Chapter 135: Hidden Treasures
No wonder Liu Suiyun made a mistake. He picked up what seemed light but was actually very heavy—not just one or two taels, nor ten or twenty taels as he had imagined, but a full hundred taels.
The silver ingots in the Vietnamese treasury were quite heavy; a hundred-tael silver ingot weighed nearly eight jin. But there was an even more important issue: these were not silver ingots, but gold ingots! A gold ingot worth a full hundred taels, with several more of the same kind piled on top of it, bearing the reign title of the Shaozhi era, indicating it was cast in 1847.
Just this one gold ingot was worth thousands of taels in silver, not to mention the large amount of silver stored in this cellar. These gold and silver ingots from the Shaozhi era had never been used and had remained sealed away in this cellar.
No wonder Chen Yuqin sighed, “I am a minister of a fallen nation, and you are an even greater king of a fallen nation.” Throughout the reign of Emperor Tự Đức, this wealth of gold and silver was not used extensively; instead, only a small amount of Tự Đức-era silver and gold ingots were hidden in cellars.
As he and Liu Suiyun knew, in 1865, Vietnam’s Ministry of Revenue and Ministry of Personnel were forced to collect all the sacrificial vessels and various silver bricks and ingots from the palaces. They only managed to gather 72,000 taels, which, when rounded up to 100,000 taels, still fell short of half of the annual compensation required.
Tự Đức had to send Zhang Wenyuan to the three remaining provinces—Vĩnh Long, An Giang, and Hà Tiên—to inspect their warehouses. There, they found only 720 taels of gold, 2,220 taels of silver, and 10,500 yellow coins. Yet the wealth in this cellar alone amounted to tens of thousands of taels, all remaining from the Shaozhi era.
Emperor Tự Đức often quoted the famous saying of Emperor Chongzhen: “I am a minister of a fallen nation, but you are not.” Perhaps deep down, he shared the same twisted mentality as Emperor Chongzhen—just as diligent, just as incompetent, and just as obsessed with amassing hidden treasures.
During the transition between the Ming and Qing dynasties, there was a mystery: it was said that Li Zicheng obtained the Ming royal treasury, estimated at 37 million taels in silver, with some claiming as much as 70 million taels. According to the “Jiashen Records” and “Jiashen Verification,” the royal treasury was used only until the seventh year of the Wanli era, and for eight years afterward, not a single coin was spent; even some silver ingots from the Yongle era were still there.
Many people dismissed this claim, but the “Veritable Records of Kangxi” provided crucial evidence: Emperor Kangxi said, “During the Wanli era of the Ming dynasty, two million taels in gold were stored in a cellar behind the Yangxin Hall. When our troops arrived, the bandits fled with the gold, and under heavy pursuit, they threw it into the Yellow River.”
The case of Emperor Tự Đức in Vietnam now shows that he was a kindred spirit to Emperor Chongzhen—a king who led his nation to ruin, just like Emperor Zhao Lie.
Indeed, during his decades on the throne, faced with internal troubles and external threats, the country faced numerous difficulties. Thus, he worked tirelessly, accumulating vast amounts of hidden wealth without spending a single coin. He had over a hundred concubines but never had a son; if he couldn’t have children, he would replace them.
He enjoyed life greatly and valued filial piety. He minted large quantities of white lead coins. Even after the six provinces in the southern region were captured by the French, he still allocated a substantial sum of money and mobilized tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians to build his final resting place—Wan Nian Ji. This led to an incident in early August of the Bingyin year (1866) when the military and civilians attacked the palace. People at the time sang, “What kind of eternity is Wan Nian? The city is built with soldiers’ bones, and the ditches are dug with the blood of the people.”
However, he was luckier than Emperor Zhao Lie—Vietnam did not become a French colony until a month after his death.
Soon, Liu Suiyun realized that the gold ingot in his hands was hardly worth mentioning. He never expected that a government in such turmoil could possess so much wealth. Soon after, he discovered the “upper-grade silver” and “lower-grade silver” that Chen Yuqin had found in the royal archives. Just these two types of gold and silver were worth no less than a million taels of silver, and most of them were ingots minted during the Mingming era, even earlier than Baozhi’s time—over sixty or seventy years old.
