The Han destroy Nam Viet, 111 BC

The last episode stopped where Lu Gia had killed the king and put Trieu Kien Duc on the throne in his place, and the Han force sent ahead had been wiped out while still forty li from Phien Ngung.¹

This time the Han did not send two thousand men. They sent out five columns, all bound for one meeting point: Phien Ngung.

But by the time the city fell, three of those columns had still not arrived. A fourth arrived late, with only a thousand-odd men left. And the whole city surrendered to exactly that late-coming general.

What happened? The two histories closest in time tell it in some detail.¹

According to the Su ky of Sima Qian, Emperor Wu of Han opened the war not with a rallying call, but with an amnesty.

The edict is recorded like this: When the Son of Heaven is weak, the lords rule by force; a subject who does not strike at rebels is blamed. Now Lu Gia, Kien Duc and their kind have rebelled and set themselves up, as calmly as if it were nothing. Send the convicts, together with a hundred thousand men of the towered ships from south of the Jiang and the Huai rivers, to strike them.¹

The figure of a hundred thousand is the overall total the edict gives. And the phrase the convicts will come back twice more in the order of battle: one column is made up of convicts from Ba and Shu, and the troops of the very general who will receive the surrender of Phien Ngung are convicts too.¹ Part of the army that destroyed the kingdom of Nam Viet was made up of men pardoned so that they could go and fight.

In the autumn of the fifth year of Yuanding — that is, one hundred and twelve BC — the Shiji records five columns setting out.¹

The first was led by Lo Bac Duc, commandant of the guards, under the title General Phuc Ba. It left from Guiyang and went down the Hoi river.

The second was led by Duong Boc, chief commandant for noble ranks, under the title General Lau Thuyen — the general of the towered ships. It left from Yuzhang and went down to Hoanh Pho.

The third and fourth were given to two Viet marquises who had already gone over to the Han. One was made General Qua Thuyen, the other General Ha Le. Both set out from Lingling; one column went down the Ly river, the other made for Thuong Ngo.

The fifth was led by the Marquis of Tri Nghia: he used convicts from the land of Ba and Shu, raised more troops from the state of Yelang, and went down the Tuong Kha river.

And then the key line: all to meet at Phien Ngung.¹

Two of the five generals were Viet, and that word stands in the main text itself. As for the Marquis of Tri Nghia, the main text gives no name. The Jijie notes of Pei Yin, from the fifth century, quote Xu Guang as saying he too was a Viet, named Di.² If that note is right, then three of the five columns sent against Nam Viet were led by Viet men.

The Han thu of Ban Gu, compiled in the first century, copies this order of battle almost word for word.³

The real fighting came in the winter of the sixth year of Yuanding — that is, one hundred and eleven BC.¹

Duong Boc arrived first. He took his picked troops, captured Tam Hiep, broke through Thach Mon, seized the Viet boats and grain, pressed on with that momentum, and broke the spearhead of the Viet army — and then he halted with several tens of thousands of men to wait for Phuc Ba.¹

At exactly this sentence, the Han thu has one extra word: he waited for General Phuc Ba with several tens of thousands of Viet men.³ Who they were, the book does not explain.

And what of Phuc Ba? The Shiji says it straight out: General Phuc Ba led convicts, the road was long, and he arrived after the appointed time; when he joined Lau Thuyen, he had only a thousand-odd men left.¹ A thousand-odd men — set that beside the hundred thousand in the edict that sent the army out.

