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| Haw Wars | |||||||
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.jpg) Siamese army during Haw wars in 1875 | |||||||
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| Belligerents | |||||||
 Haw rebels (Red flag and Striped flag bands) | |||||||
| Commanders and leaders | |||||||
| Unknown |  ChulalongkornSurasakmontri Oun Kham | ||||||
TheHaw Wars (Thai:สงครามปราบฮ่อ) were fought against Chinese quasi-military refugee gangs invading parts ofTonkin and theLaos from 1865–1890. Forces invadingLao domains were ill-disciplined and freely demolished Buddhist temples. Not knowing these wereremnants of secret societies, the invaders were wrongly calledHaw (Lao:ຫໍ້;[1] Thai:ฮ่อ; Chinese: Hao).[2] Forces sent by KingRama V failed to suppress the various groups, the last of which eventually disbanded in 1890.
During the latter half of the 19th century, bands of Chinese warriors known as "flag gangs" ravaged large areas of northern Laos.Outlaws andfreebooters, the Black flag gangs were fleeing the suppression of theRed Turban secret society.Tonkin (now northernVietnam) was invaded first, when units of the "Black Flags" and the rival "Yellow Flags" crossed theChina-Vietnam frontier in 1865 and set up bases in the upper reaches of theRed River Valley.
Liu Yongfu andBlack forces fighting theFrench acquired a certain legitimacy and fame of the Vietnamese rulerTự Đức. In contrast, the Yellow Flags, under the leadership of Huang Chung-ying, failed to acquire any legitimacy and, pursued by a combination of the Vietnamese and Black Flag forces, were broken up and defeated. In 1875–1876, following the capture and execution of Huang Chung-ying by the Black Flag-Vietnamese forces, the surviving Yellow Flag remnants fled westwards into the upper part of the Black River Valley where they harassed the townships of the semi-independentTai-speaking federation ofSip Son Chu Tai (or Sip Song Chau Tai – Twelve Tai lands), today part of northwestern Vietnam) and northeastern Laos.[3]
Further to the west, starting from about 1872, bands of defeated rebels began drifting across the frontier into Laos, then atributary state of theKingdom of Siam. These new bands, distinguished by "Red Flag" and "Striped Flag" banners, moved south to occupy nearly all of northern Laos. The Red Flags sackedĐiện Biên Phủ in 1873, and the Striped Flags seized control ofMuang Phuan and the Plain of Jars that same year.
Responding to this serious challenge, in 1874ChaoOun Kham, king ofLuang Prabang, and theNguyen monarchTự Đức, sent a joint army to expel the invaders. The force was routed, and Chao Ung, prince of Phuan, was killed. The victorious Haw moved south to sackVientiane, while Chao Unkham sent urgent appeals for assistance to the Thai monarch, KingChulalongkorn (Rama V).
In the spring of 1875,Siamese forces crossed the RiverMekong atNong Khai. In the first Thai military expedition of the Haw Wars, they advanced to capture the main Haw base at Chiangkham. The expedition failed to achieve its primary objective, since the Haw refused to give battle and withdrew into the mountains of Phuan andHuaphan. When the Siamese left later that year, armed Haw bands emerged to loot and plunder more or less at will.
Eight years later, in 1883, faced with a renewed Haw threat to his capital at Luang Prabang, Chao Unkham again appealed toBangkok for assistance. KingChulalongkorn dispatched a Siamese army composed largely ofIsan and northern Thai levies. The resulting expedition, in which the BritishsurveyorJames McCarthy participated, "was ill-conceived, inadequately planned, and ultimately unsuccessful". Thanks to McCarthy's presence, the 1884-1885 expedition is unusually well-documented. McCarthy's personal accounts provide descriptions of the effort, suffering and incompetence of the Haw Wars which are more evocative than those in official Siamese accounts.
McCarthy had begun his acquaintance with theLao-Tonkin borderlands in the 1884, when he led a Thai surveying expedition to Phuan and the southern frontiers of Huaphan, as part of his task of mapping the Thai Kingdom. During this journey he travelled widely through territories subject to regular attack by the flag gangs. He noted that "as we went on, tales of the Haw were brought in, agonizing accounts of their raiding on villages, whose inhabitants they had slaughtered, mutilated or carried into captivity".