Countless sealed gold and silver ingots dazzled Liu Suiyun’s eyes. Gold and silver ingots ranging from one qian to a hundred taels appeared before him in hundreds, leaving even the concubines who had seen the royal splendor stunned…
…
The inner treasury was the emperor’s private vault, under the jurisdiction of the Imperial Household Department. According to the Annam History, in May of the first year of the Mingming era (1819), the Nguyen dynasty built an inner treasury on the left side of the imperial city. It was later divided into seven vaults: one for gold and silver, one for brocaded fabrics, one for medicinal materials, etc. The gold and silver vault was the inner treasury, and the gold and silver coins stored there were also called “inner treasury coins.”
By March of the twelfth year of the Mingming era (1831), Emperor Mingming ordered that all wealth across the country be brought under his direct control. He set limits on the amount of silver stored in various regions and ordered that any excess ingots be handed over to the inner treasury. The following year, he reduced the silver storage limit in Hanoi from 30,000 taels to 10,000 taels, with the extra 20,000 taels sent to the imperial treasury. In June of the sixteenth year, he ordered the six provinces of Guangnan to send their stored silver ingots to the capital, resulting in a total of 2,550 ingots. During this period, Emperor Mingming hid silver ingots in cellars four times, storing a total of 1,199,840 taels of silver.
Moreover, compared to the insufficient amount of circulating silver, in October of the thirteenth year of the Mingming era, Emperor Mingming ordered that the quality of the silver ingots in the Imperial Household Department be ensured—each ten-tael ingot sent there must indeed weigh ten taels. These became the famous inner treasury silver ingots in Vietnamese history.
After the Mingming era, Emperor Baozhi minted higher-value silver ingots ranging from 20 taels to 100 taels and left many of them for future generations. In February of the seventh year of his reign, he ordered that one million taels of silver ingots accumulated from the Jialong, Mingming, and Baozhi eras be stored in “gold chests” (cellars) for preservation.
During the Thiệu Đức era, the country faced numerous internal and external troubles, leaving regional stores empty. As a result, few surplus silver ingots were sent to the Imperial Household Department, so only lower-value ingots ranging from one tael to ten taels were minted, ending the prosperity seen during Baozhi’s era.
In addition to the inner treasury silver ingots, there were also inner treasury gold ingots. In the fourteenth year of the Mingming era, 100 gold ingots worth 100 taels each were minted, named “Vietnam Tongbao.” During the Thiệu Đức and Thiệu Đức eras, various types of inner treasury gold ingots were minted, ranging from one qian to 100 taels, with a purity of 85%.
In addition to the imperial treasury ingots, a new term “imperial palace treasury” emerged starting from the second year of the Shaozhi era. Different from the ingots of the Imperial Household Department, this was entirely the emperor’s personal treasury. As for how much gold and silver remained in the imperial treasury during the last years of the Tự Đức era, it was kept secret. All of it was confiscated by the French after their troops entered Huế. According to Vietnamese historical records, in July of the autumn of 1885, members of the royal family launched an armed rebellion against the French in Huế but were defeated. They fled with Emperor Hàm Nghi. To help Nguyễn Phúc Thành ascend the throne to succeed Hàm Nghi, the French gave them 2,000 silver ingots worth ten taels each and 20,000 copper coins. In May of the following year (the first year of the Đồng Khánh era, 1886), the French claimed to have returned half of the gold and silver to Vietnam, but only returned a portion still in Huế to Emperor Đồng Khánh. Đồng Khánh sent an official from the Ministry of Revenue to inspect the goods with French officials. As a result, the French handed over to Vietnam silver ingots, silver coins, and silver bars totaling 78,421 jin. At that time, French weights were used, with one gong equaling 11 taels in Chinese balance. Thus, the total weight of these silver ingots and coins was 862,600 taels. Additionally, 591 gold coins and money pieces weighing 11 jin, equivalent to 121 taels, were given to Vietnam. The French kept 32,230 jin of silver ingots, equivalent to 354,500 taels, as well as all the gold ingots and a batch of gold coins and money pieces weighing 3,050 jin, equivalent to 33,000 taels of gold. Given the extremely high gold price at the time—where one tael of gold was worth dozens of taels of silver—even by the exchange rate during the Minh Mạng era, when one tael of gold was worth 30 taels of silver—just the gold taken by the French