
Léonard Victor Joseph Charner was an Admiral of the French Navy.
Trương Định, sometimes known as Trương Công Định, was a mandarin (scholar-official) in the Nguyễn dynasty of Vietnam under Emperor Tự Đức. He is best known for leading a guerrilla army in southern Vietnam against the French invasion in defiance of the emperor. He refused to recognise the 1862 Treaty of Saigon that ceded Vietnamese territory to France.

Nguyễn Trung Trực was a Vietnamese fisherman who organized and led village militia forces which fought against French colonial forces in the Mekong Delta in southern Vietnam in the 1860s. He was active in Tân An and Rạch Giá from the initial French invasion until he was captured and executed.

Phan Thanh Giản was a Grand Counsellor at the Nguyễn court in Vietnam. He led an embassy to France in 1863, and committed suicide when France completed the invasion of Southern Vietnam (Cochinchina) in 1867.

Phan Thanh Liêm,, was a Vietnamese soldier, politician, nationalist and (anti-French) independence activist.

Admiral Pierre-Louis-Charles Rigault de Genouilly was a French naval officer. He fought with distinction in the Crimean War and the Second Opium War, but is chiefly remembered today for his command of French and Spanish forces during the opening phase of the Cochinchina campaign (1858–62), which inaugurated the French conquest of Vietnam.

Élie, Jean de Vassoigne was a French general who distinguished himself in the Baltic in 1854 against the Russians in the Battle of Bomarsund, then commanded from 1854 to 1856 the occupation corps of Greece during the Crimean War. Then in 1859 and 1860, he went to campaign in China commanding the 3e régiment de Marine brigade of General Collineau. He was then sent to Tonkin and Annam in Cochinchina from 1860 to 1861. On February 27, 1861, during the Battle of Ky Hoa, he was seriously injured by an arrow. In 1870, he took part in the Battle of Sedan, during the Franco-Prussian War.