Siamese War (Napoleon's World)

The Siamese War is the Western name given to the struggle of the French Empire to support the collapsing Kingdom of Siam in the early 1990's under pressure from the Siamese People's Army. The war's length is under debate - the SPA was formed in 1987 and began conducting guerrilla operations in 1988, and the French Foreign Legion dispatched soldiers during that time. The Escalation of 1990 is often cited as the true start of the war. France lost around 120,000 men (officially) although numerous sources cite the number as well over 200,000, and suffered severe non-fatal casualties in the forms of wounds, disease, and lingering effects from chemical and non-conventional warfare tactics. Between six and seven million Siamese died in the war. The French withdrew from Siam in the fall of 1996 in a bungled exercise costing thousands in lives and materiel, and by 2000 had reduced their presence in Indochina - once consisting of five million soldiers spread across four countries just from France and her colonial empire alone - to 30,000 soldiers split between Phnom Penh and Kampong Som in Cambodia. The war severely crippled Albert II's respect amongst his own generals, ended the period of overseas "police actions" by Albertine France, and devastated the legitimacy of the governments of numerous states in Europe, particularly when Europe had a long economic malaise beginning in 2002. It has been called "France's Brazilian War" by Americans and is considered one of the key factors in the collapse of the French Empire and Versailles Pact, ending the Cold War, a decade and a half later.