Henri Rivière (naval officer)
Rivière's seizure of the citadel of Hanoi in April 1882 inaugurated a period of undeclared hostilities between France and Dai Nam (as Vietnam was known then) that culminated one year later in the Tonkin campaign (1883–1886).
He was promoted to the rank of capitaine de frégate in June 1870 and served as second officer on the ironclad corvette Thétis with the French Baltic Squadron during the Franco-Prussian War.
Rivière's role in the suppression of a revolt in the French colony of New Caledonia in the late 1870s won him promotion to the coveted rank of capitaine de vaisseau in January 1880.
In defiance of the instructions of his superiors, he stormed the citadel of Hanoi on 25 April 1882 in a few hours, with the governor Hoàng Diệu committing suicide having sent a note of apology to the emperor.
The Vietnamese government, unable to confront Rivière with its own ramshackle army, enlisted the help of Liu Yongfu, whose well-trained and seasoned Black Flag soldiers were to prove a thorn in the side of the French.
In the summer of 1882 troops of the Chinese Yunnan and Guangxi armies crossed the border into Tonkin, occupying Lang Son, Bac Ninh, Hung Hoa and other towns.
On 27 March 1883, to secure his line of communications from Hanoi to the coast, Rivière captured the citadel of Nam Dinh with a force of 520 French soldiers under his personal command.
His small force (around 450 men) advanced without proper precautions, and blundered into a well-prepared Black Flag ambush at Paper Bridge (Pont de Papier), a few miles to the west of Hanoi.
The news of Rivière's defeat and death reached Paris on 26 May, and the French navy minister Admiral Peyron declared 'France will avenge her glorious children!'
The Chamber of Deputies immediately voted a credit of three and a half million francs to finance the despatch of a strong expeditionary corps to Tonkin.
The French had been forced to leave Rivière's body on the battlefield of Paper Bridge, and for several months were unsure of the precise circumstances of his death.
Most of Rivière's fellow officers naturally assumed that he had been either shot or stabbed to death on the battlefield there and then, but many Vietnamese believed that he had been taken alive by the Black Flags.
Several weeks after the battle the French heard rumours that Rivière's body had been savagely mutilated and buried near the Black Flag stronghold of Phu Hoai.
The body had been gashed with sword slashes, the head and the hands were missing, and the sleeves of the naval tunic had been cut away to remove the marks of rank.
Rivière's remains were brought back to Hanoi, where a funeral service was said over them by Paul-François Puginier, the French apostolic vicar of Western Tonkin.
