1 gunboat lightly damaged Heavy The Capture of Nam Định (27 March 1883), a confrontation between the French and the Vietnamese, was one of the early engagements of the Tonkin Campaign (1883–86).

In a brief campaign in the last week of March 1883, Commandant Henri Rivière captured the citadel of Nam Định, the second-largest city in Tonkin, with a flotilla of gunboats and a battalion of marine infantry.

[4] The Vietnamese government, unable to confront Rivière with its own ramshackle army, enlisted the help of Liu Yongfu, whose well-trained and seasoned Black Flag soldiers were to prove a thorn in the side of the French.

In the summer of 1882 troops of the Chinese Yunnan and Guangxi Armies crossed the border into Tonkin, occupying Lạng Sơn, Bắc Ninh, Hưng Hóa and other towns.

On 8 March, Rivière learned that the Annamese government was planning to lease the coal mines at Hòn Gai, a coastal town near Haiphong, to a Chinese consortium which was really a front for a British company.

On his orders, Commandant Berthe de Villers left the following day aboard Parseval, raised the French tricolour in Hòn Gai and established a post of 50 men there.

In his report on this action to Charles Thomson, the governor of Cochinchina, Rivière explained that he had occupied Hòn Gai primarily to secure his line of communications with Haiphong.

Rivière nevertheless decided to attack the city, and assembled a flotilla of junks and steam-launches to transport four and a half marine infantry companies under Colonel Carreau's command and a detachment of Cochinchinese riflemen (tirailleurs annamites)—520 men in all—down the Red River to Nam Định.

[Note 1] The expedition had first to run the gauntlet of the defences of Ninh Bình, whose citadel was built on a massive crag overlooking the Red River and was defended by a number of cannon which completely commanded the passage.

The expedition passed Ninh Bình unharmed, and anchored that evening at the entrance to the Nam Định canal, where it was joined by the gunboats Pluvier and Surprise.

In the early afternoon French marine infantry went ashore and occupied the Nam Định naval barracks, evacuated by the city's defenders, without resistance.

Later in the afternoon sailors from Fanfare went ashore and burned a number of wooden huts to obtain a clear field of fire for the gunboat's artillery.

While this exchange of fire was in progress Rivière summoned the city's governor Vũ Trọng Bình to present himself in person aboard Pluvier and to hand over the citadel before 8 a.m. on the following day.

Knowing that it would be impossible to breach the walls with the small-calibre cannon of the French gunboats, Rivière decided to force an entrance into Nam Định by destroying one of the main gates with explosives.

He nevertheless ordered a preliminary bombardment of the city's ramparts by the gunboats, hoping to dismount as many Vietnamese artillery pieces as possible before his infantry and engineers made their assault.

On the evening of 25, the gunboats deployed along the Nam Định canal into a long line opposite the southeast wall of the citadel, enabling them to bring the defenders under a punishing crossfire.

However, the fog cleared in the early afternoon, and Fanfare moved up close to the southeast wall and began to bombard Nam Định's outer defences at 2 pm, firing slowly and accurately to dismount the guns facing the canal.

The attack force numbered just under 600 men, as Rivière supported the marine infantry and Cochinchinese riflemen with the landing companies of the gunboats Pluvier and Fanfare.

A large Vietnamese force outside the city attempted to attack the French gunboats in the early evening, but was shelled in the open and quickly dispersed.

Vietnamese casualties are not known, but according to Rivière the defenders fought with unusual stubbornness, and when the French entered the city they found its walls piled with corpses.

He appointed chef de bataillon Badens commandant supérieur of Nam Định, giving him a garrison of 440 men and two gunboats.

Badens quickly restored order in the town and reconstituted its municipal government, appointing new magistrates on the advice of the head of the local Catholic mission.