A significant sum, but hardly more than a fraction of what the new government needed, particularly given the monumental task of creating a national army. From the moment of the DRV's founding, her leaders determined that they would have to build a modern regular army capable of defending the entire territory of Vietnam, from the Chinese border in the north to the Ca Mau peninsula in the south. Recruitment for this National Defense Guard (the renamed Vietnamese Liberation Army) in the fall of 1945 went well-by the end of the year, Giap had some fifty thousand soldiers, a tenfold increase from August. In addition, major efforts were made in these months to organize self-defense and guerrilla units throughout the northern and central provinces. In Hanoi, the self-defense militia (tu ve) comprised virtually all the young men in the city and numbered in the tens of thousands.8

But how to supply these various units with weapons and ammunition? The problem was acute, perhaps even insoluble. The government had managed to accumulate some firearms from various sources, including the surrendering Japanese troops, but not nearly enough. Many units had to train only with sticks, spears, and primitive flintlocks turned out by local blacksmiths. With reluctance, Ho agreed to use proceeds from Gold Week to purchase thirty thousand rifles and two thousand machine guns from the Chinese. Giap also sent underlings to Hong Kong and Bangkok to barter gold, opium, and rice shipments for weapons. All of it helped, but Ho and Giap understood that critical shortages remained, particularly with respect to ammunition. The rapid gains made by Gracey and Leclerc in Cochin China against the underequipped units of Tran Van Giau made clear how formidable the military test would be.9

Another fact weighed on Ho Chi Minh's mind: His Viet Minh, though already an inspiration to nationalists all over the colonial world, stood alone where it counted, among the big players on the international stage. Stalin's Soviet Union was not merely uninterested but had been prepared to accept the future of Southeast Asia in Chiang Kai-shek's hands. The French Communist Party, though the largest in France, followed the Stalinist line and counseled patience and moderation; its leader, Maurice Thorez, vice president in de Gaulle's government, said he did not intend "to liquidate the French position in Indochina." Stalin raised no objection. He moreover continued to suspect Ho of being too independent, too much the nationalist, and too desirous of American support. (Stalin had been told of the Viet MinhOSS cooperation in 1945.) The British, for their part, were actively helping the French reclaim Cochin China, while the Americans seemed to have settled on a neutral policy that-in effect if not in intention-leaned toward France. Ho continued to send letters to the White House asking for support; with each nonreply, he lost a bit more faith.10

Add to all this Ho's concern about Chinese occupation forces north of the sixteenth parallel, and it's easy to understand his resort to diplomacy. He told anxious comrades not to forget that the last time the Chinese came, they had stayed a thousand years. Moreover, he added, Lu Han's forces had given aid and comfort to Ho's main nationalist rivals, the Viet Nam Quoc Dan Dang (VNQDD, or Vietnamese Nationalist Party) and the Dai Viet, who had been thrown on the defensive by the Viet Minh's superior organization and boldness but who might yet rebound. Better by far to put up with the French for a time. True, it meant delaying full national independence for some time to come, and retarding the progress of the revolution in the south, but what real alternative was there?

II

THE TALKS BEGAN IN MID-OCTOBER 1945, WITH THE FIRST SUBSTANTIAL session occurring on December 1. Ho's interlocutor was Jean Sainteny, who had remained in Hanoi after his frustrating experience in August and been appointed French commissioner for Tonkin and northern Annam (above the sixteenth parallel). The two men would form, in the months that followed, if not a genuine bond as is sometimes claimed, at least a smooth working relationship. Ho Chi Minh came to trust Sainteny more than other Paris officials with whom he met, and to like him more. He came to see what others saw in the Frenchman (in addition, that is, to his matinee-idol looks): a deep intelligence that was matched by a personal modesty and capacity to listen. No doubt it helped that Sainteny also possessed a thorough knowledge of Indochina, having been a colonial official in the interwar period. For his part, Sainteny found Ho to be a "strong and honorable personality" who was "not basically anti-French." In his book Histoire d'une paix manquee (Story of a Lost Peace), published in 1953, Sainteny would speak of "his vast culture, his intelligence, his incredible energy, his asceticism," and the incomparable prestige this gave him among the Vietnamese people. But Ho was also patient, Sainteny stressed, willing to maintain an association with France for some specified period: "He had struggled towards [independence] for 35 years; he could certainly wait a few years more."11

