Cochinchina campaign
The Cochinchina campaign was a series of military operations between 1858 and 1862, launched by a joint naval expedition force on behalf of the French Empire and the Kingdom of Spain against the Nguyễn period Vietnamese state. It was the opening conflict of the French conquest of Vietnam.
| Cochinchina campaign | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Part of the French conquest of Vietnam and Western imperialism in Asia | |||||||||
Capture of Saigon, Antoine Léon Morel-Fatio. | |||||||||
| |||||||||
| Belligerents | |||||||||
| Đại Nam | ||||||||
| Commanders and leaders | |||||||||
|
Charles Rigault de Genouilly François Page Léonard Charner Louis Bonard Carlos Palanca y Gutiérrez | Nguyễn Tri Phương | ||||||||
| Strength | |||||||||
|
~3,000 1 frigate 2 corvettes 2 avisos 9 gunboats | 10,000+ | ||||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||||
| 1,000 killed and wounded | Heavy | ||||||||
Initially a limited punitive expedition against the persecution and execution of French (and to a lesser extent Spanish) Catholic missionaries in Đại Nam, the ambitious French emperor Napoleon III however, authorized the deployment of increasingly larger contingents, that subdued Đại Nam territory and established French economic and military dominance. The war concluded with the founding of the French colony of Cochinchina and inaugurated nearly a century of French colonial rule in Vietnam in particular and Indochina in general.