After early French victories at Tourane and Saigon, the Cochinchina campaign reached a point of equilibrium with the French and their Spanish allies besieged in Saigon, which had been captured by a Franco-Spanish expedition under the command of Admiral Charles Rigault de Genouilly on 17 February 1859.

The end of the Second Opium War in 1860 allowed the French government to despatch reinforcements of 70 ships under Admiral Léonard Charner and 3,500 soldiers under Élie de Vassoigne to Saigon.

Charner's squadron, the most powerful French naval force seen in Vietnamese waters before the creation of the French Far East Squadron on the eve of the Sino-French War (August 1884–April 1885), included the steam frigates Impératrice Eugénie and Renommée (Charner and Page's respective flagships), the corvettes Primauguet, Laplace and Du Chayla, eleven screw-driven despatch vessels, five first-class gunboats, seventeen transports and a hospital ship.

[2] The French and their Spanish allies were besieged in Saigon by a Vietnamese army around 32,000 strong under the command of Nguyễn Tri Phương.

Subsidiary defences were piled up in front of its walls: wolf-pits, ditches filled with water, palisades and chevaux de frise.

Bamboo was employed in the defences with consummate art, and the walls were crowned with thorn bushes along their entire length.

The French artillery moved forward to a position one kilometre from the siege lines, and bombarded the Vietnamese defences.

[4] The French and Spanish assault columns charged, and captured Redoubt Fort and part of the Vietnamese trench lines.

The sun, very low in the sky, was spoiling the aim of the cannons, and Lieutenant-Colonel Crouzat brought them forward by rapid bounds to within 200 metres of the enemy lines and ordered them to fire with case shot at the top of the ramparts.

Then the haversacks were laid on the ground, the sailors of the assault force reclaimed their scaling ladders, up to then carried by the coolies, and the admiral ordered the charge to be sounded.

According to the French, the Vietnamese lost around 1,000 men, and their casualties included Nguyễn Tri Phương, who was wounded during the battle.

[6] According to Việt sử Tân biên, the Vietnamese also lost two commanders killed in the action: Tán-lý Nguyễn Duy and Tán-tương Tôn Thất Trĩ, Tham tán quân thứ Phạm Thế Hiển - the deputy of Nguyễn Tri Phương - was seriously sick and died a few days after.