The Trieu: legitimate dynasty or foreign conquest

The last episode left a question open: when a northerner founds a country in the south, is he, to Vietnamese history, a founding king or an invader?

There is an easy answer. The old writers did not know that Trieu Da was a northerner, and that is why they honoured him. That answer fails at the very first line. Open the Trieu section of the Dai Viet su ky toan thu, and the line introducing the king reads: surname Trieu, personal name Da, a man of Chan Dinh in the Han realm.¹

The history knew perfectly well, and still placed him in the line of Vietnamese kings. So the later argument was never about who uncovered where he came from. It was about what to measure him by. This episode goes through each person who held the measuring stick, in order of time.

The earliest of them to leave a trace is Le Van Huu, a court historian of the Tran dynasty, in the thirteenth century. His history is lost. But the preface to the Outer Annals of the Complete Annals tells us it was compiled from Emperor Vu of Trieu onward.² It did not begin with the Hung kings. It did not begin with An Duong Vuong. It began with Trieu Da.

What survives of Le Van Huu are the comments the Complete Annals copied out. His comment on Trieu Da opens with four examples of outsiders who achieved great things:

Without Jizi, Liaodong could not have taken up the custom of robe and cap; without Taibo, Wu and Kuaiji could not have risen to the strength of a king and overlord. Emperor Shun was a man of the Eastern Yi, yet a fine ruler among the Five Emperors; King Wen was a man of the Western Yi, yet a worthy ruler among the Three Dynasties.³

Then he draws his measure:

From this we know that one who is good at governing a state does not count whether the land is wide or narrow, whether the people are Chinese or Yi, and looks at virtue alone.³

Laying that measure against Trieu Da, he writes that Emperor Vu of Trieu opened up our Viet country and made himself emperor, stood level with the Han, wrote letters calling himself the old man, and began the imperial enterprise of our Viet country — a merit that may be called great.³

Notice how the argument works. If Trieu Da had been Viet, there would be no need to borrow Emperor Shun of the Eastern Yi or King Wen of the Western Yi. Le Van Huu accepts where the man came from, and then changes the measure: Chinese or Yi does not count. Only virtue counts.

The comment does not stop at a great merit. The next clause says what the praise is for:

If later emperors of the Viet can follow Trieu Vu, holding the borders firm, establishing the affairs of army and state, dealing with their neighbours by the proper way, and keeping the throne through benevolence, then they will keep their land for a long time — and the sentence turns at once to the northerners.³

For Le Van Huu, Trieu Da is not just a name on a list of kings. He is a model: a man who made himself emperor in the south and stood level with the north. The comment was written for later Viet kings to read and to imitate.

The Complete Annals kept that arrangement. One thing should be said first, to avoid confusion: in the Complete Annals as they survive, the Trieu are not in the Basic Annals. They are in the Outer Annals, book two, right after An Duong Vuong. The Basic Annals begin with the Dinh dynasty.¹ The sign that the Trieu were honoured has to be found somewhere else, and it is not hard to find.

The Trieu have a section of their own, thirty-five folios long — longer than the Hong Bang section and the Thuc section put together. Trieu Da is called Emperor Vu. The years are numbered by the reigns of the Trieu kings, and the third year of the Second Emperor of Qin appears only as a note for comparison. Only when the Trieu fall does the history move on to a section headed as subject to the Western Han.¹ Before that, the Viet su luoc had also given the Trieu a section of their own, and called Trieu Da Emperor Vu.⁴

The plainest declaration is in the editorial principles, the rules set at the head of the work. Under the article on Ngo Vuong, they say:

The record begins with Ngo Vuong because the king was a man of our Viet country, who, at a time when North and South were divided and contending, put down the disorder and restored the country, so as to continue the line of Hung Vuong and Trieu Vu.⁵

Hung Vuong, Trieu Vu: two names side by side in one rightful line. And when the Basic Annals open, the line introducing Dinh Tien Hoang praises him for sweeping away the chieftains and continuing the line of Trieu Vu.⁶ Keep that phrase in mind. We will meet it again, with a different name in it.

Ngo Si Lien comments in exactly Le Van Huu's direction. He opens with a classical line: one of great virtue is sure to gain the throne, sure to gain renown, sure to gain long life, and says that Emperor Vu gained these only because he had virtue. At the end of the section he goes further, calling the Five Ranges a place of strategic strength, the gateway of our Viet country, and writing that the later Dinh, Le, Ly and Tran never recovered the old lands of Emperor Vu of Trieu.⁷

The snag comes from Le Tung, in his general essay of 1514, printed at the front of the Complete Annals. He praises Emperor Vu of Trieu for making himself emperor in his own quarter, as Han Gaozu did in his, with a benevolent love for the people and the wisdom to hold a country. But in the closing summary the same man writes that Emperor Vu of Trieu sent Trong Thuy to use a marriage to An Duong Vuong's daughter, steal the turtle's claw and then attack and take the country — so the stratagem of Emperor Vu of Trieu was an insidious one.⁸

In one breath he is our king. In the next, the way he took our country is an insidious scheme. The seed of the whole argument was already there, inside the camp that honoured the Trieu.

When the Nguyen court historians compiled the Kham dinh Viet su thong giam cuong muc, in the second half of the nineteenth century, they had no need to write an essay. They changed the rules of recording.

One article of the editorial principles lists An Duong Vuong, King Vu of Trieu, the kings who succeeded him in the Trieu line, the two Ly kings, the earlier and the later, Trieu Viet Vuong, and Nam Tan Vuong Xuong Van, and then rules: none of them is legitimate. The old histories wrote them in large characters. Now, following the rule for separate states, they are written as notes in small characters. Their titles of emperor or king follow the old histories, except that their deaths are recorded as hoang, to set them apart from the rightful line.¹⁰

Three strokes of the brush in a single article. Emperor is brought down to king. Large characters are brought down to small. A death that should have been recorded as bang, the word for an emperor, is now recorded as hoang, the word kept for feudal lords. Not one word of censure is needed.

The list shows that the Cuong muc was not measuring by origin alone: An Duong Vuong is on it too. And the reason the principles give for the man placed at the head of the rightful line is that he unified the realm.¹⁰ The table of contents puts the Trieu in the Preliminary Annals, whose first book runs from Hung Vuong to the end of the first year of King Ai of Trieu.¹¹

The Complete Annals, at the head of the Basic Annals, introduce Dinh Tien Hoang as the man who continued the line of Trieu Vu.⁶ In their editorial principles, the rightful line runs from Hung Vuong and Trieu Vu.⁵

The Cuong muc, at exactly the matching point — the article of its editorial principles that sets Dinh Tien Hoang at the head of the Main Annals — writes that Dinh Tien Hoang put down the warlords, unified the realm, and truly could continue the line of Hung Vuong.¹⁰

Hung Vuong is still there. Trieu Vu has vanished.

The reason is already set out in that other article: none of them is legitimate. In this one, the two words Trieu Vu are simply absent. The whole verdict of the Nguyen court fits inside a name taken out of a sentence.