Đề Thám: The Rebel Who Refused to Surrender Photographs - Warning! Contains Violent Images!

Warning! Contains Violent Images! There are several photos of real dead bodies here.

Here are scenes of Đề Thám’s camp. Obviously Dieulefils wanted to intersperse images taken while at Đề Thám’s camp with scenes of French and local soldiers. Why? Probably to create a narrative of French superiority over Vietnamese revolutionaries.

The image order tells an interesting story. In one series of images, we see a few prisoners, one on a stretcher, one that appears to be carried by a group of “tirailleurs tonkinois” (riflemen made up of the Tonkin regiment who were locals under French authority, sometimes called red-scarf soldiers) and the other gaunt with hands which appear to be bound. A few cards later, we see three decapitated heads of these three prisoners.

In another group of cards, we see the portrait of Đề Thám’s handsome lieutenant Ba Bieu and the next card, we see his dead body strung up against a pole.

The images are in the same numerical order that Dieulefils used.

Here are some postcards produced by other postcard makers. Obviously, someone took a Dieulefils card to make a card of two of Đề Thám’s lieutenants.

Below are scenes of the prisoners and executions of members of the The Hanoi Poisoning Incident directed by Đề Thám on June 1908. Photos were also taken by Dieulefils. Some of the prisoners in this photo who were wearing cangues (the wooden cage around the prisoner’s necks), were likely later executed. Over a third of the conspirators of this incident were put to death. Many of the others had exceptionally long prison sentences where I am sure several more died due to the harsh conditions of an Indochina prison.