Black Flag Army The Black Flag Army ( ; ) was a splinter remnant of a bandit group recruited largely from soldiers of ethnic Zhuang background , who crossed the border in 1865 from Guangxi , China into Upper Tonkin , then part of the Empire of Annam ( Vietnam ) . Although brigands , they were known mainly for their fights against the invading French forces , who were then moving into Tonkin . With the sanction of both Vietnamese and Chinese authorities , the Black Flags joined the Vietnamese regular forces , stemming French encroachment beyond the Red River Delta . The Black Flag Army is so named because of the preference of its commander , Liu Yongfu , for using black command flags . The rise and fall of the Black Flag Army . In 1857 , Liu Yongfu ( Vietnamese : " Lưu Vĩnh Phúc " ) , a Hakka soldier of fortune was heading a group of about 200 men within a larger bandit group of Guangxi province headed by Huang Sihong ( 黃思宏 ) . He defected with his men to the band of Wu Yuanqing ( Wu Yuan - ch ' ing , 吳元清 ) under his own - black - flag . Liu organized a ceremony reminiscent of the tiandihui rituals and what will be known as the Black Flag Army was born . The " army " was operating as an independent unit under Wu Yuanqing and his son and successor , Wu Yazhong ( Wu Ya - chung , 吳亞终 ) or Wu Hezhong . Although not part of the Taiping forces , both Wu Yuanqing and Wu Yazhong laid claim to be Taiping " princes " . After the Taiping rebellion was crushed in 1864 in Nanking , the Qing army proceeded to destroy systematically the many armed bands of south - eastern provinces , particularly the band of Wu Yazhong in Guangxi . Hotly pursued , the desperate Wu Yazhong , Liu and his Black Flag Army crossed into Upper Tonkin in 1865 . The Black Flags demonstrated their usefulness to the Vietnamese Court by helping the suppression of the indigenous tribes populating the mountainous terrain between the Red and Black River s , and for this Liu was rewarded with an official military title . Secured with the backing of the Vietnamese Court , Liu Yongfu established a profitable extortion network along the course of the Red River , " taxing " river commerce between Son Tay and Lao Cai at a rate of 10 % . The profits accrued from this venture were so great that Liu ' s army swelled in numbers in the 1870s , attracting to its ranks adventurers from all over the world . Although most of the Black Flag soldiers were Chinese , among the junior officers there were American and European soldiers of fortune , some of whom had seen action in the Taiping Rebellion . Liu used their expertise to transform the Black Flag Army into a formidable fighting force . Under his command in Tonkin , there were 7 , 000 soldiers from Guangdong and Guangxi . The harassment of European vessels trading on the Red River triggered the dispatch of the French expeditionary force to Tonkin under Commandant Henri Rivière in 1882 . The resulting clashes between the French and the Black Flag Army ( the latter abetted by the regular Vietnamese and Chinese forces ) escalated , resulting eventually in the Sino - French War ( August 1884 - April 1885 ) . The Black Flags assisted the Chinese forces during this war , best known in the fierce Siege of Tuyen Quang when the joint Black Flags - Chinese armies holed up a battalion of the French Foreign Legion defending the citadel . The Black Flag Army was formally disbanded at the end of the Sino - French War , though many of its members continued to harass the French for years afterward as freelance bandits . Remarkably , the Black Flag Army was called into being again in 1895 by Liu Yongfu in response to the Japanese invasion of Taiwan ( 1895 ) . Liu Yongfu crossed to Taiwan at the appeal of his old friend Tang Ching - sung , island ' s former governor - general and now president of the short - lived Republic of Formosa . Liu was to command the Formosan resistance forces against the Japanese . Liu took a number of aging Black Flag veterans back into service to join the fight against the Japanese , but the reconstituted Black Flag Army was swept aside with ease by the Japanese Imperial Guards Division . Liu himself was obliged to disguise himself as an old woman to escape capture . The Black Flag Army in action . Defeat of Francis Garnier ' s invasion of Tonkin , December 