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67-584: (Redirected from Pescadores Campaign ) Pescadores campaign may refer to: Pescadores campaign (1885) , French occupation of the islands, part of the Sino-French War Pescadores campaign (1895) , Japanese conquest of the islands from China, part of the Japanese invasion of Taiwan Topics referred to by the same term [REDACTED] This disambiguation page lists articles associated with
134-627: A French colony. This was never a realistic prospect. France had fought the war to oust the Chinese from Tonkin, not to make colonial conquests in China itself, and the French punctiliously evacuated the Pescadores on 22 July 1885. Courbet issued strict instructions that his troops should pay for everything they needed, and the islanders seized the opportunity to make as much money as possible out of
201-418: A basic interrupted-thread screw sufficiently long enough to have enough thread to secure the cartridge on firing still required three separate motions to operate – rotate, withdraw, swing aside after firing, and repeated in reverse before firing. Elswick Ordnance Company (Armstrong's ordnance arm) developed a coned version of the interrupted-thread screw, with a decreasing rather than constant diameter towards
268-479: A battery armed with smoothbore cannon to sweep the plain to the east of Makung and a large entrenched camp to the north of the town to house the regular troops of the island's garrison. The outer Chinese defences were much weaker. The southern entrance to P'eng-hu Bay was covered on the west by the Hsiaochi battery on Fisher Island (modern Xiyu ), and on the east by a battery on Plate Island. The Hsiaochi battery
335-438: A gas-tight seal. This was further complicated by the need to screw and unscrew the breech as quickly as possible; this was met by the " interrupted thread " breech block, where the block circumference was alternately threaded and left unthreaded at a slightly smaller diameter to allow the whole block to be fully inserted and rotated a fraction to lock it. Hence if the block circumference was divided into two sets of threads and gaps,
402-454: A marine artillery section of two 80-millimetre (3.1 in) mountain guns (Lieutenant Lubert). The Chinese garrison of the Pescadores, which had been substantially reinforced at the beginning of 1885, was commanded by the generals Zhou Shanchu [ zh ] and Zheng Yingjie (鄭膺杰), and numbered around 2,400 men. A number of foreign officers served with the Chinese garrison, including an American officer named Nelson, responsible for
469-566: A single unit. The cartridge case sealed the breech on firing and a vertical sliding wedge (block) locked it in place. These new guns incorporated recoil control devices which facilitated consistency of aim, allowed single-motion loading and could be fired as soon as the cartridge was inserted, and then ejected it after firing, these properties denoting a "quick-firing" gun. This set a new standard for artillery, and made firing cycles measured in seconds rather than minutes possible. Britain used brass cartridge cases for all calibres up to 6 inches in
536-455: The Battle of Fuzhou , in the eyes of his officers it was his most flawless military achievement. Significantly, Courbet directed operations in person, and chose to fight this brief colonial campaign in the traditional style, with ships of the French navy supporting the land operations of marine infantry and artillery. The decision reflected inter-service rivalries. Courbet was cocking a snook at
603-712: The Boshin War to devastate the Aizu castle town and force its inhabitants to surrender quickly, and British Armstrong light field guns proved deadly against Chinese forces in the Second Opium War . However, the British Army and Navy preferred to revert to muzzle-loaders until larger high-powered breech-loaders with secure obturation systems that were relatively simple to operate were developed. American engineer Lewis Wells Broadwell who worked as sales agent for
670-567: The British Army and Royal Navy , but concerns about limited armour penetration of the shells due to limited maximum velocity, safety concerns with the breech blocks blowing out of guns, and higher skill levels demanded of gunners led the British Government to revert to rifled muzzle-loaders from 1865 to 1880, when Britain finally deployed reliable screw breech mechanisms. The Imperial Japanese Army used Armstrong cannon during
737-704: The Gatling Gun Company in Europe replaced a papier-mache obturating cup in bag-loaded RBLs with a metallic gas ring and patented his invention in 1861, later perfecting it in 1864 and 1866; most countries paid royalties to Broadwell for the design, but in Germany the Krupp company stole it and used it for free. In the meantime the French persevered with trying to develop breechloaders which combined faster loading than muzzle-loaders, high power, safety and solved
