Embers of War (23 page)

But how to supply these various units with weapons and ammunition? The problem was acute, perhaps even insoluble. The government had managed to accumulate some firearms from various sources, including the surrendering Japanese troops, but not nearly enough. Many units had to train only with sticks, spears, and primitive flintlocks turned out by local blacksmiths. With reluctance, Ho agreed to use proceeds from Gold Week to purchase thirty thousand rifles and two thousand machine guns from the Chinese. Giap also sent underlings to Hong Kong and Bangkok to barter gold, opium, and rice shipments for weapons. All of it helped, but Ho and Giap understood that critical shortages remained, particularly with respect to ammunition. The rapid gains made by Gracey and Leclerc in Cochin China against the underequipped units of Tran Van Giau made clear how formidable the military test would be.
⁹

Another fact weighed on Ho Chi Minh’s mind: His Viet Minh, though already an inspiration to nationalists all over the colonial world, stood alone where it counted, among the big players on the international stage. Stalin’s Soviet Union was not merely uninterested but had been prepared to accept the future of Southeast Asia in Chiang Kai-shek’s hands. The French Communist Party, though the largest in France, followed the Stalinist line and counseled patience and moderation; its leader, Maurice Thorez, vice president in de Gaulle’s government, said he did not intend “to liquidate the French position in Indochina.” Stalin raised no objection. He moreover continued to suspect Ho of being too independent, too much the nationalist, and too desirous of American support. (Stalin had been told of the Viet Minh–OSS cooperation in 1945.) The British, for their part, were actively helping the French reclaim Cochin China, while the Americans seemed to have settled on a neutral policy that—in effect if not in intention—leaned toward France. Ho continued to send letters to the White House asking for support; with each nonreply, he lost a bit more faith.
¹⁰

Add to all this Ho’s concern about Chinese occupation forces north of the sixteenth parallel, and it’s easy to understand his resort to diplomacy. He told anxious comrades not to forget that the last time the Chinese came, they had stayed a thousand years. Moreover, he added, Lu Han’s forces had given aid and comfort to Ho’s main nationalist rivals, the Viet Nam Quoc Dan Dang (VNQDD, or Vietnamese Nationalist Party) and the Dai Viet, who had been thrown on the defensive by the Viet Minh’s superior organization and boldness but who might yet rebound. Better by far to put up with the French for a time. True, it meant delaying full national independence for some time to come, and retarding the progress of the revolution in the south, but what real alternative was there?

II

THE TALKS BEGAN IN MID-OCTOBER 1945, WITH THE FIRST SUBSTANTIAL
session occurring on December 1. Ho’s interlocutor was Jean Sainteny, who had remained in Hanoi after his frustrating experience in August and been appointed French commissioner for Tonkin and northern Annam (above the sixteenth parallel). The two men would form, in the months that followed, if not a genuine bond as is sometimes claimed, at least a smooth working relationship. Ho Chi Minh came to trust Sainteny more than other Paris officials with whom he met, and to like him more. He came to see what others saw in the Frenchman (in addition, that is, to his matinee-idol looks): a deep intelligence that was matched by a personal modesty and capacity to listen. No doubt it helped that Sainteny also possessed a thorough knowledge of Indochina, having been a colonial official in the interwar period. For his part, Sainteny found Ho to be a “strong and honorable personality” who was “not basically anti-French.” In his book
Histoire d’une paix manquée
(
Story of a Lost Peace
), published in 1953, Sainteny would speak of “his vast culture, his intelligence, his incredible energy, his asceticism,” and the incomparable prestige this gave him among the Vietnamese people. But Ho was also patient, Sainteny stressed, willing to maintain an association with France for some specified period: “He had struggled towards [independence] for 35 years; he could certainly wait a few years more.”
¹¹

