The harsh policy of Tieu Tu

The title of this episode speaks of a harsh policy. So what do the old histories say that policy was?

The answer is short enough to deserve a whole episode. The Liang shu, the Chen shu, the Nan shi, the Zizhi tongjian, the Viet su luoc, the Complete Annals and the Cuong muc all mention Tieu Tu. Not one of them tells of a single concrete thing he did in Giao Chau: not one tax, not one levy of labour, not one tribute.¹

What they leave behind is two words of blame, in two books. This episode goes looking for exactly those two words.²

Tieu Tu belonged to the ruling house of the Liang. The Zizhi tongjian records him as the son of Tieu Khoi, Prince of Ba Duong, a younger brother of Emperor Wu of Liang. So the emperor was his uncle, his father's elder brother.¹ A note in the Cuong muc adds his title: Marquis of Vu Lam.³

The Nan shi gives him a very short biography of his own, attached after that of his elder brother, Tieu Pham. His courtesy name was The Cung. He rose to be Minister of the Guards. Then, when Hou Jing seized and held the capital, someone sent one of his own enemies to stab him to death. Giao Chau does not appear in that biography by so much as a word.⁴

His father's biography in the Liang shu does not mention him.⁵

The Liang shu, the official history of the Liang dynasty, records what happened in Giao Chau in five hundred and forty-one in a single line: Ly Bi attacked; Tieu Tu paid bribes and was then able to go back. Not one word in that line says how Tieu Tu governed.⁶

The Nan shi puts it more briefly still: Ly Bi, a man of Giao Chau, attacked the regional inspector Tieu Tu.⁷ Again, not one word of blame.

The first word of blame is in the Chen shu, in its opening book, the book about Tran Ba Tien. The sentence begins with the words "before this", like a step back in the story:

Before this, Tieu Tu, Marquis of Vu Lam, was regional inspector of Giao Chau, and through harsh exactions he lost the people's hearts.²

The word the Chen shu uses means to rake in and to squeeze — exaction. The sentence moves straight on to Ly Bi, and that part is kept for the next episode.²

The Liang shu and the Chen shu were both completed by Yao Silian at the start of the Tang. One and the same man: in the Liang's own history he does not blame Tieu Tu; in the book on Tran Ba Tien he does.⁶

The Chen shu also holds a sentence spoken by Tran Ba Tien himself, a man of the Liang: The fault lies with the man of the imperial clan, who brought several provinces to usurpation and disorder, and it has dragged on for many years.² The man of the imperial clan in this story is Tieu Tu. But that sentence only says who was to blame. It does not say what he did.

Some five hundred years after the events, in the eleventh century, Sima Guang wrote that sentence again in the Zizhi tongjian:

It so happened that just then the regional inspector of Giao Chau, Tu, Marquis of Vu Lam, lost the people's hearts through harshness and brutality.¹

The Chen shu's word, exaction, has become brutality. One word is about property. The other is about how people are treated.¹

From here on, the Vietnamese histories follow the Tongjian. The Dai Viet su ky toan thu, the Complete Annals of the fifteenth century, copies this sentence almost word for word, under the year five hundred and forty-one.⁸ The Kham dinh Viet su thong giam cuong muc, in the nineteenth century, quotes that same sentence too.⁹

The Complete Annals also have a summary sentence at the head of the annal: At that time the governors and magistrates were tyrannical and harsh, and Lam Ap raided the frontier. But that sentence is about officials in general. It does not name Tieu Tu.¹⁰

The familiar Vietnamese phrase for him, brutal and harsh, is the Vietnamese rendering of exactly this layer: the Tongjian and the Complete Annals. As for the word policy, none of the histories has it. They record a judgement, not an action.⁸

The Tongjian records a memorial of five hundred and forty-five by He Chen, an official of the Liang, lamenting the local officials:

The commanderies cannot bear the grip of the provinces, the districts cannot bear the exactions of the commanderies. So they harass one another in turn, caring only for what they can scrape in.¹¹

The word for exaction here shares a root with the Chen shu's word. But the memorial was written four years after the events in Giao Chau, and it speaks of the whole Liang realm, not of Giao Chau in particular.¹¹

The same book of the Tongjian records: Giao Chau and Guangzhou used only gold and silver as money.¹² The histories do not tie that detail to Tieu Tu, so this episode does not either.

The man about to rise against Tieu Tu was Ly Bi. The Tongjian introduces him in one sentence: Ly Bi of Giao Chi, of a powerful clan for generations, was frustrated in his official career.¹

The Tongjian also records his post as the trouble was about to break: supervisor of Duc Chau. The Complete Annals record it as supervisor of the province of Cuu Duc.⁸ The Cuong muc writes it as army supervisor of Cuu Duc. Three books, three versions.¹³

The Complete Annals, in the summary that opens the annal of the Early Ly, give an origin that the Chinese books just quoted do not have:

The king was of the Ly clan, his taboo name was Bi, and he was a man of Thai Binh in Long Hung. His ancestors were northerners who, at the end of the Western Han, suffering from the wars, fled south to live, and after seven generations became southerners. The king had talent in letters and in arms. He first served as an official under the Liang, and when disorder came he returned to Thai Binh.¹⁰

The third layer belongs to the Nguyen court, some four hundred years after the Complete Annals. The notes of the Cuong muc reject that very place name:

The old history records Ly Bi as a man of Thai Binh in Long Hung. We now observe: Thai Binh was established in the fourth year of the Wude era of the Tang, and Long Hung was established under the Tran; in the time of the Liang there were no such place names. The old history, on that basis, gave him the later names in retrospect.³

The home given in the Complete Annals, then, is written in the place names of later ages.³

The second man appears only in the Tongjian. The Liang shu, the Chen shu and the basic annals of the Nan shi go straight from Ly Bi's name to the attack on Tieu Tu, without mentioning him.¹

There was a man named Tinh Thieu, skilled in letters, who went to the place of selection to seek an official post. The Minister of Personnel held that the Tinh clan had had no worthy men in earlier generations, and would only make him a gate warden at the Guangyang Gate. Thieu took it as a humiliation.¹

The Tongjian goes on: Thieu went home, and plotted with Ly Bi to raise troops. The Complete Annals retell this story following the Tongjian.⁸

Set side by side again, the Tongjian's narrative has a clear order. First, a man of a powerful clan, frustrated in office. Then a man skilled in letters, slighted for his surname. The sentence about Tieu Tu comes after them, and it opens with a word meaning it happened, at that juncture.¹

As the Tongjian builds its sentences, the regional inspector's harshness is the occasion. The frustration of the other two men was there already, before it.

That is all the old histories record of Tieu Tu: one line with no blame in it, one word for exaction, one word for brutality, and not a single deed. What they record in more detail are the men about to rise against him.

The next episode: Ly Bi rises and founds Van Xuan, 541-544.