Phan Xích Long, also known as Hồng Long, born Phan Phát Sanh (1893–1916), was a 20th-century Vietnamese mystic and geomancer who raised an unsuccessful uprising against French rule in Cochinchina from 1913 to 1916. He attempted to exploit religion as a cover for his own political ambitions, having started his own ostensibly religious organisation. Claiming to be a descendant of Emperor Hàm Nghi, Long staged a ceremony to crown himself as the emperor of Vietnam, before trying to seize power in 1913 by launching an armed uprising against the colonial rule of French Indochina. His supporters launched an attack on Saigon in March 1913, drinking potions that purportedly made them invisible and planting bombs at several locations. The insurrection against the French colonial administration failed when none of the bombs detonated and the supposedly invisible supporters were apprehended. The French authorities imprisoned Long and many of his supporters, who openly admitted their aim of overthrowing French authorities at the trial. During the 1916 Cochinchina uprisings against French rule, many of Long's supporters attempted to break him out of jail. The French easily repelled the attack on the jail, decimating Long's movement. Following the attempted breakout, Long and his key supporters were put to death. Many of the remnants of his support base went on to join what later became the Cao Đài, a major religious sect in Vietnam. Early career Phan was born in 1893 in southern Vietnam as Phan Phát Sanh. His place of birth is disputed; the historians R. B. Smith and Hue-Tam Ho Tai say that he was from Cholon, the Chinese business district of Saigon, while Oscar Chapuis records Tan An as his place of birth. Sanh's father was a police officer. and it has been speculated that the family were of Chinese descent. He started as a servant in a French family, before travelling to the That Son (Seven Mountains) region in the far south of Vietnam, a region that was known as a hotbed of mysticism. There Long trained in mysticism. As a youth, Sanh travelled from Vietnam to Siam, earning his living as a fortune-teller and geomancer. In mid-1911, Sanh formed a secret society on the unverified pretense that he was a descendant of Hàm Nghi, the boy emperor of the 1880s. Led by Tôn Thất Thuyết and Phan Đình Phùng—two high-ranking mandarins—Hàm Nghi's Cần Vương movement battled against French colonisation in the