Second and third Chinese domination

The old chronicles say

Having put down Cuu Chan, Ma Yuan asked to split Tay Vu district in two, set out more than ten points on which Viet law was at odds with Han law, and took the bronze drums of the Lac Viet to cast into a model horse. The main text of his biography in the Book of the Later Han has no bronze pillar at all. Among the books examined, the oath about the pillar first appears in 1178, in the Linh ngoai dai dap, more than eleven hundred years after Ma Yuan: the pillar then stands in Kham Chau, the verb is push up, not yet break, and the teller says only that he heard it.⁹¹⁴

Si Nhiep was governor of Giao Chi and held the commandery more than forty years through the turmoil of the Three Kingdoms; in 210 he led his brothers in accepting the direction of Wu without a battle, and he died in 226. The Tam quoc chi records him as a governor who brought tribute every year; the Complete Annals give him an annal of his own as Si Vuong. For 248, the Tam quoc chi records turmoil in Giao Chi and Cuu Chan and Luc Dan’s campaign to win surrender, but names no woman; the name Trieu Au, the golden clogs and the elephant come from other books, most of them lost and surviving only through quotation.^1521617

For two hundred years after that, the office of regional inspector of Giao Chau kept staying within a few families. By the Jin shu, the Dao family had five men serve as inspector across four generations. By the Song shu, the Do family, originally of Jingzhao, had lived in Chu Dien since the great-grandfather’s time; Do Tue Do shot fire-arrows and burned Lu Tuan’s boats at the southern landing of Long Bien. By the Nan Qi shu, a man of Giao Chi, Ly Truong Nhan, killed the retainers who had come from the north and seized the province in revolt; in 479 the Qi still made his cousin Ly Thuc Hien regional inspector of Giao Chau, to keep the peace.¹⁸¹⁹²⁰

In 541 Ly Bi rose; by the Liang shu, the inspector Tieu Tu paid bribes and was allowed to go home. In 544 he proclaimed himself emperor: the Vietnamese histories record the state name Van Xuan, while the four Chinese histories covering those years do not have those two words. Ly Bi died in the Khuat Lao cave — four Chinese histories say the people of the cave beheaded him, three Vietnamese histories say he fell ill and died. The Complete Annals record Trieu Quang Phuc routing the Liang in 550, and note themselves at the head of his annal that the old histories do not record him and that they now draw on unofficial histories and other books; the Chen shu places Tran Ba Tien at Nankang at that time. In 602 Luu Phuong of the Sui attacked Ly Phat Tu; within the Sui shu itself, one biography says he surrendered, another that he was captured.^{2132242324252627}

In 687 the Protector Luu Dien Huu made the Ly households, who had paid half the tax, pay it in full, then killed their leader, Ly Tu Tien; his confederates besieged the Protectorate of Annam and killed Dien Huu, though the histories disagree on who led the troops and who did the killing. In 722, by the basic annals of the Old Book of Tang, Mai Thuc Loan attacked and besieged the prefectures and districts; the biography of Duong Tu Huc gives his name as Mai Huyen Thanh, who styled himself the Black Emperor, and tells how the eunuch recruited more than a hundred thousand men and put him down along the old road of Phuc Ba. In 791 the Protector Cao Chinh Binh levied heavy taxes, the seat was besieged, and he died of worry: the Chinese histories name the leader Do Anh Han, the Complete Annals name him Phung Hung, whom his son honoured as Bo Cai Dai Vuong.^282930316