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#1732765580517804-558: The QF 3 pounder as a light 47-mm naval gun from 1886. The gun was ideal for defending against small fast vessels such as torpedo boats and was immediately adopted by the RN as the "Ordnance QF 3 pounder Hotchkiss". It was built under licence by Elswick Ordnance Company . Both the Hotchkiss and Nordenfelt guns loaded ammunition as a single cartridge with projectile, cartridge case and primer in
871-418: The battleship class of HMS Dreadnought and continued until the start of World War I . The major problem to be solved with breechloading artillery was obturation : the sealing of the breech after firing to ensure that none of the gases generated by the burning of the propellant (initially gunpowder ) escaped rearwards through the breech. This was both a safety issue and one of gun performance – all
938-482: The 19th century, only muzzle-loaders were used. In 1837, Martin von Wahrendorff patented a design for a breech-loader with a cylindrical breech plug secured by a horizontal wedge; it was adopted by Sweden in 1854. Independently, Giovanni Cavalli first proposed a breech-loader gun in 1832 to the Sardinian Army , and first tested such a gun in 1845. Advances in metallurgy in the industrial era allowed for
1005-579: The American artillery officer Nelson was beheaded during the bombardment of 29 March on the orders of an enraged Chinese commander, because his guns were unable to make any effective reply to the French warships. The French bombardment of the Chinese positions on the Pescadores was heard in Taiwanfu on the Formosan mainland. The British missionary William Campbell described the impact of the battle on
1072-488: The Armstrong model in the way it eliminated the need to withdraw the screw before swinging it to the side. Bofors continued to use this in medium artillery into the 20th century. The Elswick conical screw breech is very similar in concept. The German company Krupp in contrast, adopted "Horizontal sliding block" breeches, rather than screw breeches, for all artillery calibres up to 16 in (410 mm) naval guns. This
1139-542: The Chinese defenders and occupied Makung. The Pescadores were occupied by the French until July 1885 and Admiral Courbet, by then a national hero in France, died aboard his flagship Bayard in Makung harbour during the occupation. The Pescadores Islands, also known from their Chinese name as P'eng-hu (澎湖), were an important transit stop for reinforcements to the Chinese army under the command of Liu Mingchuan confronting
1206-701: The French and ROC governments, their remains were exhumed with full military honours and transferred to the French Cemetery at Keelung aboard the national frigate Commandant Pimodan , where they rest today alongside their old comrades in the Formosa Expeditionary Corps and the Far East Squadron. Armstrong cannon A rifled breech loader (RBL) is an artillery piece which, unlike the smoothbore cannon and rifled muzzle loader which preceded it, has rifling in
1273-401: The French cantonments from contact with any possible contagion from Makung. All Chinese houses within a certain distance were demolished to create a cordon sanitaire around the French barracks, several nearby mosquito-ridden streams were filled in, and each barrack hut was disinfected with iron sulphate and phenic acid. These precautions gradually brought the disease under control, and most of
1340-536: The French in northern Taiwan around Keelung , and their capture would prevent further reinforcements from reaching Taiwan. Courbet had wanted to mount an expedition to capture the Pescadores for several months, but the feasibility of the operation depended on the progress of the Keelung Campaign . Colonel Jacques Duchesne 's defeat of Liu Mingchuan's forces and capture of the key Chinese position of La Table on 7 March 1885 finally disengaged Keelung, allowing
1407-424: The French occupation of the Pescadores. Cholera broke out within one or two days of the landing, and by 23 April 15 men had died and a further 20 had been hospitalised. The disease had probably been brought over from Keelung by the marine infantry of Lange's battalion, but the French suspected that it originated in Makung, whose Chinese population lived in cramped and insanitary conditions. Courbet therefore isolated
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#17327655805171474-554: The French surveyed the coastal waters around the islands and considerably improved the rudimentary facilities of Makung harbour. Meanwhile, during the summer of 1885, nearly thirty French warships of the Far East Squadron rode peacefully at anchor off Makung, in the largest concentration of French naval power in the Far East in the history of the French Navy . Several dozen French soldiers and sailors succumbed to cholera during
1541-443: The French to detach troops from its garrison for a descent on the Pescadores. Courbet's flotilla consisted of the ironclads Bayard and Triomphante , the cruisers d'Estaing and Duchaffault , the gunboat Vipère and the troopship Annamite . His landing force consisted of an understrength battalion of marine infantry (400 men as opposed to the usual complement of 600 men) under the command of chef de bataillon Lange and
