The Protectorate of Annam and the rising of Ly Tu Tien and Dinh Kien

The title of this episode has two people in it: Ly Tu Tien and Dinh Kien.

But according to every history that records his name, Ly Tu Tien was killed before the siege of the Protectorate’s seat ever began. And the man who led the troops against it is recorded by one history as Dinh Kien, and by another as a different man altogether, named Ly Tu Than.¹

This episode untangles that knot. But first we need to know what the besieged seat was, and when it came into being. Because even on that, the histories do not agree.

The last episode closed in six hundred and two, when the state of Van Xuan fell. The eighty-five years from then to six hundred and eighty-seven pass here in just a few lines, the ones the Dai Viet su ky toan thu records about the officials the Tang sent south.

In six hundred and eighteen, the Complete Annals records a man named Khau Hoa as grand superintendent of Giao Chau. In six hundred and twenty-eight, Ly Tho, governor-general of Giao Chi, was convicted of corruption.²

In that same year a man named Lu To Thuong was ordered to Giao Chau, and refused. His words are recorded in full: Linh Nam is thick with poisonous miasma; whoever goes there has no hope of coming back. He was beheaded.²

In six hundred and thirty-five, the governor-general of Giao Chau, Ly Dao Hung, died in office of the miasma.²

Those four lines say nothing about the people who lived here. They are only about the officials: one convicted of corruption, one who would not go and lost his head for it, one who went and never came back.

When did the name the Protectorate of Annam first appear? The geography treatises of the two Tang histories give the same answer.

The Old Book of Tang says: in the eighth month of the first year of Tiaolu, the Governor-General’s Office of Giao Chau was renamed the Protectorate of Annam. That is, six hundred and seventy-nine. The New Book of Tang also gives the first year of Tiaolu.³⁴

But in the Old Book of Tang itself, in the basic annals that record Emperor Gaozong’s reign year by year, Giao Chau is renamed the Protectorate of Annam in the eighth month of six hundred and eighty-one. One history, two different years.⁵

The Vietnamese histories add a third figure. The Complete Annals puts the Tang renaming Giao Chi as the Protectorate of Annam in six hundred and twenty-two.⁶

Four centuries later, the Nguyen court historians who compiled the Kham dinh Viet su thong giam cuong muc placed the founding in six hundred and seventy-nine, and added a note: the old history puts it in the fifth year of Wude, which is wrong; we now correct it following the Tang histories. The fifth year of Wude is exactly six hundred and twenty-two.⁷

The Cuong muc only says it is wrong. It does not say why. There is one coincidence worth noticing: in both Tang histories, six hundred and twenty-two is the year of a different name — the year the commandery of Giao Chi became Giao Chau, and, according to the Old Book of Tang, also the year the Superintendency of Giao Chau was set up.³⁴

The Viet su luoc does give six hundred and seventy-nine, but it also records that in that year the Tang made Luu Dien Huu Protector. As we will see below, Dien Huu’s own biography shows that he arrived later than that.⁸

The Tang histories describe this machinery in very few words. The most valuable sentence is in the geography treatise of the Old Book of Tang: the Prefect also holds the office of Protector, and commands four thousand two hundred troops.³

So a single official both governed the prefecture of Giao and held the post of Protector. The figure of four thousand two hundred troops is the figure the book gives, with no year attached. Keep it in mind, because in six hundred and eighty-seven we will meet a very different number.

The same treatise gives population and distance too. For the seat of the Protectorate in Giao Chau alone, by the figures the book calls the "old" ones, there were eight districts, more than seventeen thousand five hundred households, and nearly eighty-nine thousand people. By the Tianbao era, in the middle of the eighth century, there were seven districts, more than twenty-four thousand households, and nearly a hundred thousand people. That is the seat alone, not every prefecture belonging to Annam. From here to the capital, Chang’an, was seven thousand two hundred and fifty-three li.³

The New Book of Tang ranks the place as a middle-grade protectorate, notes a force called the Kinh luoc army, and lists the local tribute: bananas, areca nuts, shark skin, python bile, and kingfisher feathers. The seat was at first in Giao Chi, and was moved to Tong Binh only in eight hundred and twenty-five.⁴

Bananas, areca nuts, python bile, and seven thousand li of road. That is about all the Tang histories tell us of the Protectorate before it was besieged.

