The next emperor, Thieu Tri (1841-1847), followed the same pattern of leadership. Resistance in the north grew even stronger. At the same time, Thieu Tri continued to resist foreign trade and jail missionaries. Frustrated, the French eventually moved to direct aggression by taking over Danang. However, the Emperor did not change his position to trade or missionary activity and the French eventually left Danang and moved south to Saigon.
The major thrust of the French takeover of southern Vietnam occurred during the reign of Tu Duc (1848-1883), the last emperor of independent Vietnam. His reign saw, a continuation and escalation of the problems of his predecessors. Instead of trying to change the Confucian style of leadership, Tu Duc tried to understand where, within Confucianism, he had failed. However, the answers were no longer to be found in the tenets of this doctrine. Rather than facing the problem of the French directly, Tu Duc, like Thieu Tri before him, put his energy into fighting the peasant uprisings directed against him all over northern Vietnam and even closing in on the capital at Hue.
The French had their own plan for Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos, a region which they later termed Indochina. Within Vietnam, they had already attracted a serious religious following of Catholic Vietnamese who considered themselves martyrs and were willing to help the French. At the same time, French explorers were mapping the region and developing a trade network between Indochina and Europe. With knowledge of strife occurring in the north, the French concentrated their efforts on the south which they easily invaded in 1859. They forced Tu Duc to sign a series of treaties which gave away much of the emperor's power. When he died, the French placed themselves in power, a place they remained for the next half-century.