WITH CHRIST IN INDOCHINA - IndoChina1911

minated in her gaining control of all of French Indo-
China.
In the seventeenth century Jesuit missionaries had
introduced Romanism into Annam, and it was
through their influence that the Nguyen family was
established. The Emperor and many of his subjects
accepted Catholicism, but subsequent rulers were
not as favorable to it. The Emperor Minh-Mang
broke with the French and allied himself to China.
His grandson, the Emperor Tu-Duc, massacred many
Annamese Catholics and some of their European
priests. This gave the French a pretext to declare
war. They siezed Saigon and Tourane. Hue was
besieged and finally the Emperor capitulated.
Cochin-China became a French colony, as did also
the City of Tourane. Tu-Duc fled to the mountains,
and a new Emperor was put on the throne by the
French. The fighting continued for some time, particularly
in the north, until Hanoi, the capital of
Tonkin, was captured in 1873, and this and its sister
city, Haiphong, the northern port on the Gulf of
Tonkin, were ceded to France, and in 1882 the whole
land became a French protectorate.
The Roman Catholic Church is still strong in all
three of the Annamese states. It has many schools
and colleges and claims more than a million followers.
Although the nation is nominally Buddhist,
the Annamese are not a religious people. Their
temples are not well kept, and the people have little