Ly Phat Tu seizes the throne, and Van Xuan falls, 571-602

According to the Dai Viet su ky toan thu — the Complete Annals of Dai Viet — Ly Phat Tu reigned for thirty-two years, with his capital first at O Dien and later at Phong Chau. The history calls him Hau Ly Nam De: the Later Ly Nam De.¹

In the Sui shu, the official history of the Sui, the dynasty that put him down, Ly Phat Tu appears around a single event: the rising of 602. There he is no emperor. He is a chieftain in Giao Chau — a local leader the court had the right to summon to its presence.²

Two files on the same man. One has a son-in-law, a magic helmet and moral commentary. The other has military orders, a count of army camps, and a bribery case.

And the first file names its own source. The last episode quoted the small-print line at the head of the annal of Trieu Quang Phuc. Read in full, that line holds one more figure:

Note: the old histories do not record Trieu Viet Vuong or Dao Lang Vuong. Now, drawing on unofficial histories and other books, we have for the first time recorded the title and place of Viet Vuong, and appended Dao Lang Vuong to fill the gap.³

Dao Lang Vuong is where Ly Phat Tu’s story begins. Before Phat Tu even steps forward, the compiler has warned that most of what follows comes from unofficial histories.

The Complete Annals places this in 550, the same year Trieu Viet Vuong entered the citadel of Long Bien:

Nam De’s elder brother, Thien Bao, was in the land of the Di Lao. He called himself Dao Lang Vuong, and founded a state called the kingdom of Da Nang.⁴

Then the book steps back to tell where this began. When Ly Bi took refuge in the Khuat Lao grotto, his elder brother Ly Thien Bao and a general of the same clan, Ly Phat Tu, led thirty thousand people into Cuu Chan. Tran Ba Tien pursued and attacked them. Thien Bao was beaten, gathered the ten thousand men he had left, and fled into the country of the Di Lao people, on the border of Ai Lao. Seeing that the grotto of Da Nang, at the head of the Dao river, had wide and fertile land, he built a citadel there, and took the name of the place as the name of his kingdom.⁴

In 555 Dao Lang Vuong died, with no son to succeed him. They all raised Ly Phat Tu up in his place.⁴

So by the Complete Annals, after Ly Nam De there were two lines of succession at once: Trieu Viet Vuong at Long Bien, and a small kingdom of the Ly family to the west. Even that origin does not hold steady. The Viet su luoc calls Thien Bao Ly Bi’s son, not his elder brother.⁵

In 557 Ly Phat Tu brought his army east and fought the king at Thai Binh district. Five times they met in battle, and neither side won. Phat Tu’s army was the smaller, and he suspected the king had some magic, so he asked for peace, and asked to swear an oath.⁶

The king, thinking that Phat Tu was of Nam De’s clan, could not bring himself to cut the tie. He drew a boundary at the Quan Than sandbank and gave Phat Tu the west of the country. Phat Tu moved to the citadel of O Dien.⁶

The note on place names puts O Dien in Ha Mo commune, Tu Liem district, and adds one detail that matters later: the commune now has a temple to Bat Lang, that is, a temple to Nha Lang.⁶

Phat Tu had a son, Nha Lang. Nha Lang asked for the hand of the king’s daughter, Cao Nuong, and the king agreed. The king loved Cao Nuong dearly, so he had Nha Lang come and live in his own household as a son-in-law. The main text even explains the term within the line: when a husband lives in his wife’s house, it is called living as a son-in-law.⁷

In 570 Nha Lang asked his wife:

Once our two fathers were enemies, and now they are joined by marriage — is that not good? But what magic does your father have, that he could drive back my father’s army?⁷

Cao Nuong did not see what her husband was after. She secretly brought out the helmet with the dragon claw and showed it to him. Nha Lang quietly worked out a way to swap the claw, and then said to his wife in private:

I have heard that the kindness of father and mother weighs as heavy as heaven and earth. We love each other and cannot bear to part, but I must set my feelings aside for a while and go home.⁷

Nha Lang went home, and planned with his father to fall on the king by surprise and take the country.⁷