1608-501: The French troops hospitalised in April recovered in May. However, the precautions came too late for Admiral Courbet himself, who contracted cholera at the beginning of June and died aboard his flagship Bayard in Makung harbour on the night of 11 June 1885. Courbet's body was taken back to France for a state funeral, but the other French dead were buried in two cemeteries at Makung, one for
1675-422: The Pescadores from the west before dawn on 29 March. During the morning of 29 March the French warships bombarded and silenced the Hsiaochi battery and other Chinese shore batteries guarding the approaches to Makung . In the late afternoon Lange's battalion was put ashore on the southern cape of P'eng-hu Island, at Dome Hill, where it set up a defensive position for the night. There were no Chinese in sight, and
1742-465: The Pescadores initially caused little stir in Paris, as the headlines in early April 1885 were monopolised by the so-called 'Tonkin affair' (the collapse of Jules Ferry's government on 30 March 1885 in the wake of the retreat from Lạng Sơn ). Courbet's victory also came too late to affect the conclusion of preliminaries of peace between France and China on 4 April 1885, but it may have helped to prevent
1809-570: The Pescadores until July, as a surety for the withdrawal of the Chinese armies from Tonkin. Makung Bay was a superb natural harbour, and many of the squadron's officers hoped that France would retain its recent conquest as a counterweight to the British colony of Hong Kong. They even renamed the islands the îles des Pêcheurs ('the fishermen's islands', a French version of the Portuguese name 'Pescadores') in anticipation of their future destiny as
1876-455: The Pescadores. The Sino-French War ended on a high note for the French navy and the Troupes de Marine . On 27 July 1885, in the wake of an enquiry into their conduct, the defeated Chinese generals Zhou Shanchu and Zheng Yingjie were demoted and punished for the loss of the Pescadores by being posted to the remote northern Chinese province of Heilongjiang . The news of the French capture of
1943-489: The afternoon Lange's men cleared a force of Chinese infantry from the village of Kisambo and closed up to the village of Siu-kuei-kang (modern Suogang, 鎖港), which was strongly held by the Chinese. Lange's men bivouacked for the night to the west of the village, ready to attack the Chinese the following morning. During the evening the French column was reinforced by the landing companies of Bayard , Triomphante and d'Estaing and by four 65-millimetre (2.6 in) cannon. On
2010-686: The afternoon. Most of the defeated Chinese soldiers escaped to Amoy ( Xiamen ) in mainland China or to Taiwanfu on junks and fishing boats under cover of darkness, though a number of soldiers were caught and handed over to the victorious French by the inhabitants of the Pescadores, who saw no reason to distinguish between two equally unwelcome sets of intruders. French casualties in the Pescadores campaign were 5 killed and 12 wounded. The wounded included one officer, lieutenant de vaisseau Poirot of Triomphante . Chinese casualties may have amounted to 300 dead and around 400 wounded, and included several senior officers. The French were told by islanders that
2077-460: The army ministry, which had long ago wrested the direction of the Tonkin campaign away from the navy ministry. His timing was perfect. While the army ministry was struggling to explain away General François de Négrier 's defeat in the battle of Bang Bo (24 March 1885) and the subsequent French retreat from Lạng Sơn , Courbet presented the navy ministry with an elegant, almost bloodless victory in
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2144-492: The barrel and is loaded from the breech at the rear of the gun. The spin imparted by the gun's rifling gives projectiles directional stability and increased range. Loading from the rear of the gun leaves the crew less exposed to enemy fire, allows smaller gun emplacements or turrets, and allows a faster rate of fire. These rapidly improving breech systems and the powerful new guns they facilitated led to an arms race in fortification and ironclad warship design that led to
2211-428: The block only needed to be rotated ¼ turn to lock it instead of several turns. The tradeoff was that only ½ the block's circumference was threaded, reducing the security accordingly. The other possibility of sealing the breech was to enclose the propellant charge in a metal cartridge case which expanded on firing and hence sealed the breech, leaving the breech-block merely needing to lock the cartridge case in place. This
2278-570: The breech, which required three separate motions to open after firing; rotate to unscrew, retract the screw and swing to the side. Loading required the 3 operations in reverse. This was hence termed a "three motion block" and was slow to operate. While working as a weapons designer for Thorsten Nordenfelt in London , Axel Welin solved this problem in 1889–1890 with his stepped interrupted screw Welin breech block . This had threads in sets of steps of increasing diameter so that instead of only half of
