Montigny Mission was a diplomatic mission of Charles de Montigny, a French diplomat who was then the French Consul in Shanghai, to the Southeast Asian polities of Siam, Cambodia and Vietnam, from July 1856 to February 1857. The mission was a part of a French effort to catch up with the British Empire to establish influences in the Far East.
The preceding events to the mission began in 1853, when King Ang Duong of Cambodia, his kingdom paying tributes to both Siam and Vietnam, through Bishop Jean-Claude Miche the Apostolic Vicar of Cambodia, sent a letter and gifts to Gauthier the French Consul in Singapore, hoping to procure relations with France. Gauthier forwarded these gifts to Toulon in Southern France but the French government considered them lost.
In response to the conclusion of the Anglo–Siamese Bowring Treaty in April 1855, in October 1855, Emperor Napoleon III of the Second French Empire appointed Charles de Montigny as the French imperial plenipotentiary to negotiate a new commercial treaty with the Western-friendly Kingdom of Siam and the anti-Western Nguyen-dynasty Vietnam. He was also instructed to protest the ongoing Vietnamese persecution of Catholics. For Cambodia, Montigny also received unofficial instruction to tell King Ang Duong that his earlier gifts to France were lost. Montigny, his family and his colleagues left Paris in December 1855. As France had been promoting itself as the global protector of the Roman Catholic Church and its missionaries, Montigny's mission concerned freedom of Christian proselytization and the protection of missionaries from persecutions. Montigny had to spend time in Rome in January 1856 to have an audience with Pope Pius IX, which delayed his journey to Southeast Asia.
Montigny's mission was a comedy of errors, hampered by frequent delays and obstructing monsoon winds. Montigny and his retinue were stranded in Egypt for three months due to his inability to procure a British mail ship to Singapore. His schedule was to arrive in Siam in March 1856. Montigny only managed to depart from Suez in April 1856, reaching Singapore in May. At Singapore, Montigny was further delayed as he had to wait for the arrival of the large French corvette Capricieuse for his mission. Everything was assembled at the end of June and Montigny left Singapore for Siam on the French steam-enhanced brig Marceau, along with French steam corvette Catinat under Captain Le Lieur and French sailing corvette Capricieuse under Commodore Jules Collier.
Montigny and his retinue arrived in Siam, in Bangkok, in early July 1856 during the reign of King Mongkut of Siam, who had been open for Western nations to conclude treaties with Siam. After some initial problems, Montigny was received in Bangkok with pomp ceremonies and grandeur on par with Chevalier de Chaumont of the seventeenth century. Montigny was admitted to a grand audience with the Siamese king Mongkut in the Siamese royal palace. In an audience, Montigny asked Mongkut about Cambodia. This move made the Siamese aware of Cambodian king Ang Duong's earlier secret endeavor with France in 1853 and the Siamese sought to monitor Montigny's interactions with Cambodia. Even though Montigny acknowledged Siam as the rightful suzerain over Cambodia, he somehow thought that Cambodia could independently pursue relations with France without Siam's approval.
Montigny successfully concluded the Franco–Siamese Treaty of August 1856, which allowed French consular and extraterritorial jurisdiction, freedom of Christians in Siam and the low three-percent import duty, in a similar manner to the preceding Bowring Treaty. Montigny also preliminarily sent a French missionary Charles Fontaine on the Catinat under Captain Le Lieur to deliver Montigny's letter to the Vietnamese imperial court at Huế. The Siamese kept Montigny delayed for another month until departure of Montigny and his retinue from Siam in September 1856. Siam sent some officials to spy on Montigny's mission in Cambodia among the Khmer men on board the Capricieuse to Cambodia.
Captain Le Lieur on the Catinat reached the Vietnamese gateway seaport of Danang or Tourane in September 1856. Fontaine attempted to deliver Montigny's letter to the Vietnamese both at Danang and at Thuận An but the Vietnamese officials refused to receive the letter. Fontaine left the letter on the beach and the letter was eventually returned to Le Lieur unopened. Le Lieur considered Vietnam's refusal to receive French diplomatic letter an affront to the prestige of the French nation. Le Lieur also noticed Vietnamese mobilization in Danang. These factors prompted Le Lieur to decide to bring the Catinat to attack Danang in September 1856, leading to the bombardment of Danang. Le Lieur sent French marines to conduct an amphibious assault on Danang. Vietnamese fortifications in Danang were crumbled and Vietnamese artillery were destroyed.
Montigny on the Marceau reached the Cambodian seaport of Kampot in October 1856, while Commodore Collier on the Capricieuse left to join Le Lieur in Vietnam. Siamese officials, who also disembarked at Kampot on the Capricieuse, allegedly threatened the Cambodians in Kampot not to cooperate with Montigny and went to deliver Mongkut's letter to the Cambodian king Ang Duong at the royal capital of Oudong. Bishop Jean-Claude Miche of Cambodia received Montigny in Kampot and told Montigny about the Siamese spy. Furious, Montigny expelled the Siamese official from Kampot and speculated that Siam had intended to spy on his activities in Cambodia.
