Ma Yuan: Lang Bac and Cam Khe

There is something back to front about the war of forty-two in Giao Chi.

We know fairly well what the winner saw and heard, standing in the middle of that marshland — because the histories copy down his own words. But how the losers died, where, and in which month, depends on which book you open.

This episode follows Ma Yuan from the moment he received his commission to the moment he marched his army home. Then it sets the accounts of how Trung Trac and Trung Nhi ended side by side, in the order in which they were written.¹

The Book of the Later Han tells of the expedition in two places, and each place keeps half the story.

The chapter on the southern peoples gives the numbers. The last episode saw the Han readying carts and ships, roads and grain while Trung Trac reigned as king. In forty-two the court sent Ma Yuan, the General Who Subdues the Waves, and Doan Chi, the General of the Tower Ships, raising more than ten thousand troops from the four commanderies of Changsha, Guiyang, Lingling and Cangwu to attack.²

Ma Yuan’s own biography gives the route. He received a sealed letter naming him General Who Subdues the Waves, with Luu Long, Marquis of Fule, as his deputy, and with the General of the Tower Ships, Doan Chi, under his command as well. When the army reached Hop Pho, Doan Chi fell ill and died, and the emperor ordered Ma Yuan to take over his troops too. From there the army advanced along the coast, following the mountainsides and cutting a road for more than a thousand li.¹

One of the two commanding generals had died of sickness before he ever set eyes on the enemy. Keep that detail in mind, because sickness returns at the end of this episode, this time with far larger numbers.

The two titles carried by the army of forty-two were not new either. General Who Subdues the Waves and General of the Tower Ships were titles that went back to the reign of Emperor Wu of Han, when they were held by Lo Bac Duc and Duong Boc.³

Ma Yuan’s biography records the battle in exactly one sentence: in spring of the eighteenth year of the Jianwu era, that is, forty-two, the army reached Lang Bac, fought the rebels and broke them, taking several thousand heads, while more than ten thousand surrendered.¹

That is all. No battle order, no word of who commanded on the sisters’ side, not a single name from the other side of the line. And those figures are the winner’s own report.

Where was Lang Bac? The Thuy kinh chu, a sixth-century book on rivers, only places it beside a branch of a river, with one sentence: Ma Yuan saw that the ground there was high, and so moved up from Tay Ly and camped here.⁴

The Tang commentaries, when they explain the place names of this region, likewise only match them to Tang place names. Among the old sources read for this episode, none places Lang Bac in a present-day province or district. Every attempt to put it on a modern map is the work of later scholars.⁴

Then comes the rarest passage in the whole episode. In the same biography, the Book of the Later Han records Ma Yuan’s own words about his days there. Translated closely, they run:

When I was between Lang Bac and Tay Ly, and the rebels were not yet destroyed, there was flood water below and mist above, and poisonous vapours rose thick and steaming. I looked up and saw hawks in flight falter and drop into the water. Lying down, I called to mind the words Shaoyou used to say in his lifetime — how could that ever be had again!¹

Notice what the passage is about. Not the victory. Not the count of heads. The commander of the winning side remembers Lang Bac as a stifling place: water underfoot, mist overhead, air so heavy that birds fell out of the sky. And he remembers it lying down, not on horseback.

The sentence looks back — "when I was" — which means he is telling it after it was all over. The words of the man named Shaoyou, there in the middle of that marsh, had become something he could not reach. It is the voice of a man who felt he had very nearly not come back.

The name Tay Ly in his words matches the Tay Ly of the Thuy kinh chu, the place from which he moved up to camp on the high ground.⁴

Every history of this war was written many centuries afterwards. This passage too was copied down that late, but it is recorded as the words of a man who stood there. And the man who stood there describes not glory, but misery.

After Lang Bac, Ma Yuan’s biography goes on: Yuan pursued Trung Trac and her band to Cam Khe, defeated them several times, and the rebels scattered and fled. In the first month of the following year, that is, forty-three, he beheaded Trung Trac and Trung Nhi, and sent their heads to Luoyang. Ma Yuan was made Marquis of Xinxi, with the revenue of three thousand households.¹

Even the name Cam Khe has two faces on the page. The main text writes Cam with the character meaning to forbid, and Khe with the character for a stream, and treats it as a military location — the place the Han army chased them to.¹

Two other sources we are about to meet write Kim Khe instead, with Kim, the character for gold, and treat it as a cave — a place where people hide.⁵ The two characters sounded close in medieval Chinese. No contemporary source has yet told us where the place lay.⁶

The Vietnamese histories know about this mismatch too. The Dai Viet su ky toan thu writes Cam Khe, then adds a note: Cam Khe — the histories record it as Kim Khe.⁷

Now for the question this episode cannot answer neatly: how did the Trung sisters die?

The most honest way is to line the accounts up in the order they were written, and to say how far each one stands from the events.