2345-506: The chamber wall on firing and effectively sealed the breech. The sliding block, in both horizontal and vertical forms, and metal cartridge case continued to be the preferred German breech system until after World War II (e.g. 7.5 cm Pak 40 ), and is still used by some modern artillery. The first quick-firing light gun was the 1-inch Nordenfelt gun , built in Britain from 1880. The gun was expressly designed to defend larger warships against
2412-740: The construction of rifled breech-loading guns that could fire at a much greater muzzle velocity . After the British artillery was shown up in the Crimean War as having barely changed since the Napoleonic Wars the industrialist William Armstrong was awarded a contract by the government to design a new piece of artillery. Production started in 1855 at the Elswick Ordnance Company and the Royal Arsenal at Woolwich . His "Armstrong screw" breech involved loading
2479-426: The crucial difference that Armstrong failed to make the progression to loading the powder charge in a metal cartridge, with the result that complete obturation was impossible. Whatever obturation that was achieved relied on manual labour rather than the power of the gun's firing, and was hence both uncertain, based on an unsound principle and unsuited to large guns. Armstrong screw-breech guns were initially adopted by
2546-530: The defence of one of the Makung forts, whose diary of events was later recovered by the French. Initially optimistic, by March 1885 Nelson had despaired of training up the Chinese gunners to the standard necessary to meet the French in battle. The fortifications of the Pescadores were designed primarily to protect Makung and deny entrance to Makung Bay, and also if possible to cover the southern entrance to P'eng-hu Bay, which would have to be traversed first by an attacking squadron. The most formidable obstacles were
2613-459: The direction of Makung. When within about rifle-shot range, there burst from them such a tremendous discharge against the large fort outside of the town that many a heart must have been filled with terror and amazement. Indeed, some say that on witnessing the fearful havoc caused by this opening volley from the French guns, both officers and men began to scamper off from the entrenchments; a statement which, however, cannot be altogether correct, since
2680-437: The landing was made without resistance. During the night of 29 March the French sent boats to scout a barrage of chains thrown across the entrance to Makung harbour. The scouting party discovered that no mines had yet been attached to the chains, and at dawn on 30 March a party of sailors from Bayard went forward in launches to cut a gap in the barrage. Chinese riflemen tried to disrupt this operation, and one French sailor
2747-438: The late 1880s and early 1890s. However, British-designed quickfiring ("QF" in British terminology, which became synonymous with charges in metal cartridge cases) continued to use screw breech blocks, but with their function merely to lock the cartridge in place rather than provide obturation. The powerful backward force generated by 6-inch QF guns still required a strongly seated breech screw with as much thread as possible. However,
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2814-418: The mainland. It all availed nothing. Fighting was to be conducted in a very different style from that of other days; and, sure enough, the large floating batteries of the French fleet loomed into sight. According to popular report, no time was lost with any kind of preliminary formalities. The Chinese commenced to fire on the advancing ships, which continued steadily and with ominous silence to press forward in
2881-476: The marine infantry of Lange's battalion and the other for the sailors of the Far East Squadron. Two commemorative obelisks erected in the summer of 1885 in these cemeteries can still be seen. One is in Makung itself, the other on the tip of the southern cape that encloses Makung harbour, formerly known as Dutch Point (from the ruins of an old Dutch fort there). Both bear almost identical inscriptions: A la memoire des soldats [marins] français décedés à Makung ('To
2948-747: The memory of the French soldiers [sailors] who died at Makung'). A third obelisk, erected by Admiral Sébastien Lespès as a monument to Courbet's memory, was removed in 1954, but its marble inscription has been preserved: A la memoire de l'amiral Courbet et des braves morts pour la France aux Pescadores en 1885 ('To the memory of Admiral Courbet and the brave men who died for France in the Pescadores in 1885'). The bodies of two marine infantry officers who died of cholera in early June 1885, sous-commissaire Marie-Joseph-Louis Dert and Lieutenant Louis Jehenne, were originally buried in front of Courbet's monument (Courbet had attended their funerals only days before his own death). In 1954, under an agreement reached between
3015-443: The mid-19th century, gunpowder propellant charges for artillery were typically loaded in cloth bags, which combusted totally on firing. Hence, unlike with a metal rifle cartridge, the breech mechanism itself somehow needed to provide obturation. The early "screw" mechanisms for sealing the breech consisted of threaded blocks which were screwed tightly into the breech after loading, but the threads themselves were insufficient to provide
