Franco-Siamese War
| Franco-Siamese War (1893) | |||||||||
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 French ships Inconstant and Comète under fire in the Paknam incident, 13 July 1893 |
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| Belligerents | |||||||||
 Kingdom of Siam
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| Commanders and leaders | |||||||||
 Auguste Pavie Jean de Lanessan
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Chulalongkorn Devavongse Phraya Chonlayutyothin
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The Franco-Siamese War of 1893 was a conflict between the French Third Republic and the Kingdom of Siam. Auguste Pavie, French vice consul in Luang Prabang in 1886, was the chief agent in furthering French interests in Laos. His intrigues, which took advantage of Siamese weakness in the region and periodic invasions by Vietnamese rebels from Tonkin, increased tensions between Bangkok and Paris. Following the conflict, the Siamese agreed to cede Laos to France, an act that led to the significant expansion of French Indochina.
The conflict started when French Indochina's Governor-General Jean de Lanessan sent Auguste Pavie as consul to Bangkok to bring Laos under French rule. The government in Bangkok, mistakenly believing that they would be supported by the British government, refused to concede territory east of the Mekong and instead reinforced their military and administrative presence.
Events were brought to a head by two separate incidents when Siamese governors in Khammuan and Nong Khai expelled three French merchants from the middle Mekong in September 1892, two of them, Champenois and Esquilot, on suspicion of opium smuggling. Shortly afterwards, the French consul in Luang Prabang, Massie, feverish and discouraged, committed suicide on his way back to Saigon. Back in France, these incidents were used by the colonial lobby (Parti Colonial) to stir up nationalistic anti-Siamese sentiment, as a pretext for intervention.
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