In the spring of 1875,
Siamese forces crossed the River
Mekong at
Nong Khai. In the first Thai military expedition of the Haw Wars, they advanced to capture the main Haw base at Chiangkham. The expedition failed to achieve its primary objective, since the Haw refused to give battle and withdrew into the mountains of Phuan and
Huaphan. When the Siamese left later that year, armed Haw bands emerged to loot and plunder more or less at will.
Second Siamese expedition and James McCarthy Eight years later, in 1883, faced with a renewed Haw threat to his capital at Luang Prabang, Chao Unkham again appealed to
Bangkok for assistance. King
Chulalongkorn dispatched a Siamese army composed largely of
Isan and northern Thai levies. The resulting expedition, in which the British
surveyor James McCarthy participated, "was ill-conceived, inadequately planned, and ultimately unsuccessful". Thanks to McCarthy's presence, the 1884-1885 expedition is unusually well-documented. McCarthy's personal accounts provide descriptions of the effort, suffering and incompetence of the Haw Wars which are more evocative than those in official Siamese accounts. McCarthy had begun his acquaintance with the Lao-
Tonkin borderlands in the 1884, when he led a Thai surveying expedition to Phuan and the southern frontiers of Huaphan, as part of his task of mapping the Thai Kingdom. During this journey he travelled widely through territories subject to regular attack by the flag gangs. He noted that "as we went on, tales of the Haw were brought in, agonising accounts of their raiding on villages, whose inhabitants they had slaughtered, mutilated or carried into captivity". McCarthy was greatly impressed by the beauty and natural wealth of the regions, but found the inhabitants living a "wretched existence...harried, mutilated and slaughtered by robbers". As in
Vientiane ten years before, the
Buddhist temples were demolished and desecrated in a search for loot. McCarthy wrote that "the wats had been wantonly destroyed, and piles of
palm-leaf records lay heaped together, which, unless soon looked at, would be lost forever." Subsequently, McCarthy travelled to
Luang Prabang to consult with the Siamese military commanders and Chao Unkham. There he learned the Haw had advanced to Muang You, which should have been defended by troops under
Phraya Sukhothai. However, this Thai nobleman, ill with malaria, had withdrawn to Luang Prabang. The Haw were able to seize the outpost and burn the Siamese stockade. With the onset of the
rainy season in June and July,
malaria was to prove a more potent foe than the much-feared Haw. In McCarthy's words "the rain poured down steadily, and sickness prevailed". Accordingly, the Siamese troops stationed in the Laos region remained at Luang Prabang or withdrew across the Mekong to Nong Khai. McCarthy travelled to Bangkok to advise King Chulalongkorn of the situation and await the return of the dry
winter months.
Battle of February 1885 in 1885. McCarthy was ordered to return to Laos at the end of the rainy season. He set out from Bangkok in November 1884, travelling by way of
Uttaradit and
Nan. He arrived at Luang Prabang on 14 January 1885, in time to witness the outbreak of hostilities that were to last three months before ending in failure. The Haw were armed with modern
repeating rifles and
Birmingham-manufactured ammunition, and many were skilled in
guerrilla warfare. They used demoralising tactics such as mutilating captives, employed
punji stakes, and made surprise night attacks.
Magic was still believed in and was resorted to by both sides.
Hora () accompanying the Siamese troops, determined that 10 o'clock on the morning of 22 February 1885 was the most auspicious time to begin the assault. At the predetermined time, a gun was fired and the attacking forces began their advance against the Haw stronghold, a well-defended stockade 400 metres long by 200 wide, surrounded by bamboo and watched over by seven towers each about 12 metres high. The Thai and Laotian troops advanced in companies of 50 men, each under the White Elephant flag of Siam, and established themselves behind a temporary palisade 100 metres from the Haw fort. The attacking forces were armed with
Armstrong () guns, but these apparently lacked ammunition. McCarthy noted that most of the firing seemed to come from the Haw watchtowers and, despite Thai and Lao courage and almost reckless indifference to injury, "considerable execution" was caused to them. The Haw, on the other hand, remained relatively unscathed. At 14:00 the Thais suffered a further setback when their commander-in-chief, Phraya Raj, was injured by a shot "weighing about two pounds, which glanced off the post of a
Chinese joss house where he was standing and struck him in the leg." The attack on the Haw stockade eventually had to be given up. ==Aftermath==