After Li Weiye's headquarters was besieged, the French army in the Kitasaka area panicked and wanted to abandon the city and flee for a while.

However, Qin Chong, who succeeded Lu Mei as governor of Cochinchina, soon calmed down and set about taking remedial measures, appointing General Bohua, commander of the Cochinchina garrison, as the supreme commander of the Kitabasaka region, commanding the mobilization of the French army and most of the newly recruited Annam indigenous soldiers from Cochinchina, equipped with sufficient guns and ammunition, and quickly set off for Hanoi.

At the same time, the French government was asked to send reinforcements of 2,500 soldiers and three companies of artillery, of which 1,500 were formed as an expeditionary force to the Kitasaka area.

On the sixth day after receiving the bad news that Li Weiye was besieged, the Governor's Office of Cochinchina had mobilized a total of 500 marines and indigenous colonists to prepare to go to the Kitasaka area to aid Li Weiye.

By March 10, due to the arrival of reinforcements, the number of French and indigenous colonial troops in the Kitasaka area had reached about 2,600. And on March 5, the French government had just passed a bill to send 2,500 additional reinforcements to the Annam region and allocate 5.5 million francs.

Now, thousands of miles away, the French government has also hurriedly sent an expeditionary force to the Kitasaka area, which includes three French infantry battalions of 600 men each, four indigenous infantry companies of 125 men each, and a total of about 2,000 people; Gu Ba was appointed commander of the Gulf of Tonkin Navy to strengthen the command of the Navy. At the same time, he was appointed as a special commissioner in Tokyo to manage the administrative affairs of the Kitasaka area, so that the French army could concentrate its forces against the Nanyang Army.

As a result, the Nanyang Corps will soon face a grim situation of fighting in isolation and imbalance in naval forces.

In order to deal with the counterattack of the French army, Li Mingyuan continued to order the minister in France to strengthen negotiations with the French government, and at the same time, he also issued operational instructions to the Nanyang Corps, ordering Mei Dongxing and others to take advantage of the gap when the French reinforcements had not yet arrived in Annam.

Solve the French troops of Li Weiye and other units, and strengthen the defense capability of the Nanyang Corps, so as to prevent the French army from launching a fatal attack on the Nanyang Corps with the assistance of superior naval forces.

After receiving Li Mingyuan's clear combat mission, Mei Dongxing immediately made a response plan.

First of all, on the premise of obtaining the permission of the local government, we used the profits obtained from Hongji coal mines, commercial transactions, smuggling, etc., to vigorously recruit young and strong soldiers in Annam, Thailand, Songkhla, the mainland, and other regions at the standard of four taels of silver dollars per month.

Second, in line with the consideration of anticipating the enemy and being lenient and having as many as possible, Mei Dongxing, while stockpiling weapons and equipment, instructed the establishment of intelligence stations in Hong Kong, Macao, and other regions to purchase more important materials such as muskets, artillery, ammunition, and Chinese and Western medical materials.

In the end, no longer waiting for the assistance and cooperation of the Annam government army, he mobilized the available regular army and Chinese armed forces from all over the country to launch a general attack on the city of Hanoi within a period of time to solve the nails that the French had planted in the north of Annam.

In the mainland area bordering Annam, there were still some Han officials within the Manchu court who still cherished the great righteousness of the state

He was very dissatisfied with the cowardice and cowardice of the Qing government, and analyzed the pros and cons one after another, pointing out that France was not afraid of it, and that the Manchu government should still adhere to the correct decision to help send troops into Vietnam to resist France.

As Zhang Peilun, the left deputy capital of the Metropolitan Procuratorate, proposed: "

China is indeed very poor, France is not very rich, now the situation of the host and guest on both sides has changed, China has a geographical advantage, at this time the imperial court is still timid, hesitant, dare not make a decisive decision, and wait until the vassal country of Annam is destroyed by the French, the surviving countries such as Korea must be afraid of the foreign powers, and the imperial court, it is really a big mistake, it is too late to regret it. ”

He also pointed out that although Mei Dongxing and others rebelled in the early years, after they arrived in Annam, they were no longer enemies of the Manchu court, nor did they return to the mainland to engage in rebellion, and now that the Manchu Qing state affairs are difficult, the country should not make more strong enemies, and should take the initiative to repair relations with the Han State and abandon the policy of being hostile to overseas Chinese.

Tang Jingsong, alternate director of the Ministry of Officials, said: If China does not dare to resist the law, it is not as good as Mei Dongxing's department.

"In the early years, Mei Dongxing's department was just a remnant of the Taiping Army, leading thousands of homeless people, young and strong, galloping Wen, defeating the enemy generals, the French were embarrassed, and were divided and surrounded by Mei Dongxing's department in a few isolated strongholds, in a dilemma, and the dignified Heavenly Empire, many civil and military ministers took the old and heavy as an excuse, and did not dare to send troops to fight with the French, although there were rhetoric on the surface to deal with the Annan government, but the cowardice and fear to this point, aren't you afraid of the billions of people and the rest of the Taiping Army laughing?"