1873 . In 1873 the Vietnamese government enlisted the help of the Black Flag Army to defeat the first French attempt to conquer Tonkin , led by the naval lieutenant Francis Garnier . On 21 December 1873 Liu Yongfu and around 600 Black Flags ( ) , marching beneath an enormous black banner , approached the west gate of the Hanoi Citadel . A large Vietnamese army followed in their wake . Garnier ordered the shelling of the Black Flags with a field piece mounted above the gate , and when they were repulsed , he led a party of 18 French marine infantrymen out of the gate in pursuit . Garnier and three of his men charged uphill in a bayonet attack on a party of Black Flags but was speared to death after stumbling in a watercourse . The youthful " enseigne de vaisseau " Adrien - Paul Balny d ’ Avricourt led a similar small column to reinforce Garnier but was also killed in front of his men . Three other French soldiers were killed in these sorties , and the others fled back to the citadel after their officers fell . Garnier ' s death shocked the French public and ended the first French adventure in Tonkin . Defeat of Henri Rivière ' s invasion of Tonkin , May 1883 . Ten years later , with France again pushing into Tonkin , undeclared hostilities broke out in 1883 and the first half of 1884 as a prelude to the Sino - French War . The Black Flags fought several engagements against French forces in Tonkin . The first major clash was at the Battle of Paper Bridge ( 19 May 1883 ) , in which the French naval captain Henri Rivière was ambushed and killed . It was a swift and striking victory for the Black Flag Army . Indecisive clashes , summer 1883 . In the Battle of Phu Hoai ( 15 August 1883 , the Black Flag Army successfully defended its positions against a French attack launched by General Alexandre - Eugène Bouët , though it took considerably higher casualties than the French . In the Battle of Palan ( 1 September 1883 ) the Black Flags did less well , being driven from a key position on the Day River . Disaster at Son Tay , December 1883 . In December 1883 the Black Flag Army suffered a major defeat at the hands of Admiral Amédée Courbet in the Son Tay Campaign . Despite fighting with fanatical courage in the engagements at Phu Sa on 14 December and Son Tay on 16 December , the Black Flags were unable to prevent the French from storming Son Tay . Even with large Chinese and Vietnamese regular contingents at Son Tay , the Black Flag Army bore the brunt of the fighting , and took very heavy casualties . In the opinion of the British observer William Mesny , a senior officer in the Chinese army , the fighting at Son Tay broke the power of the Black Flag Army , though the stubborn defence put up by the Black Flags in the Battle of Hoa Moc fifteen months later does not bear out this assessment . Loss of Hung Hoa , April 1884 . The Black Flag Army took no part in the Bac Ninh campaign ( March 1884 ) . After the French capture of Bac Ninh , the Black Flags retreated to Hung Hoa . In April 1884 the French advanced on Hung Hoa with both brigades of the Tonkin Expeditionary Corps . The Black Flags had thrown up an impressive series of fortifications around the town , but General Charles - Théodore Millot , the French commander - in - chief , took it without a single French casualty . While General François de Négrier ' s 2nd Brigade pinned the Black Flags frontally from the east and subjected Hung Hoa to a ferocious artillery bombardment from the Trung Xa heights , General Louis Brière de l ' Isle ' s 1st Brigade made a flank march to the south to cut Liu ' s line of retreat . On the evening of 11 April , seeing Brière de l ' Isle ' s Turcos and marine infantry emerging behind their flank at Xuan Dong , the Black Flags evacuated Hung Hoa before they were trapped inside it . They set alight the remaining buildings before they left , and on the following morning the French found the town completely abandoned . Loss of Tuyen Quang , June 1884 . The Black Flag Army retreated up the Red River to Thanh Quan , only a few days march from the frontier town of Lao Cai . Several hundred Black Flag soldiers , demoralised by the ease with which Courbet and Millot had defeated the Black Flag Army , surrendered to the French in the summer of 1884 . One of Millot ' s final achievements was to