The earliest account we can still read is the Book of the Later Han, compiled by Fan Ye in the fifth century — some four hundred years after forty-three. Even within that one book there are two accounts. Ma Yuan’s biography says that in the first month of forty-three he beheaded the two sisters and sent their heads to Luoyang.¹ The chapter on the southern peoples says instead: in summer, in the fourth month of that year, Yuan broke Giao Chi and beheaded Trung Trac, Trung Nhi and their followers, and the rest all surrendered or scattered.²

The same author, the same book, three months apart. The book disagrees with itself elsewhere too: one chapter says Trung Trac took sixty-five towns, the other says more than sixty.² But on the ending, both chapters use the same word: beheaded.

The second account is in the sixth-century Thuy kinh chu, quoting a lost book called the Giao Chau ngoai vuc ky. There, when Ma Yuan led his troops against Trac, the one who fled into the Kim Khe cave was her husband — this book calls him by a single name, Thi — and he was caught only three years later.⁶

The third account is the commentary of Li Xian of the Tang, in the seventh century, some six hundred years after the events. He placed his note right after the words "sent their heads to Luoyang", quoting a book called the Viet chi: Trung Trac raised troops and set up her capital in Me Linh district; when Ma Yuan came to put her down, she fled into the Kim Khe cave, and was caught only after two years.⁵

So on one and the same page, the main text says beheaded in the first month, less than a year after Lang Bac; and the note says hid in a cave, caught only after two years. Li Xian set down both, and did not rule between them.⁵

That makes four markers for one and the same ending: the first month, the fourth month, two years, three years. And the two books that tell of the cave do not even agree on who hid there — one says the husband, the other says Trung Trac herself.⁶

The Viet su luoc, an anonymous history compiled in the fourteenth century — some thirteen centuries after the events — puts it briefly: Trung Trac was killed by Ma Yuan.⁸

The Complete Annals, the national history of the Le dynasty compiled in the fifteenth century, tell it at greater length, and from this side. In their telling, it was Queen Trung herself who saw that the enemy was too strong, judged her own forces a disorderly rabble, feared she could not hold out, and so fell back to hold Cam Khe. Her troops, too, because their ruler was a woman, feared they could not beat the enemy, and scattered and ran. The Complete Annals close that passage with four characters: the line of the realm was broken once more.⁷

Then in the year Quy Mao, that is, forty-three, Queen Trung and her younger sister Nhi resisted the Han army; their position isolated, both were overwhelmed and perished.⁷

The original words, ham mot, mean being caught in a losing position and perishing. The Complete Annals stop at those words: no manner of death, no place, no date.⁷

And notice one small shift. In the Book of the Later Han, Cam Khe is the place Ma Yuan chased them to. In the Complete Annals, it is the place Queen Trung chose to fall back to and hold. The same place name, moving in two directions, depending on which side the writer stood.

Four hundred years after the Complete Annals, the Nguyen court’s Kham dinh Viet su thong giam cuong muc, compiled in the nineteenth century, went back to the very date in Ma Yuan’s biography. The main text reads: in the year Quy Mao, the nineteenth year of the Jianwu era, in spring, in the first month, Trung Trac and her younger sister Nhi resisted the Han army, and were defeated and died. But right below it, a note quotes the Nam Viet chi of Shen Huaiyuan: Trung Trac fled into the Kim Khe cave, and was caught only after two years.⁹

That clause matches almost word for word the line Li Xian quoted from the Viet chi. The arrangement is identical too: the death in the main text, the cave in the note. Twelve centuries apart, two sets of historians on the two sides of the border did the same thing — they kept both accounts, and dropped neither.⁹

Giao Chi was quiet, but Ma Yuan did not go home yet. His biography records that Yuan took more than two thousand tower ships, large and small, and more than twenty thousand fighting men against the remnants of Trung Trac’s followers in Cuu Chan — Do Duong and his band — from Vo Cong to Cu Phong, beheading and capturing more than five thousand people. The passage closes with four characters: south of the passes, all was pacified.¹

Li Xian’s note explains that Vo Cong and Cu Phong were the names of two districts of Cuu Chan commandery, and that Cu Phong is now Ai Chau — the "now" there being the Tang dynasty’s now.¹¹

The chapter on the southern peoples tells the same campaign more briefly, but adds one detail: Do Duong and his band were broken and made to surrender, and then more than three hundred head of their chieftains were moved to Lingling.² The chieftains were the men who led them, and a head is simply how the book counts people. And Lingling was one of the four commanderies that had supplied troops for the expedition. The leaders taken far away from their own land — that is how the campaign was closed.

Put the two chapters side by side, and the army sets out more than ten thousand strong, while in Cuu Chan there are more than twenty thousand fighting men. The book does not explain the gap. These are two figures at two moments, recorded in two different chapters.²

Only in the autumn of forty-four did Ma Yuan put his army in order and return to the capital. The same biography records that of his troops, those who died of the miasmal fevers came to four or five in every ten.¹ The poisonous vapours steaming up at Lang Bac, it turns out, were not a figure of speech.

What Ma Yuan left behind in Giao Chi after he marched home belongs to the next episode, and to another era.

On the Vietnamese side, the Complete Annals marked this turning point with four characters set right after Cam Khe: the line of the realm was broken once more.⁷ The first period of Chinese domination, and the three years of the Trung sisters, close here.

The next episode: Ma Yuan’s bronze pillars and the policy of assimilation.