The Battle of Palan was fought two weeks after the Battle of Phu Hoai, in which General Alexandre-Eugène Bouët (1833–87), the French commandant supérieur in Tonkin, had failed to defeat Liu Yongfu's Black Flag Army. Heavy flooding in mid-August had obliged the Black Flags to abandon their positions in front of the Day River and retreat behind the river. The key to their new positions were the villages of Phong (or Phung), commanding the main road to Son Tay at its crossing of the Day River, and Palan (also known as Ba Giang), at the junction of the Red and Day rivers.