Marie-Charles David de Mayréna
Marie I | |
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King of Sedang | |
Reign | 3 June 1888 - 11 November 1890 |
Predecessor | Office established |
Successor | Jules Georges Piquet as Governor-General of French Indochina |
Born | Toulon, France | 31 January 1842
Died | 11 November 1890 Tioman Island, British Malaya | (aged 48)
Marie-Charles David de Mayréna (also known as Charles-Marie David de Mayréna and Marie I, King of Sedang; 31 January 1842 – 11 November 1890) was an eccentric French adventurer who became the self-styled king of the Sedang of the northern Central Highlands in what is now southern Vietnam.
Biography
De Mayréna was born in
Once there, however, he persuaded some tribal chiefs to form a new
King Marie declared
He also sought to obtain official diplomatic recognition of his kingdom, offered to cede his kingdom to France in exchange for monopoly rights and hinted that the Prussians were interested if the French were not. When the French government became chilly, Mayréna approached the English in Hong Kong in 1889. When he was rebuffed there, Mayréna went to Belgium. In 1889 a Belgian financier named Somsy offered arms and money to Mayréna in exchange for mineral rights. However the French Navy blockaded Vietnamese ports to prevent his return and his arms were seized as contraband at Singapore. Mayréna retired to British Malaya.[3] There, on 11 November 1890, Marie I died under mysterious circumstances (various reports claiming by poisoning, snakebite or as the result of a duel) on Tioman Island.
The Kingdom of the Sedang was subsequently conquered by the French Republic and her protectorate,
Legacy
French writer and statesman André Malraux wrote an unpublished novel about Mayréna whilst Malraux’s friend and character in La Condition Humaine, Baron de Clappique, wrote a movie script about him.[5]
References
- ^ The Imperial Collection – The Kingdom of the Sedang Archived 2012-02-05 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Sedang Kingdom (Vietnam)
- ^ Footnotes to History- S Archived 2008-05-09 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ The Kingdom of Sedang
- ^ Cf. André Malraux, Antimémoires (Paris: Gallimand 1967), translated as Anti-Memoirs (New York: Holt Rinehart Winston 1968), chapter The Royal Way on pp. 253-322. Therein Malraux discusses Mayréna (pp. 258--259). Malraux also references his novel (p. 255) La Voie royale (Paris: Bernard Grasset 1930), whose character Perken was said to be somewhat based on Mayréna (p. 321). Most of Malraux's chapter loosely narrates Clappique's film script The Devil's Kingdom [English title] about Mayréna through Clappique's voice (pp. 259-320).