When the Treaty of Peking ended the war in China in January 1861, Vice Admiral Léonard Charner, the new commander of the China Seas Naval Division, was ordered to relieve the French garrison at Saigon and complete the conquest of Cochinchina. In mid-February 1861, Charner sailed south from Shanghai with the 3rd Marine Infantry Regiment and six detached companies from the 4th Regiment (a total of 1,200 men under the command of a Lt. Col. Favre and Lt. Col. Jules Marcelin Albert Testard); the 2nd Light Infantry Battalion (600 men under a Major Comte); 200 artillerymen (commanded by Lt. Col. Pierre Franois Crouzat) manning 10 30mm and 80mm field howitzers, as well as 12-pounder and 4-pounder cannons; a detachment of engineers; and 800 sailors organized as naval infantry and another 100 formed into boarding parties (both elements commanded by naval Captain Franois Théodore de Lapelin). These forces rendezvoused at Saigon with a Spanish force (under Colonel Carlos Palanca y Guttierez) consisting of 200 infantry and 70 mixed cavalry (Filipino, African chasseurs and Cochinchina spahis) commanded by Captain Charles-douard Hocquard. Including the men available from the Saigon garrison, Charner’s small army now numbered about 3,500 men.

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The Vietnamese had had a year to prepare for the expected return of the French, and they had used the time wisely. In July 1860, the Imperial Court at Hue had named a veteran military mandarin, Nguyen Tri Phuong, as Governor of the Military District of Gia Dinh, which included Saigon and the surrounding region. He had assumed command of a force of 20,000 to 30,000 men. His orders were to prevent a French breakout from Saigon.

Extending west from French-held positions at Saigon was a broad expanse of relatively flat, open ground known as the Ky Hoa Plain. Broken in places by shallow ravines and gullies, sparsely wooded, and dotted near the principal Vietnamese fort with burial mounds, the plain would have to be crossed before the French could engage the main Vietnamese works.

Nguyen had immediately set about strengthening Vietnamese defenses at Ky Hoa. Trenches were extended, walls heightened and thickened, redoubts and outposts built, and physical obstacles constructed. The Vietnamese lines were anchored on a massive complex of interconnected earthen fortifications on the northwestern edge of Ky Hoa Plain, about 6 1/2 kilometers west of the Saigon River. Consisting of five conjoined, walled enclosures, the Ky Hoa complex sat astride the main land route to Cambodia. It was nearly a kilometer wide, with wooden watchtowers placed at intervals outside the walls. The complex stretched 2 1/2 kilometers along a northwest-southeast axis, about a kilometer south of the main runway of today’s Tan Son Nhut airport.

Extending south and west from the main defenses was what Admiral Charner had called ‘an extraordinary network’ of trenches and obstacles more than 12 kilometers long and linking the main fortifications with outposts and redoubts.

Best estimates suggest that the Ky Hoa defenses were garrisoned by about 21,000 troops, although that number probably included forces manning outlying fortifications and trench lines who were not directly involved in the impending battle.

The mandarin’s superiority in numbers, his strong geographical position and his elaborate defensive works were counterbalanced by the fact that his troops were poorly trained compared with the French, and armed with antiquated, flintlock muzzleloaders, lances, pikes and halberds. Much of their artillery, although well-handled, was old, and many of the guns were made of iron.

On the right, French gunboats controlled about 5 kilometers of the winding Thi Nghe Creek above its confluence with the Saigon River. Beyond that point, Vietnamese control made a French attack problematic. To reach the Ky Hoa forts along this short northern approach, the French and their Spanish allies would have to expose their right flank to the Vietnamese.

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