The French frigate La Cleopatre had visited Tourane (present day Đà Nẵng) in 1822.

Her captain was to pay his respects to Minh Mạng, but was greeted with a symbolic dispatch of troops as though an invasion had been expected.

In 1824 Minh Mạng rejected the offer of an alliance from Burma against Siam, a common enemy of both countries.

In 1824 Henri Baron de Bougainville had been sent by Louis XVIII to Vietnam with the stated mission "of peace and protection of commerce.

Upon arriving in Tourane in 1825, the mission is not allowed ashore.

The royal message is turned away on the pretext that there is nobody able to translate it.

It is assumed that the snub is related to an attempt by Bougainville to smuggle ashore a Catholic missionary from the Missions étrangères de Paris.