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And after a while, the prince himself became discouraged. "What is the point of sending children to school?" he asked. "We are backward, and whatever we do shall never rise to the level of other peoples. Anyway, an educated population is difficult to govern." He grew increasingly impervious to Western influence, despite his summer visits to the royal villa at Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat on the French Riviera. By the time he took the throne in 1959, after the old King died at 74, Savang Vatthana seemed to have sunk into a torpor that could not be shaken by the fast-paced world around him. One Western diplomat, after a session with the King, said it was "like listening to a long Oriental movie dubbed in French." He is a fan of Margot Fonteyn and Italian opera, and at one recent soiree, after a performance of native dances, he gathered his French and diplomat guests in stuffed armchairs in a corner and attempted to start the conversation with a topical question. "Tell me," he asked: "What does the youth of today think of Anatole France?" Two Brothers. At about the same time as the future King, two other princelings returned from France. Prince Souvanna Phouma, 59, and his half brother Prince Souphanouvong, 48, belonged to a remote branch of the royal family. Both studied civil engineering in Paris and won high marks. Prince Souvanna, upon his return, slipped easily into the crowd of sleek sybarites who for the past six years have flitted in and out of office.
But Prince Souphanouvong, dazzled by his exposure to French socialism, turned left. He moved to Hanoi, married a Vietnamese girl, began consorting with the Viet Minh revolutionists, who were plotting the overthrow of Indo-China's French masters. In 1949, he set off on a 40-day trek through the northern jungles to a rendezvous with the brilliant Viet Minh ex-schoolteacher and field commander, General Vo Nguyen Giap. Over a bottle of warm champagne, which Giap bragged had been "taken from the body of a dead Frenchman," Giap explained how guerrilla warfare worked.
"Use the peasants as your eyes and ears and your main source of supply," he urged Souphanouvong. "Before cooking each meal, peasant women must take a handful of rice and put it in a basket. Even in hard times, they won't miss it, and you'd be surprised how soon it mounts up." Even children could be trained to deliver messages or carry grenades. As for the mountain tribesmen, "Teach them to shoot, guide them in killing a French soldier and, by implicating them in a crime, you implicate them in the war." Above all, counseled Giap, keep away from towns. "People in towns have chairs, tables, shoes, beds—you can't eat those things. Country folk have rice, eggs, chickens, pigs. Remember, those who rule the countryside rule the country." Prince Souphanouvong, though fuzzy on his Marxism, took the guerrilla lessons to heart. Equipped with a pair of black boots, Viet Minh aides and money, he marched off into the northern Laotian provinces, and in the next three years formed the nucleus of the Pathet Lao.
By the time the French surrendered at Dienbienphu and the Geneva Conference declared Laos a neutral state, the "Red Prince" had established Pathet Lao control firmly in the two mountainous provinces of Samneua and Phongsaly.