Olivier de Puymanel
French naval officer
Victor Olivier de Puymanel (1768 in Carpentras – 1799 in Malacca), Nguyễn Văn Tín (阮文信) or Ông Tín in Vietnamese, was a French construction officer and a French Navy volunteer and adventurer who had an important role in Vietnam in the 18th century. He played a key role in the modernization of the army of Nguyễn Phúc Ánh (the future Emperor Gia Long).
Olivier de Puymanel was second-class volunteer on board the French warship Dryade. In 1788 he deserted his ship while in Pulo Condor. He soon entered into the service of the Vietnamese prince Nguyễn Phúc Ánh at the instigation of Pigneau de Behaine, who was setting up a force of French volunteers to help the latter regain the throne.
Olivier de Puymanel supervised the construction of the Citadel of Saigon, according to the design of the French engineer in Vietnam Théodore Lebrun.
He also trained Vietnamese troops in the modern use of artillery, and implemented European infantry methods in the Vietnamese army of Nguyễn Phúc Ánh. In 1792, Olivier de Puymanel was commanding an army of 600 men who had been trained with European techniques.
Puymanel built a fortress in Duyên Khanh, near Nha Trang, where he defended the city against Tây Sơn forces, together with Pigneau de Behaine and Prince Cảnh. In 1795, Puymanel engineered the campaign to take Nha Trang.
“Olivier de Puymanel” enters the record as french naval officer. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Olivier, Puymanel and French can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Olivier de Puymanel” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.