Leon Pignon, a brilliant career colonial officer with a Machiavellian cast of mind who accompanied Sainteny to many of the negotiating sessions, was more skeptical of Ho's sincerity and more determined to reclaim full French sovereignty over Indochina. To him, Ho was "a great actor" who possessed a "Communist face" and would not long stomach a close association with France; Paris therefore should seek to build up other nationalists rather than work with Ho. But even Pignon, a graduate of the French ecole Coloniale who had served his first stint in Indochina in 193336 and whose sister taught at the Lycee Albert Sarraut in Hanoi, developed a grudging respect for the Viet Minh leader and did not dispute Sainteny's characterization of Ho as a man of moderation who favored compromise over violence. Where Sainteny and Pignon perhaps most differed was in the relative weight they gave to Ho's humility and pride: Sainteny emphasized the former, Pignon the latter.12

From the start the negotiations were complicated by the ongoing Viet Minhsponsored resistance movement in Cochin China, and by Ho's insistence on the inclusion of the term independence (doc lap) in any final agreement. Sainteny, meanwhile, was instructed to gain Viet Minh assent to the entry of French troops into Tonkin, where about twenty thousand French nationals still lived, in exchange for a French vow to bring about the departure of the Chinese occupation force under Lu Han. Regarding the future status of Cochin China, Paris ordered Sainteny to insist that it be viewed as distinct from Tonkin and Annam, and that its people be allowed to choose their own destiny. The talks soon settled into a pattern, with the two men pressing their respective positions in a smoke-filled meeting room in a villa on Paul Bert Square in Hanoi. Sainteny would puff on his pipe, and Ho would smoke whatever cigarettes (Chinese, American, French) were available. Back and forth they would go, two men with considerable mutual respect and even affection, debating the meaning of particular French and Vietnamese words and phrases. They made little headway.13

Gradually, though, as 1945 turned into 1946, both sides softened their position. The outcome of the Vietnamese national elections on January 6 bolstered Ho Chi Minh's legitimacy-the Viet Minh fielded the vast majority of candidates and won a decisive victory. At the same time, however, General Leclerc continued to strengthen the French military position in Cochin China, to the point that by February he seemed poised to turn his attention northward. Diplomatically too, Ho had reason to worry, as the parallel Sino-French negotiations to secure a Chinese withdrawal from Tonkin were beginning to show real promise. The French, it now seemed clear, were advancing north, come what might. Yet to fight them on the battlefield was quite out of the question: Giap's forces were too ill equipped and too undertrained. To remain intransigent in the talks, on the other hand, and if necessary withdraw the DRV government from Hanoi as the French advanced, risked losing the initiative to the antiViet Minh and pro-French Vietnamese groups in Hanoi.

Ho, aware that a conciliatory posture included risks of its own-it would threaten popular support for the DRV among many nationalists, some of whom were more anti-French than he was-chose to press harder for a deal. He truly wanted a negotiated solution. No doubt he was also motivated by the abrupt resignation, on January 20, 1946, of Charles de Gaulle as head of the French government. De Gaulle's departure, unrelated to the empire and caused by his frustration with parliamentary squabbling in Paris, removed what Ho took to be a major obstacle to an acceptable deal, and he had some reason to believe that the new government under Socialist Felix Gouin would be less intransigent.

On the French side, General Leclerc had the same hope. He did not advocate wholesale concessions to the Vietnamese, and he continued to affirm the righteousness of the French cause. (Leclerc was never as conciliatory, never as moderate, as many historians have suggested.)14 But he grasped that the military means at his disposal were limited and that he faced not one but two potential foes in Tonkin-the Viet Minh as well as the Chinese occupying forces under Lu Han. This necessitated some kind of agreement with the DRV, the general believed, though from his perspective the accord need not necessarily come before French troops landed in the north. It might indeed be preferable to sign the deal after that landing, since this could prevent Ho Chi Minh and his government from leaving the capital and taking to the hinterland to commence an interminable guerrilla war in both north and south. Such a war, Leclerc believed, would be a disaster for France.

