Sino-French War
- Period
- August 1884 – April 1885
- Sides
- France vs Qing China
- Battles
- 16
The Sino-French or Franco-Chinese War, also known as the Tonkin War, was a limited conflict fought from August 1884 to April 1885 between the French Third Republic and the Qing dynasty for the suzerainty of Vietnam. There was no declaration of war.
Sources: Wikipedia — Sino-French War · CC BY-SA 4.0
Battles 16
August 1884
Battle of Fuzhou
The Battle of Fuzhou, or Battle of Foochow, also known as the Battle of the Pagoda Anchorage, was the opening engagement of the 16-month Sino-French War. The battle was fought on 23 August 1884 off the Pagoda Anchorage in Mawei (馬尾) harbour, 15 kilometres (9.3 mi) to the southeast of the city of Fuzhou (Foochow). During the battle Admiral Amédée Courbet's Far East Squadron virtually destroyed the Fujian Fleet, one of the Qing dynasty's four regional fleets.
August 1884 – March 1885
Keelung campaign
The Keelung campaign was a military campaign undertaken by French forces in northern Formosa (Taiwan) during the Sino-French War. After making a botched attack on Keelung in August 1884, the French landed an expeditionary corps of 4,500 men and captured the port in October 1884. Unable to advance beyond their bridgehead, they were invested inside Keelung by superior Chinese forces under the command of the imperial commissioner Liu Mingchuan. In November and December 1884 cholera and typhoid drained the strength of the French expeditionary corps, while reinforcements for the Chinese army flowed into Formosa via the Pescadores Islands, raising its strength to 35,000 men by the end of the war. Reinforced in January 1885 to a strength of 10,000 men, the French won two tactical victories against the besieging Chinese in late January and early March 1885, but were not strong enough to exploit these victories. The Keelung campaign ended in April 1885 in a strategic and tactical stalemate. The campaign was criticised at the time by Admiral Amédée Courbet, the commander of the French Far East Squadron, as strategically irrelevant and a wasteful diversion of the French navy.
October 1884
Battle of Tamsui
The Battle of Tamsui, Danshui, or Hobe was a significant battle where French military forces were defeated by Qing forces at Tamsui on Taiwan during the Keelung Campaign of the Sino-French War.
October 1884
Kép campaign
The Kép campaign was an important campaign in northern Vietnam during the opening months of the Sino-French War. A force of just under 3,000 French troops under the command of General François de Négrier defeated a major Chinese invasion of the Red River Delta launched by Pan Dingxin's Guangxi Army in successive engagements at Lâm, Kép and Chũ.
November 1884 – March 1885
Siege of Tuyên Quang
The siege of Tuyên Quang was an important confrontation between the French and the Chinese armies in Tonkin during the Sino-French War. A French garrison of 619 men, including two companies of the French Foreign Legion, successfully defended the French post of Tuyên Quang against vastly outnumbering Chinese forces in a four-month siege from 24 November 1884 to 3 March 1885. 'Tuyên Quang 1885' remains one of the Legion's proudest battle honours.
November 1884
Battle of Yu Oc
The Battle of Yu Oc was a French victory during the Sino-French War. The battle was fought to relieve the French garrison of Tuyên Quang, under siege by the Tang Jingsong's Yunnan Army and Liu Yongfu's Black Flag Army. The French commander at Yu Oc, Colonel Jacques Duchesne, would later distinguish himself as the conqueror of Madagascar (1895).
January 1885
Battle of Núi Bop
The Battle of Núi Bop was a French victory during the Sino-French War. The battle was fought to clear Chinese forces away from the French forward base at Chu, and was an essential preliminary to the Lạng Sơn Campaign in February 1885.
February 1885
Battle of Shipu
The Battle of Shipu was a French naval victory during the Sino-French War. The battle took place on the night of 14 February 1885 in Shipu Bay (石浦灣), near Ningbo, China.
February 1885
Lạng Sơn campaign
The Lạng Sơn campaign was a major French offensive in Tonkin during the Sino-French War. The Tonkin Expeditionary Corps, under the command of General Louis Brière de l'Isle, defeated the Chinese Guangxi Army and captured the strategically important town of Lạng Sơn in a ten-day campaign mounted under formidable logistical constraints.