amounted to 990,000 taels of silver. In total, if converted to silver, Vietnam only received 866,000 taels, while the French took 1,340,000 taels. Therefore, the claim that half of the gold and silver was returned to Vietnam was merely propaganda. The value of what Vietnam received was at most 60% of what the French took, and this only covered part of the gold and silver from the Tự Đức era; a large portion remained with the French. When Emperor Hàm Nghi fled, 20 chests of silver bars (totaling 190 bars, each worth 10 taels) and 18,696 silver coins and money pieces were seized along the way and guarded by French soldiers. The French also sought 83 chests of gold and silver in Quảng Bình Province, each containing 100 pieces, as well as four chests of gold recovered after being lost, weighing 1,600 taels in total. The largest discovery was in May 1885: 9,142 “10-tael silver ingots” and 78,960 “1-tael silver ingots,” 500 taels of gold, 700,000 taels of silver, 898 taels of gold, and 1,400 taels of silver stored at Thọ Xương Gate—all of which were not given to Vietnam and their whereabouts remain unknown. Hence, some historians believe it is highly doubtful whether the 860,000 taels of silver returned under Đồng Khánh even accounted for a quarter of the silver in the imperial treasury during the Tự Đức era. Nevertheless, these millions of taels of silver became French spoils of war. The French used this gold and silver to fund their military expenses during the Sino-French War, enabling them to maintain an army of tens of thousands in the Far East for a long time. It was precisely this wealth, along with revenues from colonies, that allowed the French government to spend hundreds of millions of francs on military purposes.
Even the 860,000 taels of silver returned to Vietnam became a means for the French to support a puppet regime there, allowing them to foster a Annamite dynasty that would obey them completely without spending any of their own money. But in this timeline, everything had changed. Liu Suiyun knew clearly that even leaving a small amount of silver to the French was a crime—a grave crime. He sent Chen Yuqin to search for the highly secret royal archives of the Nguyen dynasty to find out exactly how much treasure there was. Based on current estimates, it was no less than 200 to 300 taels of silver; in fact, the figures obtained from the royal archives, when converted to silver, amounted to about four million taels—using the exchange rate of 1 to 30 during the Minh Mang era. Yet amidst all this wealth, Liu Suiyun felt a deep sense of powerlessness. There was gold and silver worth four million taels, but he lacked the means to transport it away. Four million taels was just a number, but when converted into weight, it represented an enormous amount—over 200,000 jin of silver and gold. Even if all weapons, ammunition, and supplies were discarded, relying on a small number of mules and horses to transport it, each person would have to carry 400 jin of gold and silver. Only a small number of mules and horses could be gathered in Hue, and such a large amount of gold and silver would inevitably draw the enemy’s hostility, as well as risking defections among those less loyal. But Liu Suiyun merely glanced at Chen Yuqin and Ruan Menglian before saying, “I will always abide by your conditions!” He then said to the pitch-black sky, “Seal this place immediately. No one is allowed in or out without my orders.” He was determined to accomplish this most difficult task. … Under the night sky, Major General Gubao appeared very frustrated. His army faced strong resistance; even after deploying five tube artillery pieces, they continued to suffer from sniper attacks. That sniper who hung himself from a tree was truly amazing—he single-handedly suppressed the entire French artillery unit, forcing the gunners to retreat due to the heavy casualties. The enemy’s reinforcements also made the battle more difficult. Although Liu Suiyun had deployed only a small force—a full platoon, half a platoon twice, and two platoons in total—this appeared to the French as three companies. Four companies! Major General Gubao thought indignantly, “Since when can the Chinese hold off a thousand Frenchmen for an entire day with just four companies?” But this battle was indeed taking place right before the general’s eyes. After a day of fighting, the French lost 300 men yet failed to gain even an inch of territory. “Prepare for a night attack?” one of his staff suggested. “We must overwhelm them with a determined bayonet charge.” The general snapped angrily, “Are these Chinese made of steel? Our night attack is completely useless against these steel-like soldiers.” He understood the staff’s suggestion—to form all troops into company-sized formations at night and charge at the enemy’s black-flagged army with bayonets—but it was the worst idea possible.
