Background
After the outbreak hostilities on 19 December 1946, the French Union forces had made significant progress by capturing the major cities Haiphong, Hanoi, Lang Son, Cao Bang as well as nearly the complete western and southern region of Tonkin, which was the stronghold of the Viet Minh movement. The reasons for the fast advance were the superior firepower, naval and air support of the French forces. The major forces of the Viet Minh were nearly surrounded by the French in the eastern part of Tonkin. There remained only a greater gap between the towns Cao Bang in the north and Yên Bái in the south. During April 1947 Ho Chi Minh made a last attempt to achieve a ceasefire and to continue the negotiations with the French government about Vietnamese independence from 1946. But the French only demanded his surrender, because the position of the Vietnamese forces seemed to be desperate. But on April 26, he refused the French, offering: "In the French Union is no place for cowards. I would be one, if I would accept." During the rest of the spring and the summer, the French made assaults to the bases of the Viet Minh troops in Tonkin but could not force them to a conventional battle. Instead the Viet Minh returned when the French moved on.
The French supreme command in Indochina under General Jean-Étienne Valluy realized that the recent tactics of minor assaults to locate the headquarters of the Viet Minh would not lead to an end of the war. From their intelligence department, they received some information that the location of the headquarters of the Viet Minh was in the city Bac Kan. They planned to capture Ho Chi Minh and the staff of the Viet Minh and to gain a complete victory over the Vietnamese independence movement.
Read more about this topic: Operation Lea
Famous quotes containing the word background:
“Pilate with his question “What is truth?” is gladly trotted out these days as an advocate of Christ, so as to arouse the suspicion that everything known and knowable is an illusion and to erect the cross upon that gruesome background of the impossibility of knowledge.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“In the true sense one’s native land, with its background of tradition, early impressions, reminiscences and other things dear to one, is not enough to make sensitive human beings feel at home.”
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940)