Word: dais
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...returning French began negotiations with the Viet Minh leader. There were polite hints that Bao Dai must go-he was too "unpopular." Bao abdicated, and Ho was in the saddle...
...Dai stayed on in Indo-China for a while, as plain citizen Nguyen Vinh Thuy and Honorary Councilor to the Republic. Nobody had much use for him. He went abroad and flung himself into a reckless round of pleasure and sport...
...champagne and caviar, played roulette for 10,000-franc chips ("His Majesty's losses," remarked a croupier, "befitted his rank"), sometimes conducted jazz bands, sent his secretary to open negotiations with the many women who caught his eye. ("My grandfather had 125 wives and 300 children," Bao Dai once remarked to a journalist. "I have a few mistresses. What then?") He played golf capably and bridge like a master. A crack shot with rifle or revolver, he often arranged target competitions with the château's servants...
Meanwhile the French, back in Indo-China, had broken with Ho Chi Minh, were floundering in a Communist-led nationalist uprising. They appealed to Bao Dai to come home again and help rally his people against the Red menace. They promised to grant Viet Nam gradual independence within the new French Union. Bao was persuaded. On March 8, 1949, he signed the document creating the new Indo-Chinese Republic which he would head as chief of state. As he left the gaudy safety of the Riviera for the hazards of a country torn by civil war, he grinned and said...
Statesman. Bao Dai has been back in Indo-China about a year. He has made some progress, but it is slow and the difficulties are enormous. The French have promised his government more authority, but they are vague in making good and sometimes stupidly petty. One point of friction between Bao Dai and French High Commissioner Léon Pignon concerns the high commissioner's residence in Saigon. It is the old imperial palace, and the symbol, in native eyes, of paramount place. Bao Dai wants it for his own use, and he stays away from the city lest...