He knew full well how tenacious the enemy forces before him were, to the point where he had to be even more tenacious to defeat them.
It was already pitch dark, and commanding a large force in a night attack was extremely difficult; the troops might lose contact along the way and fight separately, suffering even greater casualties.
He agreed only to send a small force to harass them, focusing instead on the attack the next day.
Liu Pengcheng was no longer the strongest commander of this force; his successor was also a direct subordinate of Liu Yu—Liu Yinggong.
He was the brother of the sniper Liu Yindao, who had hung himself from a tree, and a company commander in the Xiliu Camp. Now he led the remaining ninety soldiers.
The darkness provided the best cover for the Xiliu Camp. Soldiers leaned against the battlements, loading bullets into their rifles, while some new recruits dug anti-artillery trenches. The artillery bombardment in the afternoon had taught them that individual shelters alone were insufficient.
The engineers were in the greatest danger. The reinforcements brought ninety anti-infantry mines, and they had to lay them all to form a dense minefield.
Some experienced infantrymen used bamboo sticks and other materials to set up various traps that would cost the French dearly. Others rebuilt the fortifications. That night, aside from the less than twenty soldiers left from Liu Pengcheng’s platoon, everyone was busy.
Fortunately for Liu Yinggong, the corpses and seriously wounded had been taken back to Shunhua City. Thanks to Chen Tingqin’s cooperation, the Xiliu Camp quickly conscripted a group of laborers, many of whom were Ming people living in the south.
These Chinese people from the transition period between the Ming and Qing dynasties had lived in Vietnam for two hundred years, and many had forgotten their homeland. Yet when the Xiliu Camp arrived, many still volunteered to join this extremely dangerous mission.
But what should they do next? Neither Liu Yinggong nor Liu Pengcheng had come up with a solution. It was already very lucky that they had managed to hold off the French for an entire afternoon.
However, the casualties were heavy. Now even the lightly wounded were fighting alongside the troops, leaving only ninety men. Nearly half of the villages had been destroyed by artillery fire.
Although they had withdrawn with over sixty men and lost more than twenty wounded, the French suffered over three hundred casualties. But they had used all their resources today; they wouldn’t be so lucky tomorrow.
An even bigger problem was that the entire force was too small—three old infantry companies plus the headquarters company made up only six hundred men. Nearly one-sixth of them had been lost in just one day.
By tomorrow, the French would already be familiar with the tactics of the Black Flag Army. If they attacked with the same strength, the situation would be dire. Liu Pengcheng reiterated his view: “We need reinforcements, even just one squad! Otherwise, our positions will surely fall tomorrow.”
On the other side, Guoba made an even more resolute decision: “Tomorrow, we’ll push all our forces forward. China used four companies to hold off our four regiments, but we still have enough troops.”
Apart from the casualties, he mobilized all his warships, excluding necessary personnel. He still had a thousand soldiers, and in addition, he requested reinforcements from Saigon.
The sea route from Saigon to Hue is quite short. He sent a warship to Saigon to request support; he needed an entire battalion of reinforcements, whether it was native Annamese infantry or marines, it didn’t matter. He simply needed an entire battalion. By now, both sides had a fairly good understanding of the enemy forces. Gobat had figured out that the enemy troops involved in the battle belonged to the Black Flag Army’s oldest and strongest infantry battalion: the Xiliu Battalion. To attack Hue, the Black Flag Army formed a special detachment, consisting of about three of their strongest infantry battalions, each battalion made up of three companies. The enemy forces fighting against them today were two of these infantry battalions. The remaining about five infantry companies were likely stationed in Hue, and their numbers far exceeded theirs. However, those five companies had to maintain order in Hue and could not join the battle here. After a day of fighting, the four companies in front of them had less than half of their original strength left. Their casualties were comparable to those of the French. With another determined attack tomorrow, if they could eliminate these enemy forces, the gates of Hue would open to them. “Today, we will need 3,000 cannonballs, not the sacrifice of 300 soldiers! Officers and soldiers under my command, this will be the greatest battle in the history of conquering Annam!” After a night’s rest, the French troops erupted in cheers like thunder.