Publicly Leclerc conveyed confidence, telling the press on February 5 that "the pacification of Cochin China and southern Annam is all over." The following month he estimated that his troops controlled not just the cities but the vast majority of villages as well. Inside, however, he feared that the task in the north would be infinitely larger and that even in the south his success could prove fleeting. He needed no reminder that he had benefited from the presence of Japanese as well as British forces in the early clashes, and that this assistance was now ending. Nor did he need anyone to tell him that relative strength of nonViet Minh elements in Cochin China-notably the Hoa Hao and Cao Dai religious sects with their backing in the countryside, and the Trotskyites with their urban supporters-could in time dissipate. The very ease of the military victories thus far achieved worried Leclerc. Few real battles had taken place, as the guerrillas simply vanished into the jungle, perhaps with the intention to return to fight another day. Leclerc would not have quibbled seriously with historian Bernard Fall's later assertion that in early 1946, France gained control of Cochin China-but only "to the extent of 100 yards on either side of all major roads."15

For Leclerc, then, military force had to be coupled with subtle diplomatic maneuvering if France was to reclaim-as he very much wanted-her predominant position in Indochina. Accordingly, taking advantage of d'Argenlieu's temporary absence from Saigon (he had returned to Paris to report on his policies), Leclerc in mid-February appealed to Paris to agree to concessions, including use of the word independence, which both de Gaulle and d'Argenlieu had vehemently opposed. The restoration of substantial French control over the south, the general contended, meant that France could now agree to mutual concessions, the better to limit Viet Minh ambitions. Paris might well have accepted this line of argument had not Sainteny reported from one of his meetings with Ho that the DRV leader might accept something less than "independence." Sainteny accordingly received instructions-drafted by d'Argenlieu-to offer Ho "self-government" within the framework of the Indochinese Federation and the French Union. In return, Ho must accept the stationing of French troops in Tonkin and agree to various cultural and economic privileges for France. On the pesky question of Cochin China's future, Sainteny should offer a compromise: A plebiscite would be held in all three regions of Vietnam to determine whether the population wished to affiliate with the new state or make a separate deal with France.16

Ho was in a tough spot, facing pressure from several quarters-from Sainteny and the French, from his Chinese occupiers who counseled moderation, and from Vietnamese nationalist parties (notably the VNQDD and the Dai Viet) who accused him of preparing to sell out to France. The signing of a Sino-French agreement in Chongqing on February 28, in which the Chinese agreed to return home in exchange for significant economic concessions from France, reduced his maneuverability further-the agreement, Ho knew, paved the way for a French invasion of Tonkin.

And indeed, the French were about to launch Operation Bentre, a secret plan for the reoccupation of Indochina north of the sixteenth parallel. Hatched in Leclerc's headquarters some months earlier (and named for a town and province at the mouth of the Mekong River), the plan had several elements but centered on landing a sizable force at the port city of Haiphong and, in coordination with a smaller force arriving by plane, proceeding to capture Hanoi. Over a period of three days starting on February 27, the French Ninth Division of Colonial Infantry and Second Armored Division-a total force of some twenty-one thousand men, most of them wearing American helmets, packs, fatigues, and boots-boarded warships, and on March 1, a fleet of thirty-five ships sailed from Saigon north along the coast. Because of the movement of the tide, the landing would have to occur on either March 4, 5, or 6, or it could not occur again until the sixteenth. An early objective: to rearm three thousand French soldiers who remained interned at the Hanoi Citadel-and who, Bentre planners surely knew, would be in a vengeance-seeking mood.17

The French hoped that the arrival of the troops, following fast on the heels of the Chongqing agreement, would compel Ho to agree to a deal on French terms. But the risks were huge. What if the Vietnamese chose instead to stand and fight? And of more pressing concern, what if the Chinese refused to offer their support to the troop landing? That is what occurred. French general Raoul Salan secured permission from the Chinese to have the vessels "present" themselves in Haiphong's harbor on March 6 but not to disembark any troops. Chinese leader Chiang Kai-shek, anxious to secure his southern flank at a time when his struggle against Mao Zedong's Communists was heating up in northeastern China, had no wish to become embroiled in a Vietnamese war of liberation. When the French ships entered the Haiphong harbor on the morning of March 6, the Chinese batteries in the cities began firing. The ships returned fire, and the fighting continued until eleven A.M., with both sides suffering casualties. Chinese negotiators, meanwhile, leaned hard on both the French and the Vietnamese to come to an accord. Strike a bargain, they in effect ordered, or you may find yourselves fighting us as well as your main adversary.