It was not surprising that the suggestions of the officials of the main war faction were rejected by the Qing government, and the officials who, like Tang Jingsong, had excessively spoken and acted in the course of the twists and turns, were reprimanded for being inconsiderate of the imperial court's painstaking efforts and improper considerations, and were sent to the Beiban area in the name of investigating the situation in Annam, and left them to fend for themselves.

The nature of the Manchu government's external concession and internal brutal oppression became more and more evident in the decades after the suppression of the Taiping uprising, first in the Far East, where millions of square kilometers of land were annexed by Tsarist Russia, and then small Japan also came up and slapped in the face.

In 1874, Japan invaded Taiwan, and then the Manchu government signed the "Beijing Peace Treaty" with Japan, which stipulated that the Qing government would compensate the Japanese invaders with 500,000 taels of silver in the name of "bereavement" and payment of "repairs and houses".

In the peace treaty, there was a self-deceptive remark that "Taiwan had recklessly harmed Japan's subjects" and that Japan's dispatch of troops was a self-deceptive remark that "the Qing Dynasty did not refer to it as a righteous act to protect the people."

A few years later, in 1879, Japan formally annexed the Ryukyu Islands, the Manchu government did not say a word, in the Manchu government at that time, the local officers and soldiers had just experienced the civil war, a certain combat effectiveness, and the Japanese side to implement the reform reform only a few years, if the two sides war, Japan will be defeated, the result of the Manchu government did not dare to send troops to fight, its cowardice and incompetence can be seen.

From Tsarist Russia, which occupied Central Asia, to the Dongying island country with few soldiers and a small country, and then to France that invaded Annam, the Manchu government has always adhered to the policy of bowing the knee and surrendering to the outside world, and in the face of victories against white Europeans with the Han state in South America, it has pierced the hearts of some conscientious mainland Chinese.

On March 15, Pang Zhenyun, a native of Liangguang, led 200 armed men to arrive at Halong Port, on March 17, Hu Kunshan, the head of the Guangdong militia group, carried 17 fast guns, and 140 brave people of the militia defected to the Nanyang Legion, and on March 20, Zhu Bingqing, the leader of the Guangxi gang armed forces, and Li Tang, the Gongsheng of Sizhou, successively led 200 to 300 young men to cross the border of Annan and enter the control area of the Nanyang Legion.

By the end of March, the number of Chinese armed forces who had defected from the mainland alone had reached more than 2,000, and in addition to the soldiers recruited by Mei Dongxing in Annam, Nanyang and other places with the funds he had collected, the number of regular troops of the Nanyang Legion had been restored to a large strength of 5,500 men, and the number of Nanyang garrisons equipped with old Dresser rifles and new formations of different models had reached 3,000, and the number of reserve militia troops had reached 5,000.

In order to prevent the worst situation of the French tearing their faces and marching into the Paksaka area, Li Mingyuan instructed the successive top military and political commanders of the Nanyang Army to make preparations when he established the immigration transit bases in Quang Ninh and Lang Son provinces.

Food and medicine were abundant, and all kinds of muskets, artillery, and imitation Gatling hand-cranked machine guns had enough ammunition to cope with the consumption of a medium-sized battle for a year.

Prior to this, the reason why the Nanyang Army did not launch a final attack on the French army in Gushu Hanoi City, Haiphong and other places was entirely to use the besieged French army as a bargaining chip to respond to the consultation and negotiation between the central government and the French government, but the French government believed that the Han State and France were also far away from Annam and could not invest in large-scale cross-sea support, and at the same time, the French government also overestimated the combat effectiveness of the French troops trapped in Beiban, believing that it was difficult for the Nanyang Army to obtain military supplies and supplies, and lacked heavy weapons support. There is no ability to capture the strongholds that are heavily defended by the French soldiers in a short period of time.

The French attempted to use the trapped French army as a bait to contain and disperse the armed forces of the Han State in the Annam area outside various isolated strongholds, and then wait until the French expeditionary force arrived in Annam, and together with the besieged French army, they would annihilate all the exhausted Nanyang Legion troops that had been fighting for a long time, and solve the last armed force of the French occupation of Annam.

Naturally, the Nanyang Corps would not do what the French envisioned in stone, and when the French fleet had just passed through the Suez Canal, Mei Dongxing had already completed preparations for the final battle of the besieged French army.

Before the formal issuance of the battle order, in order to boost morale, Mei Dongxing personally summoned more than a dozen armed leaders who rushed from the mainland, among which Tang Jingsong made Mei Dongxing feel the most important, because he was the first Manchu central official to take the initiative to defect since the establishment of the Han State.