In the early 1950s, France was engaged in a highly unpopular war to hold on to its colony of Indochina; in seven years the war cost the lives of one hundred thousand French soldiers. The decisive defeat of the French army at Dien Bien Phu, on May 7, 1954, led the government of Mendés France to the end of the war and the division of Vietnam into two countries, and the beginning of a stream of Vietnamese immigrants to Paris.