The Spy Who Loved Us_ The Vietnam War and Pham Xuan An's Dangerous Game ( PDFDrive )

244 THOMAS A. BASS
revolted and murdered their British bosses. Most importantly,
Poulo Condore was the toehold that allowed France to begin
building its Asian empire.
Before becoming emperor of Vietnam, Gia Long, then
known as Nguyen Anh, took refuge on Poulo Condore in 1783
during the Tay Son Rebellion. When the missionary soldier
Pigneau de Béhaine sailed out to find him, this is where Nguyen
Anh signed the deal that defined the shape of Vietnamese history
for the next two hundred years. In exchange for ownership
of Poulo Condore and other commercial concessions, Pierre
Joseph Georges Pigneau, a tanner’s son who called himself the
bishop of Adran, would provide the emperor with guns, ships,
and a mercenary army.
To secure the deal, Nguyen Anh loaned the bishop his
seven-year-old son, and together they sailed off to the court
of Louis XIV to arrange the necessary financing. After a year of
exile on Poulo Condore, Nguyen Anh returned to the mainland
and captured Saigon. Here he met up with the bishop and was
reunited with his son. With the aid of Pigneau’s mercenary
force, Nguyen Anh marched north. He subdued Vietnam’s disparate
territories and founded his empire in the city of Hué, the
historic center of Nguyen family rule. The French capitalized
on Pigneau de Béhaine’s toehold by attacking Hué and Danang
in 1858 and Saigon the following year. By 1861 the Nguyen dynasty
was ruling Vietnam in name only.
Nguyen Anh described his deal with the French as “setting
the wolf to guard the sheep.” Phi Yen, his concubine, opposed the
strategy, and for her temerity she was banished to an even
more remote island in Con Dao harbor, which is now another
shrine visited by incense-bearing pilgrims.
Our second day on Con Dao, after breakfasting on soup
with squid and shrimp and imbibing a strong dose of café filtre,
we head to Hang Duong cemetery, which holds many of the island’s
twenty thousand graves. Among the white tombs is a
sarcophagus covered by fresh flowers, barrettes, combs, mirrors,