Chester A. Arthur

The Battle of Hoa Moc was the most fiercely-fought action of the Sino-French War . At heavy cost, Colonel Giovanninelli's 1st Brigade of the Tonkin... Expeditionary Corps defeated forces of the Black Flag and Yunnan Armies blocking the way to the besieged French post of Tuyen Quang. The French capture of Lang Son in February 1885 in the Lang Son Campaign allowed substantial French forces to be diverted further west to relieve the small and isolated French garrison in Tuyen Quang, which had been placed under siege in November 1884 by Liu Yongfu’s Black Flag Army and Tang Jingsong’s Yunnan Army. The Siege of Tuyen Quang was the most evocative confrontation of the Sino-French War. The Chinese and Black Flags sapped methodically up to the French positions, and in January and February 1885 breached the outer defences with mines and delivered seven separate assaults on the breach.
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The so-called Battle of Zhenhai was a minor confrontation on 1 March 1885 between Admiral Amédée Courbet's Far East Squadron and Chinese... warships and shore batteries near the coastal city of Zhenhai, 12 miles downstream of Ningbo, during the Sino-French War . The 'battle' is of some interest because the French and Chinese sources disagree sharply on what happened. French sources treated the encounter as a minor incident, while Chinese sources celebrated it as a striking defensive victory. The 'battle of Zhenhai' is still commemorated in China as an important Chinese victory in the Sino-French War. In early February 1885 part of Admiral Courbet's Far East Squadron left Keelung to head off a threatened attempt by part of the Chinese Nanyang Fleet to break the French blockade of Formosa . On 11 February Courbet's task force met the cruisers Kaiji , Nanchen and Nanrui , three of the most modern ships in the Chinese fleet, near Shipu Bay, accompanied by the frigate Yuyuan and the composite sloop Chengqing .
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The Pescadores Campaign in late March 1885 was one of the last campaigns of the Sino-French War . It was fought to capture a strategically important... island group off the western coast of Taiwan. Admiral Amédée Courbet, with part of the French Far East Squadron, bombarded the Chinese coastal defences around the principal town of Makung on P'eng-hu Island and landed a battalion of marine infantry which routed the Chinese defenders and occupied Makung. The Pescadores were occupied by the French until July 1885 and Admiral Courbet, by then a national hero in France, died aboard his flagship Bayard in Makung harbour during the occupation. The Pescadores Islands, also known from their Chinese name as P'eng-hu , were an important transit stop for reinforcements to the Chinese army under the command of Liu Ming-ch'uan confronting the French in northern Taiwan around Keelung , and their capture would prevent further reinforcements from reaching Taiwan. Courbet had wanted to mount an expedition to capture the Pescadores for several months, but the feasibility of the operation depended on the progress of the Keelung Campaign.
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The Battle of Dong Dang was an important French victory during the Sino-French War. The battle was fought as a pendant to the Lang Son Campaign , in... which the French captured the Guangxi Army's base at Lang Son. On 16 February General Louis Brière de l'Isle, the commander of the Tonkin Expeditionary Corps, left Lang Son with Giovanninelli's 1st Brigade to relieve the Siege of Tuyen Quang. Before his departure he ordered General François de Négrier, who would remain at Lang Son with the 2nd Brigade, to press on towards the Chinese border and expel the battered remnants of the Guangxi Army from Tonkinese soil. After resupplying the 2nd Brigade with food and ammunition, De Négrier advanced to attack the Guangxi Army at Dong Dang. De Négrier's 2nd Brigade numbered just under 2,900 men in February 1885. The brigade's order of battle was as follows: De Négrier advanced on Dong Dang with Herbinger's three line battalions, the two Foreign Legion battalions, a company of Tonkinese riflemen and Roperh and de Saxcé's batteries. Servière's 2nd African Battalion was left to guard Lang Son and the brigade's supply line back to Chu.
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