The affair of six hundred and eighty-seven begins with a sentence about tax. The most detailed version is in the Old Book of Tang:

The Ly households of Linh Nam formerly paid half the levy; when Dien Huu arrived, he forced them to pay it in full.¹

The word Ly here has to be explained straight away, to avoid confusion. It is the name of a group of people in Linh Nam, written with a character entirely different from the Ly that is the family name of Ly Tu Tien or Ly Tu Than. A Ly household is a household belonging to that group, not the household of some family named Ly.¹

So where did that "half" come from? The passages recording the affair of six hundred and eighty-seven do not say. But the Tongdian, a work recording the institutions of successive ages, preserves a Tang regulation issued in six hundred and nineteen. Each adult man paid a grain rent of two shi. The prefectures of Linh Nam alone paid their tax in rice: upper households one shi and two dou, middle households eight dou, lower households six dou. And the households of the Di and the Lao all paid half.⁹

Linking the regulation of six hundred and nineteen to the affair of six hundred and eighty-seven is the reading of the person who wrote this episode, not of the old histories. The regulation speaks of the Di and the Lao, Tang names for peoples of the south; it does not use the word Ly. But read that way, what Dien Huu took away may have been a reduction written into law from the very first years of the Tang.

Luu Dien Huu has no biography of his own in the Old Book of Tang. He is recorded as an appendix, as a younger kinsman, to the biography of Luu Dan Chi, in the chapter called Wenyuan, the "garden of letters". The New Book of Tang gives him an entry of his own, also in its chapter on men of letters.¹¹⁰

According to the biography, he was a man of Pengcheng who passed the jinshi examination, and was once sent to try the remaining followers of Xu Jingye, and judged them leniently. Then he went out to serve as Prefect of Jizhou, and was transferred to be Protector of Annam.¹

The Xu Jingye affair happened in six hundred and eighty-four, so he came to Annam after that year, not in six hundred and seventy-nine as the Viet su luoc has it.

One detail is worth keeping: the official remembered for a harsh tax order has a biography that opens with a lenient judge, and he was placed in the chapter for men of letters.

The Old Book of Tang goes on, and this is the fullest account that survives.

Once the order to pay in full went out, those under him all resented it, and plotted to rebel. Dien Huu struck first: he killed their ringleader, Ly Tu Tien.¹

Killing the ringleader did not put an end to it. In the third year of Chuigong, Tu Tien’s confederates, Dinh Kien, Ly Tu Than and others, led their forces to besiege the seat of Annam. That year was six hundred and eighty-seven.¹

Then comes the figure worth setting beside those four thousand two hundred troops: at that time there were no more than a few hundred fit soldiers inside the walls. Dien Huu shut the gates and held out, waiting for relief from the neighbouring regions.¹

There was an army close by, but it did not move. The history names a man called Phung Tu Du, from a great clan of Guangzhou, and describes him in very heavy words: he took pleasure in another’s disaster, wanted to win merit out of the danger, and so held back his troops and let the rebels loose, making the harm all the greater.¹

Dien Huu was killed by Tu Than. Afterwards the adjutant of Que Chau, Tao Huyen Tinh, led troops against Tu Than and his men, captured them, and beheaded them all beneath the walls of Annam.¹

There the passage ends.

Set the Old Book of Tang beside the other accounts, and the knot in this episode’s title finally shows.

The New Book of Tang tells almost the same story, but more briefly. Dien Huu killed their ringleader, Ly Tu Tien, and then the rest of his band, Dinh Kien and others, rebelled, gathered their forces, and besieged the seat of Annam. In this version there is no Ly Tu Than. Dien Huu was killed, but the book does not say by whom. The man Tao Huyen Tinh beheaded is Dinh Kien. This version gives no year either.¹⁰

The Viet su luoc follows the New Book of Tang: Ly Tu Tien is killed, and the rest of his band besiege the seat and kill Dien Huu, but it does not name Dinh Kien.⁸

The Zizhi tongjian puts the affair in the seventh month of six hundred and eighty-seven, and tells it in yet another way. It does not name the man Dien Huu killed first, calling him only the ringleader. The Tongjian has a sentence that neither Tang history has: the Ly households refused to comply. The rebels after that are Ly Tu Than and his men, and there is no Dinh Kien. Nor is the town merely besieged: Tu Than and his men stormed and took the seat of Annam, and killed Dien Huu. Those beheaded are Tu Than and his men.¹¹

The Complete Annals also puts it in the seventh month of six hundred and eighty-seven. Its first half almost repeats the tax sentence of the Tongjian; its second half almost repeats the New Book of Tang. Here Ly Tu Tien is called the one who laid the plans, and is killed by Dien Huu. The rest of his band, Dinh Kien, gather their forces and besiege the seat. And then the Complete Annals differs from all three other versions: Kien killed Dien Huu.¹²

So let us put it in order.

Ly Tu Tien is the man killed first. He did not lead the siege. Dinh Kien and Ly Tu Than are two different men, both confederates of Tu Tien. The Old Book of Tang has both; the New Book of Tang has only Dinh Kien; the Tongjian has only Ly Tu Than.

The man who killed Dien Huu is Ly Tu Than according to the Old Book of Tang, and Dinh Kien according to the Complete Annals, while the New Book of Tang does not say. The two Tang histories say the town was besieged; the Tongjian says it was taken.

Ly Tu Tien and Ly Tu Than: two names that look alike without their tone marks, but two different men. That is the thing most worth remembering from this episode.