Battle of Thuan An

Battle of Thuan An
Part of the Tonkin Campaign
French warships off the Thuan An forts, 18 August 1883
Date 20 August 1883 Location near Huế, central Vietnam Result French victory
Belligerents
France	Vietnam
Commanders and leaders
Admiral Amédée Courbet	Unknown
Casualties and losses
12 wounded	2,500 killed and wounded

The Battle of Thuan An (20 August 1883) was a clash between the French and the Vietnamese during the period of early hostilities of the Tonkin Campaign (1883 to 1886). 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 Can Vuong national uprising in July 1885.

On 30 July 1883, Admiral Courbet, General Bouët and Jules Harmand, the French civil commissioner-general for Tonkin, held a council of war at Haiphong. The meeting noted that the Court of Huế was covertly aiding and abetting Liu Yongfu's Black Flag Army, and that the Vietnamese commander-in-chief Prince Hoang Ke Viem was openly in arms against the French at Nam Định. The three men agreed that Bouët should launch an offensive against the Black Flag Army in its positions around Phu Hoai on the Day River as soon as possible. They also decided, largely on Harmand's urging, to recommend to the French government a strike against the Vietnamese defences of Huế, followed by an ultimatum requiring the Vietnamese to accept a French protectorate over Tonkin or face immediate attack. Jules Ferry's government was initially reluctant to sanction an attack on Huế, fearing that it might provoke a response from China, but the French minister to China, Arthur Tricou, convinced the French government that China would acquiesce in a French 'act of virility'.

On 11 August the navy minister Charles Brun approved Harmand and Courbet's proposal for a naval descent on Huế to coerce the Vietnamese court. The aim of the expedition was to put a landing force ashore to capture the Thuan An forts, which guarded the entrance to the River of Perfumes, after a preliminary bombardment by the warships of Courbet's Tonkin Coasts naval division. As the Tonkin Expeditionary Corps would be fully committed to Bouët's projected attack on the Black Flag Army, it was agreed that the landing near Huế would be made by troops from the French garrisons in Cochinchina.

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