The First Indochina War took place across French Indochina and eventually led to French defeat and the signing of a peace accord for Laos at the Geneva Conference of 1954. In 1960, amidst a series of rebellions in the Kingdom of Laos, fighting broke out between the Royal Lao Army (RLA) and the communist North Vietnamese and Soviet Union-backed Pathet Lao guerillas. A second Provisional Government of National Unity formed by Prince Souvanna Phouma in 1962 was unsuccessful, and the situation steadily deteriorated into large scale civil war between the Royal Laotian government and the Pathet Lao. The Pathet Lao were backed militarily by the People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) and the Viet Cong.