page_title: Siege of Tourane
section_title: Capture of the Kien Chan forts, 18 November 1859
hierarchical_section_title: Siege of Tourane / Capture of Tourane and the Tien Sa peninsula / Capture of the Kien Chan forts, 18 November 1859
caption_attribution_description: English: Battle_of_Tourane_Vietnamese_depiction_detail 1859
context_page_description: The Siege of Tourane was a Vietnamese victory during the Cochinchina Campaign, a punitive campaign against the Vietnamese launched by France and Spain in 1858. A joint Franco-Spanish expedition under the command of Admiral Charles Rigault de Genouilly captured Tourane in September 1858, but was then besieged in the city by the Vietnamese and forced eventually to evacuate it in March 1860.
context_section_description: In the autumn of 1859 Rigault de Genouilly, whose conduct of the war had come under criticism, was repatriated to France and replaced in command of the allied expedition by Rear Admiral François Page.  Page disembarked in Tourane on 19 October, and immediately after his arrival offered peace terms to the Vietnamese: an end to the persecution of Christians, the installation of French consuls in Vietnam and certain commercial privileges.  These were relatively moderate terms, but the Vietnamese did not accept them.  Instead, they spun out the negotiations, believing that the French would eventually leave Vietnam empty-handed.
  Page thereupon ordered a third attack on the Vietnamese siege lines at Tourane.  The attack was directed against the Kien Chan forts, to the north of Tourane Bay, which barred the route to Huế.  Its chief purpose was political rather than military, namely to impress upon the Vietnamese that the French were not prepared to make peace at any price.  On 18 November 1859 Némésis and Phlégéton (towed respectively by Prégent and Norzagaray, a despatch vessel recently bought at Manila), the gunboats Avalanche and Alarme, the transport Marne and the Spanish despatch vessel Jorgo Juan (which had replaced El Caño) anchored off the Kien Chan forts and opened a devastating bombardment. Before long the allied warships had wrecked the forts and dismounted their cannon.  The casualties were not all on the Vietnamese side, however.  Lieutenant-Colonel Dupré-Déroulède, the senior French engineering officer, was cut in two by a cannonball while standing on the bridge of Némésis.  The same shot killed a French sailor, wounded several others, and spattered Admiral Page with blood.  Once the forts were silenced a French landing force was put ashore and found that the Vietnamese had abandoned their positions.  Once again the French had won a fine tactical victory, overwhelming the Vietnamese defenders and capturing the forts, but once again the victory had no strategic significance.
caption: French order of battle (detail of a contemporary Vietnamese map).
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