In 1954 the first stage of the Vietnamese revolution came to an end with the establishment of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. The French had suffered an overwhelming military defeat at Dienbienphu and it was clear that their chances of contriving to bring off a reconquest of the whole of Indochina at any remotely tolerable cost had simply ceased to exist. The liquidation of French assets in Indochina, the acceptance of the loss of plantations, factories, mines and rice-production was an economic blow, but one which, with the prospect of access to a unitary western European market, many French political leaders could accept with equanimity. The national humiliation of failure in a war of colonial reconquest, though real enough in the ranks of the regular officer corps of the army, was not supplemented by any intolerable level of economic loss for the French nation as a whole. The total number of Frenchmen involved in the colonial presence in Indochina had never been enormous except specifically in the military effort at colonial reconquest. Moreover the commitment to this reconquest on the part of sections of the regular officer corps was hardly matched throughout the ranks of the army, particularly among the many conscripts. While only a few Frenchmen remained for long in the independent state of North Vietnam, much of the colon population had always resided in the former province of Cochin China, an area which was entirely inside the territory of the state which was established in the south as a result of the way in which the Geneva agreements of 1954 were implemented.