Initially, with the exception of the French possessions in the Pacific and French India, and French Equatorial Africa in August–September 1940, all the territories of the French colonial empire rejected de Gaulle's appeal and reaffirmed their loyalty to Marshall Pétain and the Vichy government. It was only progressively, often with the decisive military intervention of the Allies, that Free France took over more and more Vichy possessions, until after the Allied landings in North Africa (Operation Torch) in November 1942 Vichy only ruled over the in southern France and a few possessions in the West Indies (and nominally over Japanese-occupied French Indochina). The French Army of Africa switched allegiance to Free France, and this caused the Axis to occupy Vichy in reaction.