The Tonkin Campaign marked the beginning of France’s deeper military involvement in Indochina, including confrontations with the Black Flag Army and Qing Chinese forces. These battlefield studies draw on French and Vietnamese sources, campaign maps, and terrain-focused analysis to reconstruct key engagements such as Sơn Tây, Bắc Lệ, and Lạng Sơn. First-hand exploration helps illuminate how jungle terrain, river systems, and colonial logistics shaped operations.
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The Battle of Hòa Mộc Was the fiercest and most costly battle of the Sino-French War. The battle was fought just a few kilometres south of besieged Tuyên Quang, as Colonel Laurent Giovanninelli’s 3,400 man force made a 300 km forced march to relive the siege, and cleared the final Black Flag position between themselves and the Tuyên Quang defenders.
From November 1884 to March 1885, 630 French troops of the Foreign Legion, Marines and Tonkinese Riflemen, held the citadel of Tuyên Quang against a force of 15,000 Chinese and Black Flag Army troops. Their endurance, and Colonel Giovanninelli’s epic relief march, made the siege one of the Foreign Legion’s most legendary battles.
In June 1884, a French column under Lieutenant Colonel Alphonse Dugenne, comprised of about 465 French troops and 284 Tonkinese auxiliaries, with a supply column of local ‘coolies’ and baggage mules, was attacked by a much larger Chinese regular force near Bắc Lệ, on the road from Phu-Lang-Thuong to Lang Son. The attack was the catalyst for the Sino-French war of 1884-85 that saw French forces of the Tonkin Expeditionary Corps engaged in combat with Chinese forces across northern Vietnam, mainland China, and Formosa (now Taiwan).
The Son Tay Campaign in December 1883 was part of a series of escalatory conflicts between Chinese and French colonial forces in Tonkin (northern Vietnam) over teh period 1873-1885. For the French, the main protagonist was Liu Yongfu’s Black Flag Army, although Chinese regular forces played an increasing role as the conflict developed. Vietnamese forces also opposed the French, but they were poorly trained and equipped.