Marquis Zeng Jize (1839 – April 12, 1890), one of China's earliest ministers to London, Paris and Saint Petersburg, played an important role in the diplomacy that preceded and accompanied the Sino-French War

Sino-French War

The Sino–French War was a limited conflict fought between August 1884 and April 1885 to decide whether France should replace China in control of Tonkin . As the French achieved their war aims, they are usually considered to have won the war...

 (August 1884–April 1885).

Early career

Zeng Jize (1839–90), a native of Hunan province, was the eldest son of Zeng Guofan

Zeng Guofan

Zeng Guofan was an eminent Han Chinese official, military general, and devout Confucian scholar of the late Qing Dynasty in China....

 (曾國藩), a leading reformist minister at the Qing court, and inherited his father's title of Marquis in 1877. Zeng received a traditional Chinese education, but was also one of the very few Chinese officials who learned English and took an interest in European affairs. With these advantages he was persuaded to represent China's interests abroad as a diplomat.

Marquis Zeng's diplomacy

Zeng was appointed minister to Britain, France and Russia in 1878, and lived in Europe for seven years (1879–1885). He made his name as a diplomat in 1880 and 1881, by renegotiating the infamous 1879 Treaty of Livadia with Russia. The resulting Treaty of Saint Petersburg

Treaty of Saint Petersburg

The ' was signed on 7 May 1875 between the Empire of Japan and Empire of Russia. Its terms stipulated that Japan give claims to Sakhalin island in exchange for undisputed sovereignty of all the Kuril islands up to the Kamchatka peninsula....

 (February 1881), which reversed most of the Russian gains of 1879, was generally considered a diplomatic triumph for China.

Zeng's duties as minister to Paris were dominated by the confrontation between France and China over Tonkin that eventually culminated in the Sino-French War

Sino-French War

The Sino–French War was a limited conflict fought between August 1884 and April 1885 to decide whether France should replace China in control of Tonkin . As the French achieved their war aims, they are usually considered to have won the war...

. Zeng's denunciations of French policy in Tonkin began softly enough in April 1882 after the capture of the citadel of Hanoi by Henri Rivière, grew more insistent as French ambitions became clearer in the summer of 1883, and reached a climax immediately after the Son Tay Campaign

Son Tay Campaign

The Son Tay Campaign was a campaign fought by the French to capture the strategically important city of Son Tay in Tonkin from Liu Yongfu's Black Flag Army and allied contingents of Vietnamese and Chinese troops...

 in December 1883.

In July 1883 Zeng's optimistic assessment that the French government had no stomach for a full-scale war with China influenced the Qing government's decision to terminate the Shanghai negotiations between Li Hongzhang

Li Hongzhang

Li Hongzhang or Li Hung-chang , Marquis Suyi of the First Class , GCVO, was a leading statesman of the late Qing Empire...

 and Arthur Tricou over the future of Tonkin. The failure of the Shanghai negotiations stiffened France's resolve to confront the Black Flag Army

Black Flag Army

The Black Flag Army was a splinter remnant of a bandit group recruited largely from soldiers of ethnic Zhuang background, who crossed the border from Guangxi province of China into Upper Tonkin, in the Empire of Annam in 1865. They became known mainly for their fights against French forces in...

 to entrench its protectorate in Tonkin, and arguably made war between France and China inevitable.

In August 1883, during a series of discussions in Paris with the French foreign minister Paul-Armand Challemel-Lacour

Paul-Armand Challemel-Lacour

Paul-Armand Challemel-Lacour was a French statesman.-Biography:He was born in Avranches in the Manche département of northwestern France. After passing through the École Normale Supérieure he became professor of philosophy successively at Pau and at Limoges...

, Zeng used the good offices of the American chargé d'affaires E. J. Brulatour to convey Chinese proposals to the French, in an attempt to give the impression that the United States was more closely associated with China's diplomatic position on Tonkin than it really was. The manoeuvre was easily detected, and irritated both the French and the Americans.

In January 1884, in the wake of Admiral Amédée Courbet

Amédée Courbet

Anatole-Amédée-Prosper Courbet was a French admiral who won a series of important land and naval victories during the Tonkin campaign and the Sino-French War .-Early years:...

's capture of Son Tay (16 December 1883), Zeng wrote a provocative article that made wounding references to the Franco-Prussian War ('The bravery of the French soldiers has been so widely praised that one might almost think that they had captured Metz or Strasbourg rather than Son Tay'). To add insult to injury, he arranged for this article to be published in Germany, in the Breslau Gazette.

This and earlier provocations goaded the French government into demanding his replacement in April 1884. The Qing court, dismayed by the rout of China's Guangxi Army in the Bac Ninh campaign

Bac Ninh campaign

The Bac Ninh Campaign was one of a series of clashes between French and Chinese forces in northern Vietnam during the Tonkin campaign...

(March 1884), complied with this demand on 28 April, paving the way for the conclusion of the Tientsin Accord between France and China in May 1884. Xu Jingcheng (許景澄), an emollient career diplomat, was appointed China's minister-general to France, Germany, Austria and Italy, and Zeng was simulaneously relieved of his position as minister to France, ostensibly to allow him to devote more time to his duties as minister to Britain and Russia. Pending Xu's arrival from China (he set sail in September 1884 and only arrived in Europe in early 1885), the Chinese minister to Germany Li Fengbao (李鳳苞) was appointed interim minister to France.