February 1885
Battle of Đồng Đăng (1885)
The Battle of Đồng Đăng was an important French victory during the Sino-French War. The battle formed part of the French advance following the Lạng Sơn campaign and resulted in the temporary expulsion of Chinese forces from the Tonkin border region. After the battle, French forces destroyed the Gate of China at Zhennan Pass before withdrawing back toward Lạng Sơn. Three weeks later Chinese forces counterattacked, leading to the events that culminated in the Battle of Bang Bo. It is named after the town of Đồng Đăng, then in northern Tonkin, close to the border between China and Vietnam.
March 1885
Battle of Hòa Mộc
The Battle of Hòa Mộc was the most fiercely fought action of the Sino-French War. At heavy cost, Colonel Giovanninelli's 1st Brigade of the Tonkin Expeditionary Corps defeated forces of the Black Flag and Yunnan Armies blocking the way to the besieged French post of Tuyên Quang.
March 1885
Battle of Zhenhai
The Battle of Zhenhai was a minor confrontation that took place on 1 March 1885 between Admiral Amédée Courbet's Far East Squadron and Chinese warships and shore batteries near the coastal city of Zhenhai, 12 miles (19 km) downstream from Ningbo, China during the Sino-French War. French and Chinese sources disagree sharply as to what happened; French sources treat the encounter as a minor incident, while Chinese sources consider it a striking defensive victory. The Battle of Zhenhai is still commemorated in China as an important Chinese victory in the Sino-French War.
March 1885
Pescadores campaign (1885)
The Pescadores campaign which took place in late March, 1885, was one of the last campaigns of the Sino-French War. It was fought to capture the Pescadores, a strategically important archipelago off the western coast of Formosa (Taiwan). Admiral Amédée Courbet, with part of the French Far East Squadron, bombarded the Chinese coastal defences around the principal town of Makung on Penghu Island and landed a battalion of marine infantry which routed the Chinese defenders and occupied Makung.
March 1885
Battle of Bang Bo (Zhennan Pass)
The Battle of Bang Bo, known in China as the Battle of Zhennan Pass, was a major Chinese victory during the Sino-French War. The battle, fought on 23 and 24 March 1885 on the Tonkin-Guangxi border, saw the defeat of 1,500 soldiers of General François de Négrier's 2nd Brigade of the Tonkin Expeditionary Corps by a Chinese army under the command of the Guangxi military commissioner Pan Dingxin.
March 1885
Retreat from Lạng Sơn
The Retreat from Lạng Sơn was a controversial French strategic withdrawal in Tonkin at the end of March 1885 during the Sino-French War. It represented the last major event of the conflict and was deemed a considerable embarrassment in France, further cementing negative public opinion about the colonial conflict which led to the collapse of French Prime Minister Jules Ferry's government.
March 1885
Battle of Phu Lam Tao
The Battle of Phu Lam Tao was a politically significant engagement during the Sino-French War, in which a French Zouave battalion was defeated by a mixed force of Chinese soldiers and Black Flags.
Earlier and later events nearby
- 1757Qing restricts Western trade to Canton
- 1850–1864Taiping Rebellion
- 1879Ryukyu Disposition
- August 1884 – April 1885Sino-French WarThis page
- 1919Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea
- 1934–1935Long March
- 1937–1938Nanjing Massacre
Who ruled this land
States that held this place in the historical borders data (Cliopatria). Years are approximate, as fine as the data's snapshots (every few years to a century). Tap to open the map for that year.
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- 300–200 BCMinyue
- 150 BCNanyue
- 100 BC – AD 1Han dynasty
- AD 25Xin dynasty
- AD 50–200Han dynasty
- AD 225–275Eastern Wu
- AD 300–425Jin dynasty
- AD 450–475Liu Song dynasty
- AD 500Southern Qi
- AD 525–550Liang dynasty
- AD 575Chen dynasty
- AD 600–625Sui dynasty
- AD 650–900Tang dynasty
- AD 925Min
- AD 950Southern Wu
- AD 975Southern Tang
- 1000–1260Song dynasty
- 1280Mongol Empire
- 1300–1360Yuan dynasty