1955 State of Vietnam referendum Đại, and police went door-to-door, warning people of the consequences of failing to vote. After his brother Ngô Đình Nhu successfully rigged the poll, Diệm proclaimed himself president of the newly created Republic of Vietnam. The defeat of the French Army at Điện Biên Phủ in 1954, followed by the Geneva Accords, led to a divided Vietnam. The French-backed State of Vietnam, led by former Emperor Bảo Đại, provisionally held control south of the 17th parallel. Hồ Chí Minh's Viet Minh held the north under the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, which Hồ Chí Minh had proclaimed in 1945. The agreements
Paris in the 17th century Saint-Marcel, along the River Bievre, which was quickly polluted by the workshops and dye vats along its banks. The largest workshops there, which made the fortunes of the families Gobelin, Canaye and Le Peultre, were dyeing six hundred thousand pieces of cloth a year in the mid-16th century, but, because of growing foreign competition, their output dropped to one hundred thousand pieces at the start of the 17th century, and the whole textile industry was struggling. Henry IV and Louis XIII observed that wealthy Parisians were spending huge sums to import silks, tapestries, glassware leather goods and carpets from Flanders,