with Bảy Viễn and Ba Dương against the French. When the Việt Minh called a mass demonstration on 25 August 1945: "... fifteen well armed, bare chested bandits carrying a large banner declaring 'Bình Xuyên Assassination Committee' joined the tens of thousands of demonstrators who marched jubilantly through downtown Saigon for over nine hours." Following the British-supported French counter-coup in September 1945, the Việt Minh withdrew from Saigon, leaving Bảy Viễn as military commander of Cholon with a force of 100 men. Viễn promptly formed an alliance with Lai Van Sang's two-thousand-man student group, the Avant-Garde Youth. Together with a number of Japanese deserters, they engaged the French. By the end of October, they were pushed back to the Rung Sat in a waterborne retrograde action which displayed as a key element the deployment of some 250 stay-behind agents. The Bình Xuyên stay-behind agents promptly engaged in a ruthless campaign of terror and extortion. A constant influx of men, money and materiel quickly established the Bình Xuyên as a well-armed, disciplined force of approximately 10,000 men. A dispute arose between Ba Dương and the Việt Minh in January 1946. In February 1946, Ba Dương was killed in a strafing raid by French aircraft. Revolutionary turned collaborator Sensing a shift in the political tide, Bảy Viễn seized the opportunity to consolidate his hold on the Bình Xuyên and achieve dominance. In the wake of Ba Dương's death, Viễn began secret negotiations with the French Deuxième Bureau for exclusive rights to territory in Saigon, ultimately leading to a March 1948, agreement with Savani which was formalized on 16 June 1948. The French government announced that it "… had decided to confide the police and maintenance of order to the Bình Xuyên troops in a zone where they are used to operating." Thereafter, the French turned over Saigon, block-by-block, and by April 1954, Lai Van Sang was director-general of police and the Bình Xuyên controlled not only the Saigon-Cholon capital region but a sixty-mile strip between Saigon and Vũng Tàu, exercising full political and economic control. United States observers of the process laconically refer to the Binh Xuyên in this era as a: "... political and racketeering organization which had agreed to carry out police functions [for the Government of Viet-Nam] in return for a monopoly on gambling, opium traffic and prostitution in the metropolitan areas." General Viễn and the defeat of the