There had been fury at what is perceived as blatant Chinese treachery when news of the Bac Le Ambush reached Paris.

Jules Ferry’s government has demanded an apology, an indemnity, and the immediate implementation of the terms of the Tianjin Accord.

The Chinese government has agreed to negotiate, but refuses to apologize or pay an indemnity.

The mood in France is against compromise, and although negotiations continue throughout July, Admiral Courbet is ordered to take his squadron to Fuzhou (Foochow).

Courbet is instructed to prepare to destroy the Foochow Navy Yard, fifteen kilometers downriver from Fuzhou at Mawei, and to attack the Chinese fleet in Mawei harbour.

Ironically, the Foochow Navy Yard represents a substantial French investment in China's future, having been built several years earlier under the direction of the French administrator Prosper Giquel.

During the second half of July and the first half of August, Courbet gradually concentrates his squadron in Mawei harbour, at the Pagoda Anchorage—named for a conspicuous Chinese pagoda, the Luoxingta, which stands on a hill above the harbor.

Negotiations between France and China break down in mid-August, and on the evening of August 22, Courbet is authorized by the French government to commence hostilities.

He duly notifies the foreign consuls, the governor-general of Fujian and Zhejiang, and the commanders of several neutral warships moored at the Pagoda Anchorage (the British gunboats Vigilant, Champion and Sapphire and the American corvette Enterprise).

The losses of the French squadron in the course of the operations before Fuzhou and in the Min River are relatively light (ten dead and forty-eight wounded).

Most of these casualties are inflicted not by shellfire during the engagement of August 23 but by sniper fire from Chinese infantry during the squadron's descent of the Min River.

The French dead include lieutenant de vaisseau Bouët-Willaumez, second-in-command of the gunboat Vipère and son of the noted French admiral Louis-Édouard Bouët-Willaumez (1809–71), who is shot dead on Vipère's bridge during an exchange of fire with the defenders of Fort Kimpai on August 27.

With the exception of La Galissonnière and Torpedo Boat No. 46, none of Courbet's vessels suffer serious damage.

The Chinese loss nine of the eleven ships of the Fujian Fleet.

Some of the Chinese ships founder where they are struck, sinking off the Pagoda anchorage and the Foochow Navy Yard.

Others drift downriver and either run aground or sink between Losing Island and the Min'an pass.

French officers aboard Châteaurenault, anchored near the entrance to the Min River, see three Chinese warships drifting downriver on the evening of August 23, abandoned by their crews and blazing from stem to stern.

One of the Chinese ships explodes in front of their eyes.

Courbet estimates Chinese casualties at between two thousand and three thousand dead.

The commemorative tablets in a shrine erected shortly after the war at the Pagoda Anchorage to honor the Chinese dead list the names of 831 sailors and soldiers killed on August 23, but this list does not include the hundreds of Chinese soldiers killed by the French during their descent of the Min River.

The Chinese imperial commissioner Zhang Peilun, who makes no serious attempt to coordinate the resistance of the Fujian fleet, is degraded after the battle and replaced by the veteran general Zuo Zongtang.

He Jing, the governor-general of Fujian and Zhejiang, Zhang Zhaotong, the governor of Fujian, and He Ruzhang, the director-general of the Foochow Navy Yard, are also degraded.

The Manchu General of Fuzhou Mutušan, who had directed the defense of the Jinpai pass on August 27 and 28 with skill and energy, keeps his job.

The Cantonese naval officer Zhang Cheng, a graduate of the Foochow naval college and captain of the Chinese flagship Yangwu, had abandoned ship as soon as the battle started and is later beheaded for cowardice.