ABSTRACT
Among the European employees of the Chinese Customs was a German named Detring who had spent years in Tientsin where he had enjoyed Li Hung-chang’s confidence. At the end of March 1884, while in Hong Kong on his way to take up the post of Customs commissioner at Canton, he encountered an old acquaintance of his Tientsin days, a French naval captain named Fournier, who obligingly offered him a passage to his destination. The substitution of rulers was without doubt intended to inaugurate a fresh attempt at resistance to the French, but by ill luck it occurred on the very eve of Courbet’s success at Sontay. The French had had the foresight to take an educated Vietnamese along with them to act as interpreter, but General Millot had enormous difficulty in elucidating what had been written.
