D’Argenlieu, whose sense of urgency was strengthened by Thinh’s suicide as well as by the outcome of parliamentary elections in France, in which the Communists made major gains (thereby threatening the medium- and long-term prospects for an unyielding French posture on Indochina, and perhaps the admiral’s own job), did not reject wholesale Valluy’s plan but overall considered it too cautious. Evacuations of the type the general wanted were neither wise nor necessary, he determined, and there could certainly be no question of withdrawing from Hanoi. Above all, France must gird for battle: “If,
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