Eastern country in the final analysis.

Historically, the attitude adopted by France towards the Manchus is enough to prove that they were not frightened by the huge population of the Manchus at all, and the French warships dared to swagger into Shanghai at the beginning of the war, and later directly entered Mawei and destroyed the Nanyang Fleet, etc., all of which showed absolute confidence in their military power.

During the war, the French government's strategy was always to occupy several ports of the Manchu Qing Dynasty, force the Manchus to submit, and also demand that the Manchus pay huge compensation, they regarded the Manchus as the Manchus during the Opium War, which aroused the anger of the Manchu court, and sent the army trained by the suppression of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom and the Shaanxi-Gansu Rebellion and the recovery of Xinjiang to Vietnam, which was inseparable from the French war on land, and finally the French government collapsed, not to mention compensation.

Now they are facing the Ming Dynasty, although they know very well that the strength of the Ming Dynasty is much stronger than that of the Manchu Dynasty, but they agreed to defeat the Manchu Qing Dynasty back then, and they didn't have much effort to hit the North League.

In the past, France itself was occupied by Germany, and it was unable to draw forces to compete with the Ming in Vietnam, but now that France's military strength has been restored, there is no need to consider the attitude of the Ming at all.

Another very important point is that although there are some professional diplomats in France who can look at the military power established by the Ming Dynasty through learning from the West more objectively and fairly, they themselves cannot get rid of the concept of white supremacy, believing that although the Ming Dynasty has made progress, it is certainly not comparable to France. The judgment of the diplomat influenced the judgment of the French government.

In the people, it was a wave of war public opinion, and the French people could no longer tolerate any weakness on the part of the French government, and they could not see the great France once again abandon its plan to occupy Vietnam, obstructed by the stupid Eastern nation of the North of Vietnam.

The judgment of the French people is more emotional than that of professional diplomats, and the evidence of the history of the rise of the West that whites have never lost a war to any other race makes it impossible to believe that the yellow race can still compete with the whites.

Just like during the Russo-Japanese War, almost all military theorists did not think that Japan could defeat a white country in a full-scale war, even if the Japanese soldiers were better trained and more carefully prepared for battle, but no one could see this. Even the Japanese themselves were always determined to break the boat, and Emperor Meiji repeatedly tried to send telegrams to the tsar before the war to report his weakness and hope for peace.

At this time, the French interest groups continued to fuel the flames, which completely encouraged the anger of the French people, and various protests continued, leaving the French government with little political choice.

Military miscalculations, coupled with the lack of room for political and diplomatic flexibility, have made the French government's efforts to deal with the conflict very unsuccessful, constantly pushing the conflict to the brink of war.

On the one hand, the civilian clique of the Ming Dynasty, like the Japanese before the Russo-Japanese War, was not sure of winning the war with the whites, and even most people believed that the possibility of defeat was higher, because the strength on the books, France was obviously stronger than the Ming.

France has a better mobilization system, a stronger economy, and a stronger navy.

Therefore, the civilian government of the Ming Dynasty appeared to be very cautious, and has been resolving the conflict through diplomatic channels, pinning its hopes on British mediation.

But the Ming government does not have much room for retreat, because the northern region of Vietnam now supplies all the iron ore of the Ming Dynasty, 80% of the coal mines, how can the industrial era develop without coal and iron?

Therefore, the northern part of Vietnam is equivalent to the lifeline of the Ming economy, and accepting the French occupation of the north of Vietnam is equivalent to tolerating France to cut off the lifeline of the Ming Dynasty, at least it is also to let the lifeline of the Ming Dynasty be in the hands of France, and in the future we will have to rely on the French to survive.

However, the direct involvement of the Ming in the war also required a strong enough stimulus, which the French quickly provided, and the French army foolishly landed on Hongji and occupied this coal supply area of the Ming Dynasty.

Daming issued the strongest response this time, while protesting, while sending troops into Vietnam again, trying to force the French army to withdraw from Hongji, while the French army did not give an inch, building fortifications in the coal mining area, and the war was about to break out, but at present, Daming also wanted a banner of extreme justice.