advance up the Clear River and throw the Black Flag Army out of Tuyen Quang in the first week of June , again without a single French casualty . If the French had seriously pursued Liu Yongfu after the capture of Tuyen Quang , the Black Flags would probably have been driven from Tonkin there and then . But French attention was diverted by the sudden crisis with China provoked by the Bac Le ambush ( 23 June 1884 ) , and during the eventful summer of 1884 the Black Flags were left to lick their wounds . Alliance with the Chinese , September 1884 to April 1885 . The fortunes of the Black Flag Army were transformed by the outbreak of the Sino - French War in August 1884 . The Empress Dowager Cixi responded to the news of the destruction of China ' s Fujian Fleet at the Battle of Fuzhou ( 23 August 1884 ) by ordering her generals to invade Tonkin to throw the French out of Hanoi . Tang Ching - sung , the commander of the Yunnan Army , knew that Liu ' s services would be invaluable in the war with France , and Liu agreed to take part with the Black Flag Army in the forthcoming campaign . The Black Flags helped the Chinese forces put pressure on Hung Hoa and the isolated French posts of Phu Doan and Tuyen Quang during the autumn of 1884 . The battle of Hoa Moc , March 1885 . In the winter and spring of 1885 3 , 000 soldiers of the Black Flag Army served during the Siege of Tuyen Quang . At the Battle of Hoa Moc ( 2 March 1885 ) , the Black Flag Army inflicted heavy casualties on a French column marching to the relief of Tuyen Quang . French casualties at Hoa Moc were 76 dead and 408 wounded , the highest casualty rate and the heaviest loss in a single day ' s fighting sustained by the French during the Sino - French War . Many French officers at Hoa Moc said that the carnage was even worse than at Son Tay fifteen months earlier . Disbandment of the Black Flag Army , June 1885 . One of the conditions of the peace treaty between France and China that ended the Sino - French War was that Liu Yongfu should leave Tonkin . By the end of the war Liu had only around 2 , 000 troops under his command and was in no position to resist pressure from Tang Ching - sung and the other commanders of the Yunnan Army to remove the Black Flag Army . Liu crossed into China with some of his most loyal followers , but the bulk of the Black Flag Army was disbanded on Tonkinese soil in the summer of 1885 . Unpaid for months and still in possession of their rifles , most of the unwanted Black Flag soldiers immediately took to banditry , under cover of the Can Vuong resistance movement against the French . It took months for the French to reduce them , and the route between Hung Hoa and the border town of Lao Cai was only secured in February 1886 . In 1887 , Black Flag bandits remained sufficiently powerful to ransack and pillage Luang Prabang . Flags of the Black Flag Army . Liu Yongfu evidently had a personal preference for the colour black , having dreamt in his youth that he would one day become a ' general of the black tiger ' . The Black Flag Army is named from the colour of Liu ' s command flags . French sources invariably mention that Liu Yongfu ' s personal command flags were very large , black in colour , and rectangular . In December , 1873 , when Liu Yongfu confronted Francis Garnier outside Hanoi , the Black Flag Army was described as marching under enormous black flags . At the Battle of Palan ( September 1 , 1883 ) , Liu Yongfu ' s headquarters was marked with seven identical black flags , bordered in silver . In the Son Tay Campaign ( December , 1883 ) , Liu Yongfu ordered three large black flags to be flown above the main gate of the citadel of Son Tay , bearing Chinese characters in white . Individual Black Flag units flew a variety of flags , some rectangular and others triangular . In the afternoon of August 15 , 1883 , during the Battle of Phu Hoai , several units of the Black Flag Army emerged from their defences and advanced across open ground to attack the French left wing ; according to a French eyewitness , the advancing Black Flag units bore numerous black banners decorated with Chinese characters in either red or white . Surviving Black Flag banners include a black triangular banner with a representation in white of the seven stars of the Great Bear . Notes . 3 ^ »