His naval force consisted of the corvettes Phlégéton and Primauguet, the gunboats Alarme, Avalanche and Dragonne, the Spanish despatch vessel El Cano and the transports Saône, Durance and Meurthe.

[7] Rigault de Genouilly halted for five days in Cam Ranh Bay for four supply ships to join him with food for the expedition.

On 10 February, the allied flotilla bombarded the forts that defended the interior harbour of Cape Saint-Jacques and soon reduced their cannon to silence.

The landing companies, a mixed force of French and Spanish soldiers under the command of capitaine de vaisseau Reynaud, then went ashore and stormed the forts.

[9] On the evening of 15 February, the naval division (which had been joined in the river by the despatch vessel Prégent) arrived in view of the two forts built by Gia Long's French engineers, which defended Saigon from the south.

[11] Later the same day capitaine de frégate Bernard Jauréguiberry, the future French admiral and navy minister, scouted the Citadel of Saigon aboard Avalanche.

In November 1859, Rigault de Genouilly, whose actions in Cochinchina had come under severe criticism in France, was replaced by Admiral François Page, who was instructed to obtain a treaty protecting the Catholic faith in Vietnam but not to seek any territorial gains.

[16] The Vietnamese, aware of France's distraction in Italy, refused these modest terms and spun out the negotiations in the hope that the allies would cut their losses and abandon the campaign altogether.

In April 1860 Page left Cochinchina to join Charner at Canton, and the defense of Saigon and the neighbouring Chinese town of Cholon, an important commercial centre, was entrusted to capitaine de vaisseau Jules d'Ariès.

To garrison these two towns d'Ariès had a mere 600 marine infantrymen and 200 Spanish troops under the command of Colonel Palanca y Guttierez, supported by the corvettes Primauguet, Norzagaray and Laplace.

Finally, in the wake of the Anglo-French victory at the Battle of Palikao on 21 September 1860, which ended the war in China, reinforcements of 70 ships under Admiral Charner and 3,500 soldiers under General de Vassoigne were dispatched 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 Duchayla, eleven screw-driven despatch vessels, five first-class gunboats, seventeen transports and a hospital ship.

[19] After the arrival of these massive reinforcements, the French were able to defeat the besieging Vietnamese at the Battle of Kỳ Hòa on 25 February 1861 and raise the siege.