and policing under Japanese. They fired upon crowds demanding arms against the French. In Saigon, the violence of a French restoration assisted by British and surrendered Japanese troops, triggered a general uprising on 23 September. In the course of what became known as the Southern Resistance War (Nam Bộ kháng chiến) the Viet Minh defeated rival resistance forces, executing their leading cadres, but, by the end of 1945, had been pushed out of Saigon and major urban centres into the countryside. Incorporation into the State of Vietnam On 1 June 1946, while the Viet Minh leadership was in France for negotiations, at the initiative of High Commissioner d'Argenlieu and in violation of the 6 March Ho–Sainteny agreement, a local territorial assembly proclaimed an "Autonomous Republic". War between France and the Viet Minh followed (1946–54). Nguyễn Văn Thinh, the first head of its government, died in an apparent suicide in November of the same year. He was succeeded by Lê Văn Hoạch, a member of the caodaist sect. In 1947, Nguyễn Văn Xuân replaced Lê and renamed the "Provisional Government of the Autonomous Republic of Cochinchina" as the "Provisional Government of Southern Vietnam", suggesting that his aim was to reunite the whole country. The next year, the Provisional Central Government of Vietnam was proclaimed with the merger of Annam and Tonkin: Xuân became its Prime minister and left office in Cochichina, where he was replaced by Trần Văn Hữu. Xuân and the French had agreed to reunite Vietnam, but Cochinchina posed a problem because of its ill-defined legal status. The reunification was opposed by the French colonists, who were still influential in the Cochinchinese council, and by Southern Vietnamese autonomists: they delayed the process of reunification by arguing that Cochinchina was still legally a colony – as its new status as a Republic had never been ratified by the French National Assembly – and that any territorial change therefore required the approval of the French parliament. Xuân issued a by-law reuniting Cochinchina with the rest of Vietnam, but it was overruled by the Cochinchinese council. Cochinchina remained separated from the rest of Vietnam for over a year, while former Emperor Bảo Đại – whom the French wanted to bring back to power as a political alternative to Ho Chi Minh – refused to return to Vietnam and take office as head of state until the country was fully reunited. On 14