This pattern is a familiar one. Writing about My Chau, Ngo Si Lien himself suspected that the chronicler, seeing that both the Thuc and the Trieu lost their countries through a son-in-law, took one event and told it twice. He also said that the daughter of Trieu Viet Vuong had been written into the same scene of marking the road, just like My Chau.⁸ But the annal of Trieu Viet Vuong in the Complete Annals as we have it contains no such scene. Of Cao Nuong it records only that she secretly showed her husband the helmet, and then fled south with her father.⁷¹

Right after the swapping of the claw, Ngo Si Lien sets down a comment. The reader might expect him to denounce the traitor. Instead he blames the father-in-law:

A woman calls her marriage going home, so her husband’s house is her true home. The king’s daughter had been married to Nha Lang — why was she not sent to her husband’s house? Why follow the Qin custom of the live-in son-in-law, and so come to ruin?⁹

In his view the first mistake lay not in the son-in-law’s scheme, but in Trieu Viet Vuong keeping his daughter at his side and bringing his rival’s son to live in his own house. A lesson in the rites of marriage, set down in the middle of a story about losing a country.

In 571 the Complete Annals opens the annal of the Later Ly Nam De. Phat Tu broke his oath and raised his army against Trieu Viet Vuong.

Viet Vuong, knowing nothing of this at first, hurriedly rallied his troops, put on his helmet, and stood waiting.¹

That sentence does not mention the claw that had been swapped. It leaves the reader to remember.

Phat Tu’s army pressed on. Viet Vuong saw that he could not hold, and fled south with his daughter, meaning to find some stronghold to hide in. Wherever he fled, Phat Tu’s army was close behind. At the Dai Nha estuary, blocked by the water, the king cried out: I am at the end of the road! Then he threw himself into the sea. The Trieu line was at an end. Later generations, finding his spirit potent, built a temple to him at the Dai Nha estuary.¹

The main text does not say how Cao Nuong died, and it has no scene of Nha Lang’s remorse. There is only a short phrase in Ngo Si Lien’s comment: Nha Lang died first.¹⁰ When the Nguyen court’s Kham dinh Viet su thong giam cuong muc retells this scene, it says outright what the Complete Annals leaves unspoken: the king, having lost the dragon claw, fled south with Cao Nuong.¹¹

Directly beneath the new king’s name, in small characters, the Complete Annals passes judgement on his whole life:

He used deceit to swallow a country, and at the first wind of the enemy he surrendered. From first to last, nothing he did was righteous.¹

Ngo Si Lien sets two measures side by side:

By the art of the hegemon, the Later Nam De’s attack on Trieu Viet Vuong was a winning plan. By the way of the true king, it falls below dogs and pigs.¹⁰

And he ends by weighing gain against loss. He did win the country, but Nha Lang died first, and he himself in the end could not escape being taken prisoner. What gain was there in that?¹⁰

The biography of Lenh Ho Hy, governor-general of Que Chau, in the Sui shu has a passage that the Complete Annals does not. On imperial order, Hy summoned the chieftain of Giao Chau, Ly Phat Tu, to court. Phat Tu meant to rebel, and asked to wait until midwinter before setting out. Hy wanted to hold him on a loose rein, and agreed.²

Then someone went all the way to the palace gates to accuse Hy of taking bribes from Phat Tu and letting him off. Before long, word came that Phat Tu had rebelled. The emperor was furious and took the accusation to be true. He sent an envoy to put Hy in chains and bring him to the capital, and Hy died on the way. Only when Phat Tu was captured and brought to the capital did word come that Hy had truly taken no bribe, and only then did the emperor understand.²

By this file, before 602 Phat Tu was a local leader whom the Sui court could summon to attend it. By the Complete Annals, he had been emperor since 571. The Chinese histories we have opened know nothing of Dao Lang Vuong, Trieu Viet Vuong or Nha Lang, and the sources give us no ground for choosing between the two files.

