In consequence, the Governors were obliged to repress the legitimate aspirations of the military officers, and refused to sanction operations on an extensive scale, which, though necessary, would most probably attract public attention in France. The natural result of this situation was that during the whole of this period the relations between the civil and military powers in the colony were of the worst. In the French Chamber the Ministry would announce from time to time that the work of pacification was making rapid strides, that organised resistance was at an end, and that the occasional depredations which occurred--the importance of which, they stated, was magnified by the sensational press of the metropolis--were the acts of a few stray Chinese brigands (_Voleurs de Vaches_), whom the local militia and gendarmes were quite able to bring to order. In the meanwhile, the bands aforementioned, secure in the comparative inactivity of the French, continued to plunder the villages and capture the native authorities, who were liberated after payment of a ransom. In 1889 the famous Luu-Ky succeeded in carrying off three French colonists, the two brothers Rocque and Baptiste Costa. They were surprised whilst on a shooting expedition a few miles from Haïphong. They remained prisoners of the band for upwards of two months, and suffered every possible indignity and great privations. They were finally liberated on the payment of 80,000 dollars. Encouraged by the success of their compatriots, the Chinese soldiers, who garrisoned the blockhouses and forts along the Kwang-si and Kwang-tung frontiers, would leave their uniforms behind them and pass into the provinces of Lang-son and Cao-Bang, where they would raid the rich valleys, burn the villages, drive away the cattle, slaughter the male inhabitants, and carry back the women into captivity. In the Yen-Thé the partisans of Ham-Nghi, who were secretly encouraged by the mandarins in Hué, had raised the standard of revolt. They occupied strong and well-fortified positions, possessed an abundance of arms and ammunition, and were ably generalled by De-Nam, a former military mandarin of the exiled Emperor, who received tribute in money or rice from the majority of the rich villages in the Upper Delta, the inhabitants of which undoubtedly sympathised with the rebels, and aided them by every means in their power. Such was the position of affairs in the Tonquin in April, 1891. On the morning of the 22nd April our detachment was taken on board one of the small but well-built river steamers which resemble in form the boats running on the Mississippi.