The battle of Hanoi

Picard, [Victor-Léopold]. Corps Expéditionnaire du Tonkin. Notes et Souvenirs de l'Expédition. Infanterie de Marine et Tiralleurs Tonkinois. Résumé des Opérations.

€ 8,500.00

Exceptional French manuscript prepared by sergeant-major Victor-Léopold Picard (b. 1861), a member of the Tonkin Expeditionary Corps during the second French campaign which led to the occupation of the entire province and the dismemberment of the Annam Empire. It is particularly remarkable for the uncommon iconography, meticulously assembled either from previously printed material or from sketches and drawings by members of the Expeditionary Corps. The manuscript includes detailed hand-drawn plans of Hanoi, its citadel and its environs, a double-page map of the Tonkin province and a plan of Sontay, next to a pretty pencil drawing of the citadel and an ink sketch of the Battle of Muy-Bop in January 1885, ink and watercolour drawings of a French soldier and of the Blockhaus attack on Hanoi, a large hand-drawn anchor and tricolore, as well as brightly coloured floral tailpieces and borders.

The text contains meticulous manuscript copies of previously printed material (military agendas, proclamations, orders and reports) retracing French operations from the capture of the Hanoi citadel on 25 April 1882 to mid-April 1885, approximately two months before the peace treaty between France and China was signed at Tientsin on 9 June 1885, forcing China to abandon its historic claim to suzerainty over Vietnam and confirming the French protectorate over both Annam and Tonkin. Among this material appear documents originally prepared and signed by captain Henri Rivière (1827-83), who seized the citadel of Hanoi in 1882, as well as generals Anatole Amédée Prosper Courbet (1827-85), Charles Théodore Millot (1829-89), and Louis Alexandre Esprit Gaston Brière de l'Isle (1827-96), all three commanders of the Tonkin Expeditionary Corps from 1883 to 1885. On a less military note, the book also contains several transcripts of relevant newspaper articles from Le Figaro, L'Avenir du Tonkin and the Journal de Clairon.

A curious manuscript presumably prepared either as a gift or as an elaborate personal souvenir from a key period in the history of French Indochina.