Léon Pignon, a brilliant career colonial officer with a Machiavellian cast of mind who accompanied Sainteny to many of the negotiating sessions, was more skeptical of Ho’s sincerity and more determined to reclaim full French sovereignty over Indochina. To him, Ho was “a great actor” who possessed a “Communist face” and would not long stomach a close association with France; Paris therefore should seek to build up other nationalists rather than work with Ho. But even Pignon, a graduate of the French École Coloniale who had served his first stint in Indochina in 1933–36 and whose sister taught at the Lycée Albert Sarraut in Hanoi, developed a grudging respect for the Viet Minh leader and did not dispute Sainteny’s characterization of Ho as a man of moderation who favored compromise over violence. Where Sainteny and Pignon perhaps most differed was in the relative weight they gave to Ho’s humility and pride: Sainteny emphasized the former, Pignon the latter.
¹²

From the start the negotiations were complicated by the ongoing Viet Minh–sponsored resistance movement in Cochin China, and by Ho’s insistence on the inclusion of the term
independence
(
doc lap
) in any final agreement. Sainteny, meanwhile, was instructed to gain Viet Minh assent to the entry of French troops into Tonkin, where about twenty thousand French nationals still lived, in exchange for a French vow to bring about the departure of the Chinese occupation force under Lu Han. Regarding the future status of Cochin China, Paris ordered Sainteny to insist that it be viewed as distinct from Tonkin and Annam, and that its people be allowed to choose their own destiny. The talks soon settled into a pattern, with the two men pressing their respective positions in a smoke-filled meeting room in a villa on Paul Bert Square in Hanoi. Sainteny would puff on his pipe, and Ho would smoke whatever cigarettes (Chinese, American, French) were available. Back and forth they would go, two men with considerable mutual respect and even affection, debating the meaning of particular French and Vietnamese words and phrases. They made little headway.
¹³

Gradually, though, as 1945 turned into 1946, both sides softened their position. The outcome of the Vietnamese national elections on January 6 bolstered Ho Chi Minh’s legitimacy—the Viet Minh fielded the vast majority of candidates and won a decisive victory. At the same time, however, General Leclerc continued to strengthen the French military position in Cochin China, to the point that by February he seemed poised to turn his attention northward. Diplomatically too, Ho had reason to worry, as the parallel Sino-French negotiations to secure a Chinese withdrawal from Tonkin were beginning to show real promise. The French, it now seemed clear, were advancing north, come what might. Yet to fight them on the battlefield was quite out of the question: Giap’s forces were too ill equipped and too undertrained. To remain intransigent in the talks, on the other hand, and if necessary withdraw the DRV government from Hanoi as the French advanced, risked losing the initiative to the anti–Viet Minh and pro-French Vietnamese groups in Hanoi.

Ho, aware that a conciliatory posture included risks of its own—it would threaten popular support for the DRV among many nationalists, some of whom were more anti-French than he was—chose to press harder for a deal. He truly wanted a negotiated solution. No doubt he was also motivated by the abrupt resignation, on January 20, 1946, of Charles de Gaulle as head of the French government. De Gaulle’s departure, unrelated to the empire and caused by his frustration with parliamentary squabbling in Paris, removed what Ho took to be a major obstacle to an acceptable deal, and he had some reason to believe that the new government under Socialist Félix Gouin would be less intransigent.

On the French side, General Leclerc had the same hope. He did not advocate wholesale concessions to the Vietnamese, and he continued to affirm the righteousness of the French cause. (Leclerc was never as conciliatory, never as moderate, as many historians have suggested.)
¹⁴
But he grasped that the military means at his disposal were limited and that he faced not one but two potential foes in Tonkin—the Viet Minh as well as the Chinese occupying forces under Lu Han. This necessitated some kind of agreement with the DRV, the general believed, though from his perspective the accord need not necessarily come before French troops landed in the north. It might indeed be preferable to sign the deal
after
that landing, since this could prevent Ho Chi Minh and his government from leaving the capital and taking to the hinterland to commence an interminable guerrilla war in both north and south. Such a war, Leclerc believed, would be a disaster for France.

