16. The Siege of Tourane, 1858-1860
In 1858, in response to the Vietnamese Emperor’s order to execute two Spanish Catholic missionaries the preceding year, French Emperor Napoleon III dispatched a joint Franco-Spanish expedition to chastise the Vietnamese ruler. In early September, the European forces seized Vietnamese fortifications on the Da Nang River, including the fortress of Tourane, which they promptly garrisoned. The bulk of the European forces then departed to attack Saigon. Once the French ships were gone from the Da Nang River, the Vietnamese promptly placed the garrisons under siege. There was relatively little fighting, and the Vietnamese adopted the strategy of denying supplies to the garrison, hoping to starve them into submission.
The French soon found themselves in a costly and frustrating quandary in Vietnam. They concentrated forces in one area only to find resistance arise in another. Pacifying the countryside proved to be an elusive goal. In early 1860, French commanders decided to concentrate their forces in the Saigon region, ignoring the smaller cities and hamlets. The garrisons at Tourane and around Da Nang were abandoned by the French, ending the almost two-year siege. The French lost 128 men in combat, and several hundred more to tropical diseases during the siege, before acknowledging the positions did little to further their overall situation in Vietnam.