3082-421: The morning of 31 March Lange attacked the main Chinese defensive line around Siu-kuei-kang. Although the marine infantry and sailors were heavily outnumbered, French naval gunfire tipped the balance in their favour. The Chinese were driven back from their positions and attempted to make a second stand before Makung, near the village of Amo. Lange attacked them again, with equal success, and occupied Makung late in
3149-557: The new small fast-moving torpedo boats in the late 1870s to the early 1880s and was an enlarged version of the successful rifle-calibre Nordenfelt hand-cranked "machine gun" designed by Helge Palmcrantz . The gun fired a solid steel bullet with hardened tip and brass jacket. It was superseded for anti-torpedo boat defence in the mid-1880s by the new generation of Hotchkiss and Nordenfelt " QF " guns of 47-mm and 57-mm calibre firing exploding " common pointed " shells weighing 3–6 lb (1.4–2.7 kg). The French firm Hotchkiss produced
3216-404: The number of soldiers suffering from frontal wounds, who afterwards found their way to the mission hospital at [Taiwanfu] showed conclusively that not a few of those poor matter-of-fact Chinamen must have made a noble stand against the invaders of their country. The Pescadores campaign was Courbet's last military victory. Although it was a minor operation compared with the capture of Sơn Tây or
3283-414: The occupying forces during their brief sojourn in the Pescadores. Food markets sprang up around the French cantonments. The French were also interested in buying exotic reminders of their stay in the Far East, and local entrepreneurs, including the abbots of Buddhist monasteries, hastened to satisfy their demand for bronze Buddhas, carved screens and other characteristic souvenirs. During their occupation
3350-462: The overall situation in China will once again worsen. It is very dangerous to send an army deep into a strange country, and nothing is certain in warfare. Even if we are successful, Vietnam does not belong to us. But Taiwan is a part of China. If money and reinforcements fail to get through to Taiwan, we will lose it and never get it back. It will then be difficult both to fight on and to make peace, so why should we consider it? Why should we not end
3417-515: The peace agreement from being sabotaged by hardline elements in China and by the Chinese army commanders fighting the French in northern Vietnam (Tonkin). The Guangxi Army commanders Wang Debang and Feng Zicai , whose forces had recently won a notable victory in the battle of Bang Bo (24 March 1885) and reoccupied Lạng Sơn, received the order to cease fire with consternation. The regional mandarins Bao Chao , Cen Yuying [ zh ] and Peng Yulin [ zh ] , who were directing
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#17327655805173484-559: The present day. Britain adopted the de Bange breech when it returned to breechloaders in the early 1880s after some initial experiments with the inferior "Armstrong cup" obturation system. Britain, France, and the United States preferred screw breeches for most calibres, but the major drawback of the de Bange interrupted screw as first implemented was that only half of the circumference of the breech block could be threaded, and hence it needed to be fairly long to achieve safe locking of
3551-454: The problem of obturation. The Lahitolle 95 mm cannon of 1875 with an interrupted screw breech met the first three requirements to a great extent and partially solved the obturation problem. Finally the de Bange system introduced in 1877 solved the obturation problem with an asbestos pad impregnated with grease which expanded and sealed the breech on firing. The de Bange system formed the obturation system for all subsequent screw breeches to
3618-420: The propellant gas was needed to accelerate the projectile along the barrel. The second problem was speed of operation – how to close the breech before firing and open it after firing as quickly as possible consistent with safety. Two solutions were developed more or less in parallel, the "screw breech" block and "sliding wedge" or "sliding block". At the time of development of the first modern breechloaders in
3685-455: The screw being threaded, the fraction threaded was number of steps / (1 + number of steps) : i.e. if the block of a large gun had four steps of threads, 80% of the screw was threaded, allowing a much shorter screw and hence breech block. This allowed the block to be unscrewed and swung out in two motions – the "two motion interrupted screw" breech. Also in the early 1890s, Arent Silfversparre of Bofors invented an ogival screw breech, similar to
3752-478: The shell and gunpowder propellant charge in a cloth bag through the hollow breech screw, lowering a heavy block into a slot behind the powder chamber and screwing the breech screw tightly against the block to lock it in place. A degree of obturation was achieved via a cup on the face of the block being forced into a recessed ring on the chamber face. The system was in effect a vertical sliding block such as later used by Krupp in both horizontal and vertical form, with
