In the Madagascar rebellion, for example, French authorities depicted the leaders of the Mouvement démocratique de la rénovation malgache (MDRM) in the most sinister terms possible and ordered a staggeringly brutal military retribution, much of it administered by the Expeditionary Force bound for Indochina. The massacre, combined with extreme deprivation, killed an estimated one hundred thousand Madagascans, a figure acknowledged and then withdrawn by French officials in 1949.
