The Indochinese Front
Pressure in the North
After Japan's formal declaration of war on November 16th, the situation in Indochina became much more dire. Whereas French forces were only occasionally skirmishing with the Japanese forces on the border, after the declaration, the IJM began a full-scale assault into the heart of Indochina. Now that the facade of the affair in Indochina had fallen away, the much more organized Imperial Japanese Navy began launching incursions on the Southern shore of Móng Cái, facing very little resistance from the French. Meanwhile, the Japanese army pushed hard along the Northern border with Joseon. The IJM’s advance was swift, and with so much pressure coming from the North, it became clear that the civil war occurring between “President” Babineaux and Governor-General Nguyễn Tất Thànn needed to be resolved if the French had any hope of defending their colonial territory from their formidable Japanese foes.
Rebels and Guerrillas
Nguyễn Tất Thành had been waging a guerrilla war against the Bonapartian rebels in Indochina led by the self-proclaimed “President” Babineaux, who had announced himself the leader of French colonial forces in Indochina, a direct violation of his orders from the motherland. In the months after the revolution in France, the military of the NFR lacked the organization or the trust to send forces to crack down on Babineaux’s disobedience. Nguyễn Tất Thành only had his guerrillas to rely on in securing the colony. Luckily for the guerillas, Babineaux’s actions against the civilian population and his men over the last few months had done much to turn the people of Indochina against him. After the Pleiku Massacre in late September, morale was quite low among the Bonapartian rebels. In contrast, the Revolutionaries hailed those who died during the massacre as martyrs of the New Republic. With this newfound resolve, Communist forces began a new recruitment campaign claiming that “the loyal soldiers of the republic who were mercilessly killed by the Bonapartian devil left scores of orphaned children to the mercy of the cruel dictator who was Babineaux”. This message, of course, failed to acknowledge that the soldiers killed were both Bonaprtian and Communist and that no children were orphaned by this event. Despite this, this messaging, along with the propaganda machine Nguyễn Tất Thành had spent years constructing against colonial occupation, proved quite effective in continuing to turn the native population against Babineaux.
Babineaux worked to crack down on communist sentiment by instilling terror in the local population. He began burning farms and harshly interrogating anyone suspected of knowing the whereabouts of the communist rebels. While this was happening, he began creating secret correspondence with the British Navy on the southern coasts of Vietnam in hopes of easing tensions with the Japanese. With the knowledge that the French royal family lived in England, he hoped he could establish some kind of alliance since he no longer held any allegiance to the New French Republic, and it was only a matter of time before the military reorganized itself well enough to spare additional forces to reclaim their colonial holdings and put down his rebellion for good. On the battlefield, Babineaux’s forces had the majority of French armor and vehicles, but they lacked manpower and ammunition from their time dealing with the Japanese and Communist agitators. Since they had severed ties with the NFR, they knew that the threat of running out of ammunition was very real. As a result, Babineaux prioritized getting domestic production of ammunition up and running and prayed that the British would sell the weapons and ammo he so desperately needed. Unsure of his allegiances, the British denied his request for aid, stating that he should instead surrender to Imperial Japanese authorities, where he would be pardoned of his crimes against the Anglo-Japanese pact. Babineaux was unwilling to give in to these demands as he had spent far too long fighting the IJM to trust them enough to surrender. Out of options, he partitioned the League of Five Emperors for assistance, promising them access to the rubber plantations in return for their assistance in securing his colonial territory.
In contrast to Babineaux, Nguyễn Tất Thành’s forces had a substantial amount of small arms and ammunition, mostly looted from the Japanese military and what was left of the colonial reserves. They seriously lacked heavy firepower, however, and could do little to stop enemy armor, relying mostly on surprise attacks and traps. The Communist forces were plentiful, but most of them were untrained, having recently joined up from rural villages and rubber plantations previously exploited by the colonial regime. This, compounded with the disorganized equipment and decentralized nature of the guerilla forces, made it exceptionally difficult to coordinate a full-scale offensive against the Bonapartian rebels. Nguyễn Tất Thành and his forces opted to continue disrupting supply lines and carrying out small-scale attacks across Indochina, hoping to harass and delay the rebels and the Japanese until more men and supplies could arrive from the mainland.
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