3819-557: The title Pescadores campaign . If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article. Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Pescadores_campaign&oldid=933759842 " Category : Disambiguation pages Hidden categories: Short description is different from Wikidata All article disambiguation pages All disambiguation pages Pescadores campaign (1885) Taiwan The Pescadores campaign which took place in late March, 1885,
3886-481: The town's inhabitants: One quiet afternoon during the spring of 1885 the people of Formosa were startled on hearing what seemed to them the sound of distant thunder. It was not thunder, but the ponderous ironclads of France engaged in demolishing the fortifications over against Fisher Island and Makung. Those fortifications were mounted with good-sized guns of foreign make, and occupied by several thousands of soldiers who had been hastily called from various centres on
3953-452: The two Makung forts, placed on either side of the entrance to Makung Bay. The Northern Fort, just to the southwest of Makung, deployed three Armstrong cannons , and was flanked by a number of subsidiary positions in which the Chinese had deployed a dozen rifled French Voruz cannon of various calibres. The Southern Fort, or Dutch Fort (it had been built by the Dutch in the seventeenth century),
4020-515: The war effort against the French in southern China, urged the Qing court to continue the struggle against France. The court replied firmly on 10 April 1885 that it was necessary to make peace immediately because the loss of the Pescadores placed the whole of Taiwan in jeopardy: The [Guangxi] Army has recovered Lạng Sơn, but the French now occupy P'eng-hu. If Generals Feng and Wang do not cease military operations now, after saving China's military honour,
4087-421: The war now, after having won a victory? This communication silenced the protests from the hardliners, and ensured that the peace with France held. Makung became the main base for Courbet's Far East Squadron for the remainder of the war and during a brief period of occupation in the summer of 1885. The Sino-French War ended in April 1885, and under the terms of the peace settlement the French continued to occupy
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#17327655805174154-409: Was armed with two 22-centimetre (8.7 in) and two 14-centimetre (5.5 in) smoothbore cannon. A third battery, sited on Observatory Island just inside Makung Bay, also covered the entrance to the bay, which had also been blocked by a barrier of chains . The Observatory Island battery was armed with two Armstrong cannon and a Chinese 20-centimetre (7.9 in) cannon. The Chinese had also built
4221-582: Was killed. With the barrage breached, Courbet's flotilla entered Makung Bay during the morning of 30 March and bombarded the defences of Makung. At the same time, Lange's battalion left its bivouac on Dome Hill and began to advance towards Makung, its flanks covered by d'Estaing and Vipère in Makung Bay and Annamite in Dome Bay. The column was guided towards its objective by an elderly local fisherman, who had volunteered his services for pay. During
4288-522: Was more easily accomplished by sliding the block in behind the cartridge case through a vertical or horizontal slot cut through the rear of the breech : the "sliding wedge" or "sliding block" breech. The very first cannons of the Middle Ages were breech loaded, with gunpowder and shot contained in pots dropped at the back of the barrel, but the poor seals made them dangerous, and they wore quickly and could not be scaled to larger weapons. Until
4355-629: Was one of the last campaigns of the Sino-French War (August 1884–April 1885). It was fought to capture the Pescadores , a strategically important archipelago off the western coast of Formosa (Taiwan). Admiral Amédée Courbet , with part of the French Far East Squadron , bombarded the Chinese coastal defences around the principal town of Makung on Penghu Island and landed a battalion of marine infantry which routed
4422-584: Was replaced in the late 1880s by the Hsi Tai battery, whose ruins can still be seen today. The Plate Island battery was quite close to the Southern Fort, and could also cover the approach to Makung Bay. Unfortunately for the Chinese, both these batteries were armed only with a mixture of antiquated smoothbore pieces that offered little threat to the French squadron. The French flotilla concentrated off Taiwanfu (modern Tainan ) on 28 March, and approached
4489-429: Was similar in some ways to the original "Armstrong screw"; the shot and powder cartridge were inserted through the open rear end of the breech into the gun bore, and a steel block was slid home into a horizontal slot cut through the breech to close the rear end of the breech. However, unlike Armstrong, Krupp loaded the powder propellant in a metal cartridge case much like a large rifle cartridge, which expanded against
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