Complex sentence: As the French achieved their war aims, they are usually considered to have won the war, but the French triumph was marred by a number of defeats and the Chinese armies performed rather better than they did in China's other nineteenth-century foreign wars.
Split into simpler sentences: As the French achieved their war aims, they are usually considered to have won the war. Eastman, 200--205 Nevertheless, the French triumph was marred by a number of defeats and the Chinese armies performed rather better than they did in China's other nineteenth-century foreign wars.