Background
In 1857 the Vietnamese emperor Tu Duc executed two Spanish Catholic missionaries. This was neither the first nor the last such incident, and on previous occasions the French government had overlooked such provocations. On this occasion Tu Duc’s timing was terrible. France and Britain had just despatched a joint military expedition to the Far East to chastise China, and the French had troops to hand with which to intervene in Vietnam. In November 1857 the French emperor Napoleon III authorised Admiral Charles Rigault de Genouilly to launch a punitive expedition to teach the Vietnamese a long-overdue lesson. In the following September, a joint French and Spanish expedition landed at Tourane, whose fine, sheltered harbour would make it a good base of operations for a campaign against Annam.
Read more about this topic: Siege Of Tourane
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