 The Vietnam National Army, mostly armed with machetes and muskets immediately attacked.They assaulted the French positions, smoking them out with straw bundled with chili pepper, destroying armored vehicles with "lunge mines" (a hollow-charge warhead on the end of a pole, detonated by thrusting the charge against the side of a tank; typically a suicide weapon) and Molotov cocktails, holding off attackers by using roadblocks, landmines and gravel.After two months of fighting, the exhausted Việt Minh forces withdrew after systematically destroying any valuable infrastructure.