The biography of Luu Phuong in the Sui shu records:

In the middle of the Renshou era, it happened that Ly Phat Tu, a man of the Li people in Giao Chau, rose in revolt. He seized the old citadel of Viet Vuong, sent his brother’s son Dai Quyen to hold the citadel of Long Bien, and his subordinate commander Ly Pho Dinh to hold the citadel of O Dien.¹²

The Li in "a man of the Li people" is not Phat Tu’s surname, Ly. It is the name of a people, written with an entirely different Chinese character. The Zizhi tongjian names him in the same way: the Li chief of Giao Chau.¹³ As for the old citadel of Viet Vuong, the book does not say which Viet Vuong it means.

Yang Su, Vice Director of the Left, put Luu Phuong forward as a man with a gift for command. Phuong was made field commander-in-chief of the Giao Chau route, at the head of twenty-seven camps. Anyone who broke orders was beheaded on the spot, but sick soldiers he tended and comforted himself.¹²

At Mount Do Long, more than two thousand bandits came to attack the imperial army, and were routed. Coming close to where Phat Tu was, Phuong first sent a man to win him over, setting out what he stood to lose and what he stood to gain. Phat Tu took fright and surrendered, and was sent to the capital. The cunning strongmen, for fear they would rise again later, were all beheaded.¹²

The basic annals of the Sui shu give the whole affair a single sentence, in the twelfth month of 602: Ly Phat Tu, a man of Giao Chau, raised troops in revolt, and Luu Phuong was sent to put it down.¹⁴ That is all the northern court needed to record about him.

The Complete Annals’ passage for 602 copies the matching passage of the Zizhi tongjian almost clause by clause, from Yang Su’s recommendation to the line about taking fright and asking to surrender.¹³¹⁵ At the close, Vietnamese history uses the very words of Chinese history. But set the two side by side, and a few words have changed.

The Tongjian writes that Luu Phuong led twenty-seven camps and advanced. The Complete Annals writes that he came to invade. The Tongjian writes that at Do Long he met bandits. The Complete Annals writes that he met bandits of the grass. The Complete Annals drops the old citadel of Viet Vuong, and has Phat Tu holding his capital at Phong Chau.¹³¹⁵

And the ending changes outright. The Tongjian writes that Phat Tu asked to surrender and was sent to Chang’an. The Complete Annals writes that Phat Tu asked to surrender, went back north and died; and that the people built a temple to him at the Tieu Nha estuary, facing the temple of Trieu Viet Vuong.¹³¹⁵ Two enemies, worshipped face to face.

Ngo Si Lien comments straight after, in the coldest voice he uses anywhere in this annal:

How can it be that with the enemy pressing at the border, before blade has touched blade, one takes fright and asks to surrender? The king was weak and cowardly, and not one of the generals and ministers of the day spoke a word. This may be called a country without men.¹⁶

In the Complete Annals, those routed at Do Long are mere bandits of the grass, and the king surrenders before any battle is joined. In the Sui shu, they are more than two thousand men who came to attack the imperial army. The book does not say whether they were Phat Tu’s men or not.¹²

The biography of Luu Phuong in the Sui shu says he surrendered.¹² The biography of Lenh Ho Hy, in that same Sui shu, says he was captured.² The Tongjian follows surrendered.¹³ The Complete Annals follows surrendered too, and adds that he went back north and died.¹⁵ Ngo Si Lien’s comment says he was taken prisoner.¹⁰ No Chinese history we have opened records that he died. The Complete Annals also sets down separately, under 603, that Luu Phuong seized the former generals of the Later Nam De, judged them cunning strongmen, and beheaded them all.¹⁷

The Complete Annals closes the annal of the Later Ly Nam De with a line of accounting:

The Later Nam De began in the year Tan Mao and ended in the year Nham Tuat, thirty-two years in all. Counting the Former Nam De and Trieu Viet Vuong together, it is sixty-two years.¹⁵

In Vietnamese history, this is a story with a beginning and an end: a marsh, a magic helmet, a son-in-law, a king afraid of the enemy. In the Chinese histories we have opened, it shows only at its two ends: the campaign against Ly Bi, and a chieftain of the Li people in 602. The two files touch only at 602 — and at exactly that point, the Vietnamese chronicler changed a few words.

The Van Xuan era ends here. The next episode: The Protectorate of Annam and the rising of Ly Tu Tien and Dinh Kien.