The blackmail tactic worked. In the afternoon of March 6, the two sides, under intense Chinese pressure, signed a "Preliminary Convention," wherein the French recognized the "Republic of Vietnam" as a "free state" (etat libre) within the Indochinese Federation and French Union; the Vietnamese agreed to welcome twenty-five thousand French troops for five years to relieve departing Chinese forces; and France in turn agreed to accept the results of a future popular referendum on the issue of unifying the three regions.18 The new National Assembly in Hanoi, which had been elected in January, approved the deal, with the understanding that it was preliminary and that additional negotiations would follow in short order. Some Vietnamese militants condemned the accord as a sellout, but Ho reiterated his conviction that the first order of business was to be rid of the dread Chinese. "As for me," he told aides, "I prefer to sniff French shit for five years than eat Chinese shit for the rest of my life."19

Not an appealing notion either way. The Ho-Sainteny deal was hardly what Viet Minh leaders had anticipated in the glorious days of the August Revolution, or what any close Indochina observer could have predicted one year earlier, in March 1945, at the time of the Japanese coup de force. That action, after all, had formally ended French dominion over Indochina and had revealed just how hollow colonial control had become. French forces had put up embarrassingly little resistance. Yet now, twelve months later, France was back, well on the way to reclaiming control south of the sixteenth parallel and seemingly ready to do the same north of the line. Little wonder that when Sainteny, after the signing ceremony, raised a glass and exulted to Ho that they had ended the possibility of major war, the veteran revolutionary demurred. "We are not yet satisfied because we have not yet won complete independence." He paused, then added, "But we will achieve it."20

To Western visitors, Ho Chi Minh in this period offered both conciliation and determination. He told American intelligence officers Frank White and George Wickes of his fond memories of living in Boston and New York and of his admiration for American principles as enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, then asked the two men to convey to Washington his high hopes for U.S. support for his nation's quest for independence. And to a senior British diplomat, Ho condemned what he saw as d'Argenlieu's effort to create a separatist movement in Cochin China (80 percent of southerners wanted union with the north, he insisted, notwithstanding some age-old regional frictions) but admitted that his people were as yet unprepared to assume their full duties of citizenship. That was why Vietnam was eager to get advice and counsel from France, from Britain, from the United States-provided it was granted in a spirit of cooperation and not in the form of "master" to "slave." The French seemed to want to retain their full sovereignty over Vietnam, and this, Ho vowed, nationalists in his country would never accept.

The visitors came away impressed. "When you talk to him he strikes you as quite above the ordinary run of mortals," Wickes wrote in a letter home. "Perhaps it is the spirit that great patriots are supposed to have. Surely he has that-long struggling has left him mild and resigned, still sustaining some small idealism and hope [that war can be avoided]. But I think it is particularly his kindliness, his simplicity, his down-to-earthness. I think Abraham Lincoln must have been such a man, calm, sane, and humble." To the Briton, meanwhile, Ho was an "outstanding character" with "excellent idiomatic English." "I came away with the impression that I had been talking to a sincere patriot though obviously imbued with all the characteristics of a convinced revolutionary.... There is no doubt in my mind that he is prepared to go to any lengths to attain his object."21

III

WHICH TELLS US SOMETHING ABOUT HOW THE MARCH 6 ACCORDS should be interpreted in history: as a mere pause in a struggle that had already begun. The agreement raised hopes in some quarters that a peaceful resolution was at hand-notably in Washington, where numerous officials saw it as proof that France had come to embrace the need for far-reaching, fundamental changes in the Franco-Vietnamese relationship-but it may in fact have had the opposite effect, making large-scale fighting more likely. For while Paris recognized Vietnam's "independence," it also won entry for French troops into the north, which gave it the means to revoke what it had promised. The Viet Minh, meanwhile, secured precious time to build up their military strength. No less important, through her recognition of the "free state" of Vietnam, France in effect made the DRV the sole legitimate Vietnamese voice in the entire country.22