Even though Montigny was initially assigned just to tell the Cambodian king about the lost gifts, at his own initiatives, Montigny sought to procure a treaty with Cambodia. King Ang Duong had planned to meet Montigny in Kampot but, after reading Mongkut's letter, changed his mind, telling Montigny to take a journey from Kampot to meet him in Oudong instead. Montigny was not keen on going to Oudong as he had been late on his schedule to go to Vietnam. Montigny and Bishop Miche drafted a treaty and assigned the inexperienced 26-year-old French priest Hestrest to bring the Franco–Cambodian Treaty draft for Ang Duong to sign at Oudong, expecting total compliance.
Montigny on the Marceau hurriedly left Kampot in late October 1856 but could not directly sail to Danang due to the opposing seasonal monsoon winds, having to take a circumventing route. Commodore Collier on the Capricieuse reached Danang in November 1856 to find the Vietnamese in a rather reconciliatory stance due to the shock of the earlier assault on Danang by Le Lieur. Delayed arrival of Montigny in Danang, however, spoiled the occasion as any negotiations could not be commenced until his arrival. Collier, Le Lieur and the Vietnamese all waited for Montigny in Danang. Le Lieur and the Catinat were recalled to the French naval base in Macau, leaving the mission and leaving Collier alone waiting for Montigny. Meanwhile, King Ang Duong of Cambodia rejected Montigny's proposed treaty draft presented by Hestrest in Oudong in November 1856 for Ang Duong's whole involvement in this French diplomatic mission served nothing but to expose his earlier secret endeavor with France to the Siamese.
Montigny on the Marceau went through Singapore, Borneo and Manila in order to circumvent the monsoon winds to eventually reach Danang in late January 1857 to find out that the Vietnamese had resumed hostile sentiments. The Vietnamese Emperor Tự Đức did not care about Montigny and ordered Đào Trí to deal with the French envoy with usual protocol. After the Vietnamese reception, Montigny the French plenipotentiary and Đào Trí the Vietnamese delegate negotiated for a Franco–Vietnamese Treaty. Montigny assumed coercive stance and came into conflict with Đào Trí over protocol and assertion of dominance. The negotiation broke down and failed because both parties proposed totally-opposing terms. Montigny attempted to force an unequal treaty, in the same manner that France had done with China and Siam, on the Vietnamese, who also put forward their own seclusive treaty terms. Montigny left Danang, along with Collier, empty-handed, without obtaining a Vietnamese Treaty, in early February 1857, thus ending his seven-month diplomatic mission to Siam, Cambodia and Vietnam.
History of French relations with Siam and Vietnam
Foundation of Paris Foreign Missions Society Originally, the Catholic mission in the Continental Southeast Asia had been under management of Portuguese Dominican and Franciscan priests. The Catholic Church had been relying on Spain and Portugal for evangelization of the faraway lands. The Portuguese were granted exclusive authority over missionary activities in Asia under the Padroado system. However, the Portuguese missionaries had been struggling, with little success in preaching the Gospel and ended up just mostly maintaining the church for the Portuguese and Luso-Asian Mestizos in Southeast Asia. By the seventeenth century, the popes began to see the Padroado system as ineffective and sought to bring missionary works in Asia back to papal power. Congregation for the Propagation of Faith or Propaganda Fide was established in 1622 under direct papal authority to oversee evangelization of peoples.
Advent of fruitful proselytization in Continental Southeast Asia began in Vietnam. By the seventeenth century, the Le-dynasty emperors ruled at the imperial capital of Thăng Long (modern Hanoi) only as puppets of the Trinh Lords, who only had power over Northern Vietnam, whereas Central Vietnam (called Cochinchina at the time) had been under the independent Nguyen Lords (Southern Vietnam was still part of Cambodia). Portuguese Jesuit priests from Macau began effective evangelization in Vietnam, starting in Cochinchina in 1615. However, like in China, Christianity readily conflicted with Confucianism, which put high emphasis on the ancestor worship. The Vietnamese called Christianity Hoa Lang đạo (花郎道, "Holland Religion"). Catholic missionaries instructed Vietnamese converts to destroy their ancestral shrines and ancestral tablets. Rejecting or refraining from ancestor worship constituted a serious crime that could be punished with death penalty according to Vietnamese law. French Jesuit priest Alexandre de Rhodes was expelled by both the Trinh Lord of Tonkin and the Nguyen Lord of Cochinchina in his attempt to spread Catholicism in Vietnam. In the span of five years, from 1640 to 1645, Alexandre de Rhodes was expelled by the Nguyen Lord four times, of which, at the last expulsion in 1645, De Rhodes was inflicted with death penalty but his sentence was commuted by the Nguyen Lord to exile. Meanwhile, in Northern Vietnam, the Trinh Lord issued bans on Christianity in 1649 and 1658. Vietnamese Catholics began to be persecuted and executed. However, in spite of the persecutions, the number of Vietnamese Catholics grew steadily to be at 80,000 in Tonkin and 20,000 in Cochinchina. Alexandre de Rhodes saw that if the Catholic Church were to establish a foothold in Asia, more missionaries were needed to be deployed and native priests should be trained. De Rhodes made his proposal to Pope Innocent X, who was pressured by Portugal, who claimed ancient rights accorded to them by the past popes, not to challenge Portuguese monopoly on missionary works in Asia.