WThe Tonkin campaign was an armed conflict fought between June 1883 and April 1886 by the French against, variously, the Vietnamese, Liu Yongfu's Black Flag Army and the Chinese Guangxi and Yunnan armies to occupy Tonkin and entrench a French protectorate there. The campaign, complicated in August 1884 by the outbreak of the Sino-French War and in July 1885 by the Cần Vương nationalist uprising in Annam, which required the diversion of large numbers of French troops, was conducted by the Tonkin Expeditionary Corps, supported by the gunboats of the Tonkin Flotilla. The campaign officially ended in April 1886, when the expeditionary corps was reduced in size to a division of occupation, but Tonkin was not effectively pacified until 1896.
WThe Bắc Lệ ambush was a clash during the Tonkin Campaign in June 1884 between Chinese troops of the Guangxi Army and a French column sent to occupy Lạng Sơn and other towns near the Chinese border. The French claimed that their troops had been ambushed by the Chinese. The incident led to the Sino-French War.
WThe Bắc Ninh Campaign was one of a series of clashes between French and Chinese forces in northern Vietnam during the Tonkin campaign (1883–86). The campaign, fought during the period of undeclared hostilities that preceded the Sino-French War, resulted in the French capture of Bắc Ninh and the complete defeat of China's Guangxi Army.
WThe Battle of Cầu Giấy or Paper Bridge, fought on 19 May 1883, was one of the numerous clashes during the Tonkin Campaign (1883–86) between the French and the Black Flags. A small French force under the command of capitaine de vaisseau Henri Rivière attacked a strong Black Flag defensive position near the village of Cầu Giấy a few miles to the west of Hanoi, known to the French as Paper Bridge. After initial successes, the French were eventually enveloped on both wings, and were only with difficulty able to regroup and fall back to Hanoi. Rivière and several other senior officers were killed in the action.
WThe Battle of Đồng Đăng was an important French victory during the Sino-French War. It is named after the town of Đồng Đăng, then in northern Tonkin, close to the border between China and Vietnam.
WThe Battle of Gia Cuc, fought on 27 and 28 March 1883, was a battle in the Tonkin Campaign between the French and Vietnamese, during the period of undeclared hostilities that preceded the Sino-French War.
WThe Battle of Palan was one of several clashes between the Tonkin Expeditionary Corps and Liu Yongfu's Black Flag Army during the Tonkin campaign (1883–1886). The battle took place during the period of increasing tension between France and China that eventually culminated in the Sino-French War.
WThe Battle of Phu Hoai was an indecisive engagement between the Tonkin Expeditionary Corps and Liu Yongfu's Black Flag Army during the early months of the Tonkin campaign (1883–1886). The battle took place during the period of increasing tension between France and China that eventually culminated in the Sino-French War.
WThe Battle of Thuận An was a clash between the French and the Vietnamese during the period of early hostilities of the Tonkin Campaign. During the battle a French landing force under the command of Admiral Amédée Courbet stormed the coastal forts that guarded the river approaches to the Vietnamese capital Huế, enabling the French to dictate a treaty to the Vietnamese that recognised a French protectorate over Tonkin. The French strike against the Vietnamese in August 1883, sanctioned by Jules Ferry's administration in Paris, did more than anything else to make a war between France and China inevitable, and sowed the seeds of the Vietnamese Cần Vương national uprising in July 1885.
WThe Black Flag Army was a splinter remnant of a bandit group recruited largely from soldiers of ethnic Zhuang background, who crossed the border in 1865 from Guangxi, China into northern Vietnam, then during the Nguyen dynasty. Although brigands, they were known mainly for their fights against the invading French forces, who were then moving into Tonkin. The Black Flag Army is so named because of the preference of its commander, Liu Yongfu, for using black command flags. The army was officially disbanded in 1885 as a result of the Treaty of Tientsin between the French and the Qing. However, remnants of the army continued to wage a guerilla war against French colonial authorities for years. With the sanction of both Vietnamese and Chinese authorities, the Black Flags joined the Vietnamese irregular forces, stemming French encroachment beyond the Red River Delta.
WThe Capture of Hưng Hóa was an important French victory in the Tonkin Campaign (1883–86).
WThe Capture of Nam Định, a confrontation between the French and the Vietnamese, was one of the early engagements of the Tonkin Campaign (1883–86). In a brief campaign in the last week of March 1883, Commandant Henri Rivière captured the citadel of Nam Định, the second-largest city in Tonkin, with a flotilla of gunboats and a battalion of marine infantry.
WThe Sơn Tây campaign was a campaign fought by the French to capture the strategically important city of Sơn Tây in Tonkin from Liu Yongfu's Black Flag Army and allied contingents of Vietnamese and Chinese troops. The campaign was one of several clashes between the Tonkin Expeditionary Corps and the Black Flag Army during the Tonkin campaign (1883–1886), and took place during the period of undeclared hostilities that preceded the Sino-French War.
WThe Tonkin Expedition commemorative medal was awarded to all the French soldiers and sailors who took part in the battles of the Tonkin campaign and the Sino-French War between 1883 and 1885. The medal, decreed by a law of 6 September 1885, was minted at the Monnaie de Paris and distributed shortly before the Bastille Day parade on 14 July 1886 to around 65,000 soldiers and sailors. The medal was later awarded to participants in a number of earlier and later campaigns in Indochina, bringing the total number of recipients to 97,300.
WThe Tonkin Expeditionary Corps was an important French military command based in northern Vietnam (Tonkin) from June 1883 to April 1886. The expeditionary corps fought the Tonkin Campaign (1883–86) taking part in campaigns against the Black Flag Army and the Chinese Yunnan and Guangxi Armies during the Sino-French War and the period of undeclared hostilities that preceded it, and in important operations against Vietnamese guerrilla bands during the subsequent 'Pacification of Tonkin'.