Sainteny, to be sure, was sincere-if perhaps nave-in his toast on March 6. He hoped the deal might be the basis for a genuine settlement. Nor was he alone among French analysts in expressing this view. Indeed, one finds in the internal French record in early 1946 a fascinating fluidity in official thinking about the best course of action in Indochina-though fascinating in part because it remained circumscribed, with virtually all analysts holding to the view that Indochina ought to remain within the empire. The January resignation of Charles de Gaulle, it's clear, gave a boost to those, like veteran colonial official Henri Laurentie, who believed that the old colonial order could not be restored in toto, that the world had changed, that it was now essential to give substance to the vague promises of liberalization made during the war. The decision made around this time to give the Colonial Ministry a new name-the Ministry of Overseas France (Ministere de l'Outre-mer)-is one sign of the changed atmosphere. In the military, meanwhile, it was no longer anathema to argue that negotiations involving mutual concessions had to be part of French strategy. A growing number of officers thought there were simply not enough boots on the ground to stake everything on a military solution, and little prospect that more could be found.23

The shakeup in French domestic politics following de Gaulle's departure also gave a boost to the forces for reform and diplomacy, at least temporarily. Though the empire was a low priority for both the public and politicians in this period, all three political parties that dominated the scene voiced at least rhetorical backing for greater autonomy to Indochina and other parts of this reconstituted "Overseas France." The Socialists (Section francaise de l'Internationale ouvriere, or SFIO) professed support for greater self-rule for imperial territories but were split internally on how quickly changes should occur. The Communist Party (Parti communiste francais, or PCF), as we have seen, counseled moderation and generally sought to steer clear of colonial issues but claimed to stand for far-reaching reform in Indochina and elsewhere. Even the Mouvement republicain populaire (MRP), the centrist Catholic party that was destined to dominate Indochina policy during much of the decade that followed, and that would in short order adopt a hard-line stance, made noises in February seeking a revamped French Union that would allow more autonomy for the Indochinese and other colonial peoples.24

But whatever fluidity existed in Paris did not exist where it may have mattered most: in the high commissioner's office in Saigon. Here, paradoxically, de Gaulle's departure may have had the effect not of boosting the forces of reform, but of thwarting them. Admiral d'Argenlieu and his staff had considerable freedom to maneuver in implementing policy directives from Paris, and that freedom now increased, as political maneuvering preoccupied many officials in the metropole. What's more, d'Argenlieu, ever the loyal Gaullist, very likely took the general's departure as a license to clamp down harder in Indochina, in order to affirm the Gaullist line until such a time as de Gaulle could return to power. D'Argenlieu initially professed to support the March 6 convention, but privately he grumbled, with clear reference to Leclerc: "I marvel at France having such a fine expeditionary force in Indochina, and that her commanders prefer to talk rather than fight."25

Little by little the admiral set about retracting the concessions France had made. In mid-April, in talks with Vo Nguyen Giap at Dalat-a mountain resort known for its elegant villas and its comparatively cool weather-he refused to discuss a provision in the March 6 Accords calling for joint Franco-Vietnamese efforts to end hostilities in the south (skirmishes there continued, despite an official cease-fire), or to act on the matter of the referendum regarding whether Cochin China would reunite with the north. D'Argenlieu and Giap also clashed on the future status of Vietnam as a "free state." For Giap, the DRV's position in the French Union would be as an essentially sovereign state, but the Frenchman countered that the French Union was a federation, which meant that each free state within it must relinquish part of its sovereignty to the central authority and specifically to the high commissioner appointed in Paris, that is, himself.26

It all set an ominous tone for the next round of negotiations, set to take place in France later in the spring. On June 1, a mere twenty-four hours after Ho left Vietnam bound for Paris, d'Argenlieu, in clear violation of the March 6 Accords and without informing Paris, "recognized" the autonomous "Republic of Cochin China" in the name of France. The idea was to present both Ho Chi Minh and the Paris government with a fait accompli, for if there was an autonomous republic in the south, there could be no question of holding a referendum on territorial unity. Never mind that d'Argenlieu had no authority to recognize a Cochin Chinese republic even if it had been legitimate; and never mind that the scheme had minimal support among the southern populace.27 Ho, upon receiving the news, said there must be a misunderstanding-surely the high commissioner would not do such a thing-but there was none.

