[10] While the Nguyễn lords were nominally a part of the Revival Lê dynasty they increasingly became more independent leading to them having military clashes with the north.

The Nguyễn loyalists overcame the Tay Sons in Binh Thuan (1794), Qui Nhon (1799 and 1801), Huế (June 1802), Hanoi (July 1802) to become the first force that able to unify the Vietnamese nation that stretched from Guangxi, China to the Gulf of Thailand, after three centuries of disintegration period.

[13] In 1834 the Minh Mạng Emperor launched a military campaign resulting in the annexation of Cambodia after the Siamese army had been forced to retreat.

Although the Nguyễn army successfully retook Phnom Penh in 1845, the emperor of Vietnam Thieu Tri sought to make peace with Siam.

Between 1802 and 1862, the Nguyễn army also had faced 405 internal rebellions and revolts from small to large scales, mostly were the Lê Loyalists, ethnic minorities, and princely.

From the Minh Mạng to the Tự Đức period the standing army of the Nguyễn dynasty numbered around 120,000 people.

[10] However, due to outdated fighting equipment, poor training, and little attention from the imperial court the Nguyễn army became increasingly backwards in comparison with contemporary military forces, allowing the country to be conquered by the French in 1883.

[10] When the French Republic consolidated its rule over eastern Indochina in 4–5 July 1885, the imperial army was organised under the Garde indigène (Indigenous Guard), leaving only 8,000–10,000.

[10] The Cơ binh had about 27,000 troops, divided into four divisions (đạo), stationed in the provinces around Hanoi and the Red River Delta.

[10] With this decree of the governor-general of French Indochina effectively put an end to the Nguyễn military as the armed forces of the independent imperial state.

[10] In 1933 the Bảo Đại Emperor abolished the Ministry of War (兵部, Binh Bộ) while reforming the structure of the Nguyễn dynasty's imperial court.

[18] Following the August Revolution launched by the Indochinese Communist Party the Nguyễn dynasty was abolished, which also meant that its military was disbanded.

[21] The soldiers wore red tunics, while officers dressed like common gentlemen with a black ao dai, even during wartime.

[25] During a later period under Thieu Tri and Tu Duc (1841–1883), the army was practically undisciplined 32,000 peasant-soldiers, with only 10% of them armed with muskets or rifles.

When the French attacked Saigon, there were about 7,000 Vietnamese combatants instead of the reported 12,000, and there weren't reserves and mobilization to deal with the casualties rather than local recruits.

Each elephant carries a red hemp bridle, a howdah, a chain crupper, belly-strap, a silk flag, two leather belts, 30 arrows, 30 javelins, an iron hook.

[34] Another two hundred galleys owned by the emperor in Hue "were built based on European and European-Vietnamese mixed styles, with fourteen guns on each.

"[35] John White, an American lieutenant and naval captain that visited Saigon in 1819, had once commented: "Cochinchina [Southern Vietnam] is perhaps, of all the powers in Asia, the best adapted to maritime adventure.