Publicly Leclerc conveyed confidence, telling the press on February 5 that “the pacification of Cochin China and southern Annam is all over.” The following month he estimated that his troops controlled not just the cities but the vast majority of villages as well. Inside, however, he feared that the task in the north would be infinitely larger and that even in the south his success could prove fleeting. He needed no reminder that he had benefited from the presence of Japanese as well as British forces in the early clashes, and that this assistance was now ending. Nor did he need anyone to tell him that relative strength of non–Viet Minh elements in Cochin China—notably the Hoa Hao and Cao Dai religious sects with their backing in the countryside, and the Trotskyites with their urban supporters—could in time dissipate. The very ease of the military victories thus far achieved worried Leclerc. Few real battles had taken place, as the guerrillas simply vanished into the jungle, perhaps with the intention to return to fight another day. Leclerc would not have quibbled seriously with historian Bernard Fall’s later assertion that in early 1946, France gained control of Cochin China—but only “to the extent of 100 yards on either side of all major roads.”
¹⁵

For Leclerc, then, military force had to be coupled with subtle diplomatic maneuvering if France was to reclaim—as he very much wanted—her predominant position in Indochina. Accordingly, taking advantage of d’Argenlieu’s temporary absence from Saigon (he had returned to Paris to report on his policies), Leclerc in mid-February appealed to Paris to agree to concessions, including use of the word
independence
, which both de Gaulle and d’Argenlieu had vehemently opposed. The restoration of substantial French control over the south, the general contended, meant that France could now agree to mutual concessions, the better to limit Viet Minh ambitions. Paris might well have accepted this line of argument had not Sainteny reported from one of his meetings with Ho that the DRV leader might accept something less than “independence.” Sainteny accordingly received instructions—drafted by d’Argenlieu—to offer Ho “self-government” within the framework of the Indochinese Federation and the French Union. In return, Ho must accept the stationing of French troops in Tonkin and agree to various cultural and economic privileges for France. On the pesky question of Cochin China’s future, Sainteny should offer a compromise: A plebiscite would be held in all three regions of Vietnam to determine whether the population wished to affiliate with the new state or make a separate deal with France.
¹⁶

Ho was in a tough spot, facing pressure from several quarters—from Sainteny and the French, from his Chinese occupiers who counseled moderation, and from Vietnamese nationalist parties (notably the VNQDD and the Dai Viet) who accused him of preparing to sell out to France. The signing of a Sino-French agreement in Chongqing on February 28, in which the Chinese agreed to return home in exchange for significant economic concessions from France, reduced his maneuverability further—the agreement, Ho knew, paved the way for a French invasion of Tonkin.

And indeed, the French were about to launch Operation Bentré, a secret plan for the reoccupation of Indochina north of the sixteenth parallel. Hatched in Leclerc’s headquarters some months earlier (and named for a town and province at the mouth of the Mekong River), the plan had several elements but centered on landing a sizable force at the port city of Haiphong and, in coordination with a smaller force arriving by plane, proceeding to capture Hanoi. Over a period of three days starting on February 27, the French Ninth Division of Colonial Infantry and Second Armored Division—a total force of some twenty-one thousand men, most of them wearing American helmets, packs, fatigues, and boots—boarded warships, and on March 1, a fleet of thirty-five ships sailed from Saigon north along the coast. Because of the movement of the tide, the landing would have to occur on either March 4, 5, or 6, or it could not occur again until the sixteenth. An early objective: to rearm three thousand French soldiers who remained interned at the Hanoi Citadel—and who, Bentré planners surely knew, would be in a vengeance-seeking mood.
¹⁷

The French hoped that the arrival of the troops, following fast on the heels of the Chongqing agreement, would compel Ho to agree to a deal on French terms. But the risks were huge. What if the Vietnamese chose instead to stand and fight? And of more pressing concern, what if the Chinese refused to offer their support to the troop landing? That is what occurred. French general Raoul Salan secured permission from the Chinese to have the vessels “present” themselves in Haiphong’s harbor on March 6 but not to disembark any troops. Chinese leader Chiang Kai-shek, anxious to secure his southern flank at a time when his struggle against Mao Zedong’s Communists was heating up in northeastern China, had no wish to become embroiled in a Vietnamese war of liberation. When the French ships entered the Haiphong harbor on the morning of March 6, the Chinese batteries in the cities began firing. The ships returned fire, and the fighting continued until eleven
A.M.
, with both sides suffering casualties. Chinese negotiators, meanwhile, leaned hard on both the French and the Vietnamese to come to an accord. Strike a bargain, they in effect ordered, or you may find yourselves fighting us as well as your main adversary.