Warring Societies of Pre-colonial Southeast AsiaPortuguese also sent him eight or nine warships of different sizes and had
a plan to set up a factory in order to sustain delivery. Two French ships,
Garonne and Robuste, were reportedly anchored at Saint-Jacques (Vung
Tau) selling commodities and firearms to the Nguyen.^53 In a letter sent
to the Portuguese king in 1791, the Nguyen prince asked to purchase
ten thousand muskets, two thousand cast-iron cannon, each weighing
60.45 kilograms, and two thousand explosive shells (twenty centimeters
in diameter).^54 In addition, he sent officers to the Malay–Indonesian
Archipelago to purchase weapons almost every year. In 1795, he even
dispatched a certain mercenary by the name of Olivier to Europe to
acquire more firearms.^55
Certainly, in the last decade of the eighteenth century, both the
Tayson and Nguyen Phuc Anh attempted to employ artillery of all sorts
in military operations, particularly for naval use. Each Tayson legion was
provided with a large number of cannon. The Nguyen army reported
that at least 35 to 40 cannon were captured after every victorious bat-
tle. In Thi Nai in 1801, there were six thousand cannon of all sizes.^56
On the other side, Gia Dinh became Nguyen Phuc Anh’s stronghold,
taking advantage from the burgeoning supply of Western, Siamese,
and Chinese gunpowder, iron, cannon, and muskets.^57 Adding to those
- Pham Van Son, Viet su tan bien [A New History of Vietnam] (Sai Gon: Tusach Su
Hoc Viet Nam, 1961): 4.188. - DNTL, vol. 2, quyen 5, 82.
- DNTL, vol. 2, quyen 7, 122.
- Nguyen Ngoc Cu, “Nhung ngay tan cua Tay son duoi mat cac giao siphuong tay
(The Last Days of Tayson in the eyes of the Western Missionaries)”, Su dia 21
(1971): 168. - Bronze was most popularly used in making cannon and other types of gunpowder
weapons in early modern Vietnam. Caste iron cannon was also used during the
eighteenth century. Li Tana suggests that Cochinchina also acquired iron cannon
from Asian markets. See Li, The Nguyen Cochinchina, 72. In Tonkin, Dutch sources
give us more details on many occasions, including 1649, 1650, 1653, 1664, 1668,
that the Le-Trinh court demanded supplies of iron cannon. In 1649, for instance,
the Trinh Lord ordered the Dutch VOC to supply ten iron ordnance pieces for
himself and to two for his son. The Company had to respond to the demands by
removing some of its own existing iron cannon in Formosa and presented them
to the Trinh in 1650. See Anh Tuấn Hoàng, Silk for Silver: Dutch–Vietnamese
Relations, 1637–1700 (Brill: Leiden, 2007): 139. The nine large cannon in Hue
are bronze-casted; however, they were made in the 1830s, several decades after
the period with which this paper is concerned. They are, in fact, ceremonial rather
than constructed for practical use in warfare.