Upon arriving in France, Ho spent two weeks at the beach resort of Biarritz, in the southwest, while some in his delegation went ahead to Paris. Sainteny was sent to keep him company. Ho fumed at d'Argenlieu's antics and threatened to return to Hanoi at once, but the Frenchman convinced him to give the upcoming talks a chance-and to try to enjoy himself while he waited. The two men attended a bullfight and a pelota tournament across the border in Spain, went fishing, and visited the Catholic sanctuary at Lourdes. Ho asked people what it was like to live under German occupation and attended a commemoration of de Gaulle's June 18, 1940, call to resistance, held at the memorial to the dead of the Biarritz resistance. After one festive meal at a restaurant in the small fishing village of Biriatou, Ho signed the guest book with the words, "Seas and oceans do not separate brothers who love each other."28

HO CHI MINH AND JEAN SAINTENY WITH OTHER MEMBERS OF THE VIETNAMESE DELEGATION IN BIARRITZ, FRANCE, IN JUNE 1946 (photo credit 5.2)

Whenever he ventured out among people, whether in Biarritz or in Paris, Ho enjoyed a warm reception. He charmed most everyone, not least the press corps. Reporter after reporter found him engaging, witty, and winningly self-deprecating. To women journalists, he presented flowers. "As soon as one approaches this frail man," commented one scribe, "one shares the admiration of all men around him, over whom he towers with his serenity acquired from wide experience." Other observers compared him to Confucius, to Saint John the Baptist, to the Buddha. Everywhere people commented on his savoir faire, his open love of children, his asceticism-he refused to drink-and his attire: the simple, high-buttoned linen suit that he wore on all occasions, formal and informal. Ho won praise as well from the France-Vietnam Association, which included among its members Emmanuel Mounier, Pablo Picasso, Paul Rivet, and Francois Mauriac.29

No one was more smitten than Jacques Dumaine, director of protocol at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. When Ho was invited to sit at the official podium during a ceremony on July 14, Bastille Day, Georges Bidault, the newly invested president of the Provisional Government, instructed Dumaine to place Ho's chair a little bit behind his own. Dumaine did as told, but grudgingly. "Ho is playing the role of Mahatma," he noted admiringly, "and his simplicity is quite genuine." Dumaine subsequently invited Ho to lunch and wrote of the encounter: "We had an intimate lunch with Ho Chi Minh. One has to admire the mastery of this self-taught man, his language skills, his ability to make his views accessible, to make his intentions seem moderate, and his politeness. His entourage is nervous, fanatical, and reckless, while he plays the wise and insightful one."30

To those concerned about his Marxism, Ho offered soothing words. Maybe in fifty years, Vietnam would be ready for Communism, he told a group of journalists in Paris the week before, "but not now." Any change to the economic system would be gradual, and the Vietnamese constitution-modeled, he emphasized, on the American one-contained safeguards for private property. "If the capitalists come to our country, it will be a good thing for them," he added. "They will make money, but not as it was made in the old days. From now on it is fifty-fifty."31

Ho knew that this personal success and his reassuring rhetoric would count for little in the end. The bilateral negotiations were what truly mattered. When at last the talks were set to begin, southeast of Paris at the famed palace in the forest of Fontainebleau, playground for generations of French royals, he was dismayed to see no prominent figures in the French delegation, merely midlevel colonial officials and three obscure politicians, all of them unsympathetic to the Vietnamese position. The roster reflected the results of an election in France in early June, which shifted the balance in the Assembly to the right and, generally, to those who shared d'Argenlieu's views. The new government, under the MRP's Bidault, saw no reason to compromise with the Vietnamese, and it took this firm position in part because of a letter to MRP chairman Maurice Schumann, dated June 8, from none other than Philippe Leclerc. The general, it seems, had shifted his position dramatically. France, he now wrote, had practically won in Indochina, having in the spring months secured most of the vital points. She therefore should not concede much at Fontainebleau, particularly to Ho Chi Minh, a man who sought only to throw the French out of Vietnam altogether. "I think, under these conditions, that it would be very dangerous for the French representatives at the negotiations to let themselves be fooled by the deceptive language (democracy, resistance, the new France) that Ho Chi Minh and his team utilize to perfection," Leclerc wrote.32