The other three columns did not arrive in time. The Shiji records at the end of the account that the troops of General Qua Thuyen and General Ha Le, and the Yelang troops raised by the Marquis of Tri Nghia, had not yet come down when Nam Viet was already pacified.¹

Lau Thuyen went ahead and reached Phien Ngung. Kien Duc and Lu Gia were both holding out inside the city. Lau Thuyen chose the advantageous ground for himself and camped on the south-east side; Phuc Ba camped on the north-west.¹

Just as dusk came on, Lau Thuyen defeated the Viet and set fire to the city.¹

Then comes the sentence that turns the whole battle: the Viet had long heard of Phuc Ba’s name; it was dark, and they could not tell whether his troops were many or few. So Phuc Ba set up his camp and sent envoys out to call for surrender. To those who came over he gave seals, and then let them go back to call others out to surrender too.¹

Two generals on two sides of the city, doing two opposite things. And the Shiji describes the result in a sentence that sounds deeply ironic: the harder Lau Thuyen attacked and burned, the more he drove the enemy into Phuc Ba’s camp.¹

At first light, the whole city surrendered to Phuc Ba.¹

By the main text, the whole battle fits into one evening and one night. The man who burned the city was Duong Boc. The man who received the surrender of the whole city was Lo Bac Duc — the one who arrived late with only a thousand-odd men, and whom, in the dark, no one knew to have so few.

The Shiji records: Lu Gia and Kien Duc had already fled by night with a few hundred followers, out to sea, sailing west.¹

The Han troops knew which way to give chase thanks to the people of Nam Viet themselves. Phuc Ba questioned the nobles who had surrendered, and only then learned where Lu Gia had gone, and sent men after him.¹

The two men were caught by two different people. To Hoang, formerly a colonel’s marshal, captured Kien Duc and was made Marquis of Hai Thuong. And the man who captured Lu Gia was a Viet palace gentleman named Do Ke, who was made Marquis of Lam Thai.¹ The Jijie notes add that in the table of meritorious lords this man’s name is written Ton Do.²

The chancellor who had served three kings, the man the Shiji itself says had the people’s hearts more than the king did, was in the end captured by a Viet and handed over to the Han.¹

The Dai Viet su ky toan thu tells this passage along the same line, and also notes that one version gives the man who caught Gia as Ton Do. The only difference is that the Complete Annals calls Kien Duc king. And in the Complete Annals, Lu Gia’s story stops at the word captured.⁴

Once Phien Ngung had fallen, the rest of Nam Viet went over to the Han, and the histories record no further battle.

The Shiji names three people. Trieu Quang, the King of Thuong Ngo, of the same clan as the Viet king, heard that the Han army had come and went over. The magistrate of Yet Duong district, named Dinh, decided on his own to side with the Han. And Cu Ong, the overseer of Que Lam commandery, persuaded Au Lac to go over to the Han. All three were made marquises.¹

At this sentence the Shiji gives no figure at all. The Han thu as it circulates today reads: Cu Ong persuaded more than four hundred thousand mouths of Au Lac to surrender, and he was made Marquis of Tuong Thanh.³ In the same passage the Han thu adds a Viet general, Tat Thu, who brought his troops over to surrender, and gives the magistrate of Yet Duong his full name, Su Dinh.³

But that figure has a discrepancy worth telling. Sima Zhen, the Tang commentator on the Shiji, in the eighth century, also stops at the sentence about Cu Ong, and quotes the Han thu to fill it out. The sentence he quotes is: more than three hundred thousand mouths of Au Lac surrendered to the Han.⁵

The same book, the same sentence, two figures: three hundred thousand in the Tang quotation, four hundred thousand in the Han thu we can read today. From these two sentences alone, there is no way to know which one was copied wrong.

And it is worth knowing what that figure counts. The word in the book is mouths — a head count of people, not a count of soldiers. Nor does the Han thu say which region Au Lac means here.³

Everyone who surrendered was a man of Nam Viet: a king of the royal clan, a district magistrate, a general, a commandery overseer. And every one of them was made a marquis.

The Shiji closes the campaign in four characters: and so made nine commanderies.¹

The main text does not name a single one.

The list is in the Han thu: that land was made into nine commanderies: Dam Nhi, Chu Nhai, Nam Hai, Thuong Ngo, Uat Lam, Hop Pho, Giao Chi, Cuu Chan, Nhat Nam.³

In the Shiji as printed today, a reader still finds that list right under the words nine commanderies. But it is a Jijie note of Pei Yin, quoting Xu Guang.² And Sima Zhen himself added a note that Xu Guang was relying on the Han thu for all of it.⁵ So names like Giao Chi or Cuu Chan, often credited to the Shiji, in fact come from the Han thu, by way of two commentators.

