As tension between France and China grew in July 1884 the garrison of Keelung was substantially increased and the town's defences improved, and in August 1884 it was no longer the easy target it had been six months earlier.

He entrusted this mission to Admiral Lespès, his second-in-command, who left the Min River the following morning aboard the gunboat Lutin to meet the ironclads Bayard and La Galissonnière off the island of Matsu.

[6] In the wake of the Battle of Fuzhou (23 August 1884), which inaugurated the nine-month Sino-French War, the French decided to make a second attempt to put pressure on China by seizing Keelung.

The French premier Jules Ferry fought the Sino-French War in the teeth of parliamentary disapproval, and was unable to give Courbet the resources necessary for a major campaign on the Chinese mainland.

Trade was resumed during the middle of the month at Twatutia, it being regarded for the time as safe, and the country thereabouts had quieted down to such an extent that a good deal of tea was brought in.

They were prohibited from making trips into the country; and even in the settlement, with religious processions, crackers, and, gongs going at all times of day, and the watchmen making a great noise with bamboos all night, rest was well nigh impossible except to the Chinese guards told off to protect foreign hongs, who after disappearing all day, except at meal times, "return at night, and instead of guarding the property, turn in early and sleep as soundly as Rip van Winkle did till morning."

Their matchlocks are described as long-barrelled guns, fixed into semi-circular shaped stocks, with pans for priming powder, and armlets made of rattan, worn around the right wrist and containing pieces of bark-cord, which, when lighted, would keep alight for hours, if necessary.

This method is sometimes varied by discharging the guns from the hip, and it is quite customary for the Hakka to lie flat on his back, place the muzzle between his toes, and, raising his head sufficiently to sight along the barrel, to take deliberate aim and fire.

Tamsui had a large foreign population at this period, and many of the town's European residents formed picnic parties and flocked to vantage points on the nearby hills to watch the unfolding battle.

Capitaine de frégate Boulineau of Château-Renaud, who had replaced the officer originally scheduled to command the attack at the last moment, lost control of his men in the thick undergrowth in front of the Chinese forts.

The court thereupon decided to continue the war against France until the French withdrew their demand for the payment of an indemnity for the Bắc Lệ ambush, rejecting an American offer of mediation made shortly after the battle.

The Chinese took prisoner and beheaded 11 French marines who were injured in addition to La Gailissonniere's captain Fontaine and used bamboo poles to display the heads in public, to incite anti-French feelings in China pictures of the decapitation of the Frenchmen were published in the Tien-shih-tsai Pictorial Journal in Shanghai.

He ordered the town's inhabitants to leave their homes, thereby denying the French their services as cooks, laundrymen and labourers, and he fortified a number of hill positions to the south and southeast of Keelung.

French officers with long memories compared the occupation of Keelung with the siege of Tourane twenty-five years earlier, where an initial victory had been succeeded by a costly and protracted stalemate and, ultimately, an ignominious evacuation by the invaders.

However, Christmas day was celebrated by the whole Tamsui community with a dinner, in which " huge pieces of beef, lordly turkeys, and fatted capons, home made puddings, pies and cakes" played a leading part.

The men were tall and sturdy, and wore a practical dark blue cloth uniform consisting of baggy trousers reaching to mid-calf and a loose shirt decorated with a large scarlet badge inscribed with characters in black indicating their battalion and company.

[27] Liu Mingchuan also raised a corps of local Hakka militia under the command of Lin Chaodong,[e] and at one point even recruited a band of head-hunting aborigines from the untamed central mountain region of Formosa.

These illiterate tribesmen had long been accustomed to raid the peaceful Chinese villages of the plain, and Liu Mingchuan seized the opportunity to divert their warlike energies against the French.

Captain Paul Thirion, whose marine infantry company met them in battle during a skirmish on 20 November 1884, claimed that a gang of small boys throwing stones would have put up a better fight.

The unlucky ones, still clad only in a scanty loincloth, wrapped themselves in sheets or blankets to stay as warm as they could.The rain finally stopped on 2 March, and two days later Duchesne launched a second, highly successful offensive.

Late in the afternoon they captured La Table with a simultaneous frontal and flanking attack, supported by rifle and artillery fire from the French forward positions on Fork Y.

Duchesne's men had been asked to make an arduous approach march of more than 100 kilometres (62 mi) through unfamiliar countryside and then to fight two major battles in the confusing, heavily wooded, mountainous terrain to the south of Keelung.

This spectacular feat of arms, perhaps the most impressive French professional triumph of the Sino-French War, was overshadowed at the time by the news of the relief of the Siege of Tuyên Quang on 3 March 1885, and remains largely unknown to this day in France.

Hut, regardless of their inferiority in numbers, the Chinese officer and his men did not falter, and it became necessary for the protection of the French troops to give the order to fire a volley to frighten the enemy from the field.

Again did the French fire, and again did the Chinese appear to retreat; but, with an evident determination to conquer or die on the field, the Anhui man again returned for the third time, with scarcely a corporal's guard remaining.

With much regret the French officer gave the order to fire, and the brave little band, lacking only in wisdom, met death to a man.Duchesne's victory enabled Admiral Courbet to detach a marine infantry battalion from the Keelung garrison to capture the Pescadores Islands in late March.

The shocking news of Lieutenant-Colonel Paul-Gustave Herbinger's retreat from Lạng Sơn on 28 March reached Courbet at Makung on 4 April 1885, in the form of a navy ministry despatch brought from Hong Kong by the cruiser Roland.

In the second week of April Courbet and Duchesne drew up a plan for an opposed evacuation of Keelung, involving a carefully phased daylight withdrawal from the frontline forts to the harbour.

Under arrangements agreed between Liu Mingchuan and Admiral Lespès on 17 June, the French withdrew from their forts on Hung-tan-shan and Yueh-mei-shan in stages, over a three-day period, and their positions were reoccupied by the Chinese only after a prudent delay.

[53] The Canadian missionary George MacKay mentioned that Keelung was reoccupied by its former inhabitants as soon as the French warships steamed out of the harbour, but he did not comment on their reaction to the transformation that had taken place in their absence.