IV

AND SO LECLERC, NEVER AS FAR FROM D'ARGENLIEU'S HARD-LINE position as some authors have claimed, now stood more or less right beside him. The French move into Tonkin following the March 6 Accords had gone reasonably well, Leclerc reasoned, with the first units coming ashore at Haiphong on March 8. The French population of Hanoi and Haiphong was giddy with joy at the arrival of its long-awaited army, and at the French forces' occupation-over the vociferous objections of the Vietnamese-of the Governor-General's Palace in Hanoi two weeks later. ("It seemed the return of Vietnam's colonial enslavement," recalled Bui Diem of watching the French troops reenter Hanoi.) In subsequent weeks, the French strengthened their posture in various spots north of the sixteenth parallel, and though huge tasks remained and fighting continued in the south, the French commander may have noted the progress made and opted to see the glass as half full.33

Whatever its source, Leclerc's perspective meshed well with that of Bidault. A former history teacher who had studied at the Sorbonne, Bidault had been active in the Resistance during the Nazi occupation, then had served as foreign minister in de Gaulle's Provisional Government beginning in August 1944. He founded the MRP and served as foreign minister in Felix Gouin's government in early 1946 before now taking the presidency himself. To Bidault, who would be at the front line of French policy on Indochina for much of the next eight years, and to many of his ministers, war was unthinkable, but the alternative, giving away independence to the "yellow men" (les jaunes), who in the past had been so easily dominated, was even more unimaginable. Bidault accordingly instructed the team at Fontainebleau, led by Max Andre, a die-hard believer in the empire with close ties to the Bank of Indochina, to adhere to a firm posture in the talks, which got under way on July 6. The head of the Vietnamese delegation, Pham Van Dong, meanwhile, was less inclined to compromise than the Giap delegation at Dalat in April had been.34

FRENCH TROOPS ENTER HANOI AS MASSES OF COLONS TURN OUT TO CHEER, MARCH 1946. (photo credit 5.3)

To no one's surprise, therefore, the old problems immediately resurfaced as the discussions began. The Vietnamese wanted independence and a weak form of association with France. France sought guided self-government (the English word was used in internal documents) within the French Union, with France controlling the sovereignty of Vietnam-in other words, the French would hold the crucial ministries. On Cochin China, the Vietnamese held steadfast to the line that it was part of their country, but the French refused to budge. According to Pham Van Dong, Andre said to him: "We only need an ordinary police operation for eight days to clean all of you out." France, in other words, had no need to compromise.35

Days and weeks passed, and the gap between the Vietnamese and the French never seemed to narrow. The French had given Ho a giant red carpet at his hotel when he first arrived, as was the custom with visiting heads of state. David Ben-Gurion, the Israeli leader, who was in Paris at the time, remarked that "Ho's descending fortunes could be measured by the progressive shrinking of the protocolary carpet. On Ho's arrival it had extended from the sidewalk to his room. As the summer wore on, it was limited to the lobby, then to the staircase, and finally simply to the corridor in front of Ho's suite."36

Ho seriously exaggerated the weight of left-wing opinion in France. The hoped-for support from the Socialists and Communists never materialized, notwithstanding the gushing praise that the respective party newspapers heaped on the Vietnamese. Marius Moutet, the beleaguered minister of Overseas France, whose socialist party had lost ground in the recent election, proved unwilling to champion independence for Vietnam, and Communist leader Thorez was likewise equivocal. Over lunch in July, the veteran socialist leader Leon Blum assured Ho, "I will be there at difficult moments. Count on me." That too would turn out to be false.37

In Saigon, meanwhile, Thierry d'Argenlieu continued his efforts at sabotage. Leclerc had by now left Indochina-in July he was reassigned to North Africa and was succeeded in Indochina by General Jean etienne Valluy-which made the subversion easier. He declared that the future relationship between France and Indochina could not be decided solely by delegates representing the Hanoi government and that, accordingly, another conference would be convened, this one at Dalat, on August 1. Its purpose would be to discuss an "Indochinese Federation" comprising Cochin China, Laos, and Cambodia, as well as southern Annam and the Central Highlands. Hanoi would not be represented at all. When word of this Dalat plan reached Fontainebleau, Pham Van Dong reacted with fury and broke off negotiations, much to d'Argenlieu's delight. The two sides eventually returned to the table, but the deep divisions remained. Provisional agreements were drawn up on a range of economic issues, but the stubborn refusal of the French to discuss political issues-notably the status of Cochin China-rendered these agreements worthless to the Vietnamese delegation. Eight weeks of talks, Pham Van Dong concluded on September 10, as the conference drew to a close, had shown only that no basis for serious negotiations existed.38