CAO BANG 1950 — First French Disaster in Indochina

Cao Bang — the first great French defeat in Indochina.

Four years before the resounding defeat of Diên Biên Phu, less well known but equally deadly, the fighting that unfolded in October 1950 on both sides of Colonial Route No. 4 in the wake of the evacuation of Cao Bang led to the first disaster for the French Far East Expeditionary Corps.

This reversal sanctioned poor conduct of the war by the governments of the Fourth Republic, and an incoherent operational strategy pursued in Indochina by the highest civilian and military authorities. But the hesitations, the vacillations and the individual opposition that characterised, on the French side, the first phase of the conflict between 1946 and 1950 would be paid for in the blood of soldiers who, undermanned and poorly equipped, faced an adversary growing ever more numerous and better trained.

The Viet Minh and its armed wing, the People's Army of Vietnam, benefited from 1949 onwards from the substantial assistance of the "big Chinese brother" and its military advisers. The battle of the border zone, also known as the "Colonial Route 4" or "Cao Bang" battle, thus carried within it the seeds of the catastrophe that, in May 1954, would accelerate the conclusion of the First Indochina War.