Page:Voyage from France to Cochin-China- in the Ship Henry.djvu/14

Rh Hué, the name by which we denote the capital, is properly that of the province in which it is situated: the town is usually called Kigue, that is to say, the residence of the emperor, or the court. It is placed on an island, formed by canals or branches of the river. The plan of the fortification is quadrilateral, flanked by four bastions on each face, with four covert-ways and four gates. The ramparts are of stone in the foundations and the ditch; then of brick and earth for two toises above the surface of the ground. The ditch is in breadth thirty toises, and in depth three. Each face of the fortification is in length three miles, containing five hundred embrasures: the whole circuit mounting two thousand pieces of cannon: the arsenals within the works contain four thousand pieces, from four-pounders up to sixty-nine pounders French; all brass and capitally mounted. The pieces for the ramparts are twenty-four and thirty-six pounders. Nine sixty-nine pounders are intended for a cavalier fronting the palace, which itself forms a spacious internal fortress, inclosed with a wall and ditch. The barracks are adapted for thirty thousand men. Within the inclosure of the palace are various buildings for the use of the emperor; and round it, on the outside, are lodged the princes, the principal mandarins, and the foreign ministers. Then come the arsenals, store-houses for rice, the bazars, and the houses of the town. The streets are all straight, sanded and bordered with trees: their breadth sixty feet. The eight principal streets terminate at the sixteen opposite gates: the city is also traversed by four canals navigable for barges. Such was the project for the town: but much remained to be done when we left the country.

According to the best information to be obtained in the capital, the Cochin-Chinese carry back their history only about six hundred years. Prior to that period the country is supposed to have been occupied by a number of independent tribes, generally at war among themselves, but all tributary to Tunkin, which was itself tributary to the vast empire of China. When Tunkin revolted from China, the Cochin-Chinese asserted also their independence, under Nguyen, a prince whom they invested with absolute power.

After many revolutions and continued wars, internal and foreign, three brothers, Gn-yac, at the head of a body of freebooters, called the Taysons, (mountaineers from the southern province of Siampa) expelling the sovereign of the family of Nguyen, divided the country among them. In 1776, one of the brothers abdicated his throne, and the eldest chose the southern portion of Cochin-China, the northern falling to the youngest, who annexed the kingdom of Tunkin, after