McCarthy was greatly impressed by the beauty and natural wealth of the regions, but found the inhabitants living a "wretched existence...harried, mutilated and slaughtered by robbers". As inVientiane ten years before, theBuddhist temples were demolished and desecrated in a search for loot. McCarthy wrote that "the wats had been wantonly destroyed, and piles ofpalm-leaf records lay heaped together, which, unless soon looked at, would be lost forever."
Subsequently, McCarthy travelled toLuang Prabang to consult with the Siamese military commanders and Chao Unkham. There he learned the Haw had advanced to Muang You, which should have been defended by troops underPhraya Sukhothai. However, this Thai nobleman, ill with malaria, had withdrawn to Luang Prabang. The Haw were able to seize the outpost and burn the Siamese stockade. With the onset of therainy season in June and July,malaria was to prove a more potent foe than the much-feared Haw. In McCarthy's words "the rain poured down steadily, and sickness prevailed". Accordingly, the Siamese troops stationed in the Laos region remained at Luang Prabang or withdrew across the Mekong to Nong Khai. McCarthy travelled to Bangkok to advise King Chulalongkorn of the situation and await the return of the drywinter months.
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McCarthy was ordered to return to Laos at the end of the rainy season. He set out from Bangkok in November 1884, travelling by way ofUttaradit andNan. He arrived at Luang Prabang on 14 January 1885, in time to witness the outbreak of hostilities that were to last three months before ending in failure.
The Haw were armed with modernrepeating rifles and Birmingham-manufactured ammunition, and many were skilled inguerrilla warfare. They used demoralising tactics such as mutilating captives, employedpunji stakes, and made surprise night attacks.Magic was still believed in and was resorted to by both sides.Hora (Thai:โหร,romanized: Hon) accompanying the Siamese troops, determined that 10 o'clock on the morning of 22 February 1885 was the most auspicious time to begin the assault. At the predetermined time, a gun was fired and the attacking forces began their advance against the Haw stronghold, a well-defended stockade 400 metres long by 200 wide, surrounded by bamboo and watched over by seven towers each about 12 metres high. The Thai and Laotian troops advanced in companies of 50 men, each under the White Elephant flag of Siam, and established themselves behind a temporary palisade 100 metres from the Haw fort. The attacking forces were armed withArmstrong 6-pounder (2.5 in/64 mm) guns, but these apparently lacked ammunition. McCarthy noted that most of the firing seemed to come from the Haw watchtowers and, despite Thai and Lao courage and almost reckless indifference to injury, "considerable execution" was caused to them. The Haw, on the other hand, remained relatively unscathed. At 14:00 the Thais suffered a further setback when their commander-in-chief, Phraya Raj, was injured by a shot "weighing about two pounds, which glanced off the post of a Chinesejoss house where he was standing and struck him in the leg." The attack on the Haw stockade eventually had to be given up.
Subsequently, McCarthy made enquiries into the origins and purpose of the Haw invaders. He concluded that the Governor ofYunnan had sent them into the region to harass the French. This may have been true of the Black Flags in Tonkin, but there is no direct indication of official Chinese involvement in Laos. The Haw continued their depredations until the mid-1890s, when a combination of Siamese and ultimately French pressure forced them to retreat to China. The Haw wars were succeeded by theFranco-Siamese conflict of 1893, in which the French managed to assert control of the region.
Today the Haw Wars are all but forgotten. One memorial to the Thai and Lao soldiers killed in the struggle stands in front of the oldNong Khai City Hall, now a community center and museum. A larger, newer one stands behind the police barracks. Down by the Mekong River in view of Laos on the opposite side standsWat Angkhan (อังคาร), which is from thePali language for "ashes of the dead", and is also Thai for the planetMars that Romans named for theirGod of War.[4] Nearby, the city maintains theGarden of Sorrows (สวนโศกเศร้า), with signs signifying this is where widows came to grieve.
In the 1880s, the White Tai ruler of Muang Lay, Cam Oum, allied himself with Chinese bandits who were plundering and causing considerable chaos in the area. During the years 1884 to 1887 two Siamese military expeditions made an effort to put down these depredations and reassert Siamese suzerainty. The Siamese operated out of Muang Thanh (Dien Bien) and maintained close relations with the Black Tai there.
(1878The Chinese Triad (三合會) Pun Tao Gong assassinates the governor of Krabi ( กระบี่) , Phra Issarathichai (พระอิศราธิชัย). All 35 people involved in the murder are executed.) (Haw wars1865–1890 Haw 23 Killed )
