Louis Briere de l'Isle

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General Briere de l'Isle. Date unknown.
General Briere de l'Isle. Date unknown.

Louis Alexandre Esprit Gaston Briere de l'Isle (1827-1897). French military officer, was Governor of Senegal (1876-81), then Commander-in-Chief during the Sino-French War of 1885.

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[edit] Military career to 1871

Briere de l'Isle was born 4 June 1827 in Martinique. In 1847 he graduated from Saint-Cyr and was made Sous lieutenant in the Troupes de marine, promoted to lieutenant in 1852 and captain in 1856. In the French colonial campaign in French Indochina, he was served as adjudant major du régiment de marine (1859-1860). Stationed in Cochinchine from 1861 to 1866. In 1861 he received the ordre de l'armée for combat at Ki Hoa.

Briere de l'Isle was made Chef d'escadron in 1862, and inspecteur des affaires indigènes at Tay Ninh in 1863.

At the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War, he was made Colonel, and wounded at the Battle of Sedan in 1870.

[edit] Governor of Sénégal

After the war, Briere de l'Isle was named Governor of Sénégal from 1876 to 1881.

Kanya-Forstner describes him as "an authoritarian ruler who angered French commercial interests and turned the colony into a quasi-military dictatorship". Finding the colony in dire financial straits, he increased taxes on imported cloth from other countries, which went some way to placating the large French come rial houses while alienating local interests in Saint-Louis and Dakar. Militarily, he began a series of offensives in Rivières du Sud occupying positions near Benty in 1879 and seizing the islands of Kakoutlaye and Matacong.

In October 1877 Brière de l'Isle's began a campaign along the Senegal River aimed at Abdul Bubakar's state in the Fouta Djallon highlands. Ignoring direct orders from Paris, he sent a force to attack Bubakar, forcing him to submit to a French protectorate over the provinces of Toro, Lao and Irlabé.

In 1878 he sent another French force against the Kaarta Toucouleur vassal state along the north bank of the Senegal River. Again blocked by the colonial minister in Paris, he argued thatthey were a threat to the Senegalese kingdom of Futa Tooro (then a French client state) with which the British were poised to interfere. The Ministry, under Jauréguiberry, gave in and on 7 July 1878, a French force destroyed the Tokolor fort at Sabouciré, killing their leader, Almany Niamody. This portion of the Kaarta vassals was then incorporated into the Khasso Wolof protectorate kingdom.[1].


[edit] Tonkin

Made Brigadier in 1881, Briere de l'Isle was given command of a brigade in 1884 during the French expedition to Tonkin (now northern Vietnam. In September 1884, he replaced General Millot as commandant of the expeditionary force at Lang Son. In the Sino-French War, he ordered a chaotic retreat, trapping French forces at Lang Son. His telegram to the French government, warning erroneously, that the French expeditionary faced annihilation, brought down the Jules Ferry government on 30 March 1885, ruined Ferry's political career, and dealt a severe blow to domestic support for French colonial expansion (see Tonkin Affair).

Briere de l'Isle left Tonkin in October 1885. He was made inspector general of Marine Infantry in 1888.

[edit] Death

He died 18 June 1896, in France.

[edit] Naming

  • There is a Rue Briere de l'Isle in Toulon, the site of a major naval base in southern France.
  • Barracks of the 5eme Régiment Interarmes d'Outre-Mer in Djibouti are named Quartier Brière de l'Isle.
  • In colonial Indochina, a major French base in Hanoi was named fort Brière-de-l'Isle. It was taken by the Japanese from Franco-Vietnamese colonial forces in a bloody battle on 9 March 1945[2].

[edit] References

  1. ^ A. S. Kanya-Forstner, The Conquest of the Western Sudan. Cambridge University Press, (1969), pp. 57-59
  2. ^ servicehistorique.sga.defense.gouv.fr, archive of Colonial police forces of Indochina.
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