The Battle of Phu Lam Tao (23 March 1885) was a politically significant engagement during the Sino-French War (August 1884 – April 1885), in which a French Zouave battalion was defeated by a mixed force of Chinese soldiers and Black Flags. Background The battle took place three weeks after the end of the Siege of Tuyên Quang, in the course of a French reconnaissance of positions occupied by troops of Tang Jingsong's Yunnan Army and Liu Yongfu's Black Flag Army. French accounts of the battle are curiously reticent, suggesting that things had gone badly wrong. In the wake of the relief of Tuyên Quang, General Louis Brière de l'Isle, the general-in-chief of the Tonkin Expeditionary Corps, drew up plans for a campaign against the Yunnan Army by a column of 5,000 French and Algerian troops, 2,000 Tonkinese auxiliaries and 460 mules and horses. The campaign would be launched from the major French base at Hưng Hóa. Chef de bataillon Simon's 1st Battalion, 1st Zouave Regiment, which had only recently arrived in Tonkin, was ordered to make a preliminary reconnaissance of the village of Phu Lam Tao, reported to have been occupied by strong elements of the Yunnan Army. On 23 March 1885, Simon reached Phu Lam Tao and discovered that the village was held by a force of Yunnan regulars and Black Flags ("pirates", as the French called them). Simon ordered his battalion to attack. The battle What happened next is difficult to establish, as the French sources skate over the engagement in silence or make only the barest of allusions to it. Agence Havas, the official French news agency, announced merely that Simon's battalion had made a reconnaissance towards Phu Lam Tao and had suffered several casualties, but there was clearly more to the affair than that. It is certain that the zouave battalion attacked Phu Lam Tao and was repulsed, and very likely that the repulse was ignominious. The fullest account of the action was given by Paul Sainmont, an officer in chef de bataillon Mignot's battalion of the 2nd Zouave Regiment, which had accompanied Simon's battalion to Tonkin:Today the 1st Battalion, 1st Zouave Regiment was at grips with the soldiers of Luu Vinh Phuc in the Thanh May district near the village of Bang Huyen. The pirates arrived there in bands chased from Lang Son by de Négrier and from Tuyen Quang by Brière de l'Isle, to