Events were brought to a head by two separate incidents when Siamese governors in Khammuan and Nongkhai expelled three French merchants from the middle Mekong in September 1892, two of them, Champenois and Esquilot, on suspicion of opium smuggling. Shortly afterwards, the French consul in Luang Prabang, Massie, feverish and discouraged, committed suicide on his way back to Saigon. Back in France, these incidents were used by the Colonial Party (Parti Colonial) to stir up nationalistic anti-Siamese sentiment, as a pretext for intervention.