page_title: Retreat from Lạng Sơn
section_title: Background
hierarchical_section_title: Retreat from Lạng Sơn / Background
caption_attribution_description: English: Photograph of general François Oscar de Négrier (1842-1913) Français&#160;: Photographie du général François Oscar de Négrier (1842-1913)
context_page_description: The Retreat from Lạng Sơn was a controversial French strategic withdrawal in Tonkin at the end of March 1885 that brought down the government of the French premier Jules Ferry and brought the Sino-French War to an end under conditions that were considered humiliating for France.
context_section_description: By the middle of March 1885 the military situation in Tonkin had reached a temporary stalemate. In February 1885, in the Lạng Sơn Campaign, the French had captured Lạng Sơn and driven China's Guangxi Army out of Tonkin.  In the second half of February General Louis Brière de l'Isle, the general-in-chief of the Tonkin Expeditionary Corps, returned to Hanoi with Lieutenant-Colonel Laurent Giovaninelli's 1st Brigade to relieve the Siege of Tuyên Quang, leaving General François de Négrier at Lạng Sơn with the 2nd Brigade.
  Giovanninelli's 1st Brigade faced Tang Jingsong's Yunnan Army around Hưng Hóa and Tuyên Quang, while de Négrier's 2nd Brigade at Lạng Sơn faced Pan Dingxin's Guangxi Army. Neither Chinese army had any realistic prospect of launching an offensive for several weeks, while the two French brigades that had jointly captured Lạng Sơn in February were not strong enough to inflict a decisive defeat on either Chinese army separately.  Meanwhile, the French government was pressuring Brière de l'Isle to send the 2nd Brigade across the border into Guangxi province, in the hope that a threat to Chinese territory would force China to sue for peace.   Brière de l'Isle and de Négrier examined the possibility of a campaign to capture the major Chinese military depot at Longzhou, 60 kilometres beyond the border, but on 17 March Brière de l'Isle advised the army ministry in Paris that such an operation was beyond his strength. Substantial French reinforcements reached Tonkin in the middle of March, giving Brière de l'Isle a brief opportunity to break the stalemate. He moved the bulk of the reinforcements to Hưng Hóa to reinforce the 1st Brigade, intending to attack the Yunnan Army and drive it back beyond Yen Bay. While he and Giovanninelli drew up plans for a western offensive, he ordered de Négrier to hold his positions at Lạng Sơn.
  On 23 and 24 March the 2nd Brigade, 1,500 men strong, battled Guangxi Army troops entrenched near Zhennanguan on the Chinese border.  The Battle of Bang Bo (named by the French from the Vietnamese pronunciation of Hengpo, a village in the centre of the Chinese position where the fighting was fiercest), is normally known as the Battle of Zhennan Pass in China.  The French took a number of outworks on 23 March, but failed to take the main Chinese positions on 24 March and were fiercely counterattacked in their turn.  Although the French made a fighting withdrawal and prevented the Chinese from piercing their line, casualties in the 2nd Brigade were relatively heavy (70 dead and 188 wounded) and there were ominous scenes of disorder as the defeated French regrouped after the battle.  As the brigade's morale was precarious and ammunition was running short, de Négrier decided to fall back to Lạng Sơn.
caption: General François Oscar de Négrier (1842–1913)
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