As for rewards, the Shiji is brief: Phuc Ba had his fief enlarged; Lau Thuyen, because his troops had stormed the strongholds, was made a marquis.¹

The last three names on the list — Giao Chi, Cuu Chan and Nhat Nam — are where the next episode will look closely.

Not every source puts it in one hundred and eleven.

The Shiji and the Han thu keep two points clearly apart: the army set out in the autumn of the fifth year of Yuanding, and the city fell in the winter of the sixth.^{1 3} Converted to the Western calendar, that is one hundred and twelve and one hundred and eleven BC.

The Book of the Later Han, compiled in the fifth century, puts it in a single short sentence: in the fifth year of Yuanding under Emperor Wu, it was destroyed, and divided into nine commanderies. That folds the destruction of the kingdom into one hundred and twelve.⁶

The Thuy kinh chu, in the sixth century, is further off still: in the second year of Yuanding, Emperor Wu of Han at last took in the Bach Viet, and opened seven commanderies. It is off in both the year and the number of commanderies.⁷

This episode follows one hundred and eleven, because the two histories closest in time both put the fall of Phien Ngung in the winter of the sixth year.

The Vietnamese histories close the Trieu dynasty in the same year, even though each one opens it in a different year. The Viet su luoc gives the Trieu seventy-four years, from the year Dinh Ty to the year Canh Ngo.⁸ The Kham dinh Viet su thong giam cuong muc gives ninety-seven years, from the year Giap Ngo to the year Canh Ngo.⁹ That year Canh Ngo is one hundred and eleven BC. Tran Trong Kim’s Viet Nam su luoc also ends the Trieu in one hundred and eleven, and begins its era of Chinese domination in that very year.¹⁰ The Complete Annals, at the end of the annals of the Trieu, likewise moves on to the annals of the period under the Western Han.¹¹

The Chinese side, for its part, gives a third figure: from the time Uy Da proclaimed himself king, five reigns in all, and after ninety-three years it fell.³ The Shiji also records five reigns and ninety-three years, without saying how it counted.¹

Seventy-four, ninety-three, ninety-seven. The histories disagree about when the Trieu began, but they almost agree about when it ended.

At the end of the account of Nam Viet, Sima Qian writes a verdict of his own. It opens with the line we met in the previous era: Uy Da became king, and the root of it was Nham Ngao. And it closes on the very war we have just told.¹²

On the Nam Viet side, he writes: the kingdom was lost in the end, and the omen began with the woman of the Cu clan; Lu Gia held to a small loyalty, and left Da with no one to carry on his line.¹²

A small loyalty. He does not call Lu Gia a traitor, and he does not call him a loyal minister either. Lu Gia had loyalty, but it was a small one, and it was that very loyalty that cut off the line of Trieu Da.

Then he turns to the two Han generals: Lau Thuyen gave rein to his desires, grew slack and arrogant, and went astray; Phuc Ba, fallen into dire straits, only grew richer in stratagems, and turned misfortune into good fortune. And the closing line: the turns between success and failure are like a braided cord.¹²

Set that verdict beside the account of the battle at Phien Ngung, and each one lights up the other: the man who arrived late with only a thousand-odd men is the one who received the whole city; the man who fought hardest is the one who is faulted.

Right after the verdict, the Shiji as printed today adds a short eulogy. It is easy to take it for more of Sima Qian, but it is not. That eulogy was written by Sima Zhen under the Tang, nearly nine hundred years after Sima Qian. And it sees Lu Gia quite differently: Lu Gia was savage and perverse; ruler and minister were not in harmony, and in the end they were wiped out.¹³

From a small loyalty to savage and perverse: two judgements on the same man, printed one after the other, nine hundred years apart.

Next episode: Giao Chi, Cuu Chan, Nhat Nam.