Do Tue Do

The old chronicles say

The Song shu, the history of the Liu Song dynasty, opens the biography of Do Tue Do with three generations of background: a man of Chu Dien, in Giao Chi, his family from Jingzhao. His great-grandfather Nguyen was governor of Ninh Pho, and so stayed on in Giao Chi. In the Chinese histories, this is a family of northern origin that had settled in Giao Chi from the great-grandfather's time.²

In 411, Lu Tuan was beaten and fled from Guangzhou, made a surprise attack on Hop Pho and advanced on Giao Chau. The Song shu tells it: Tue Do led six thousand men, civil officials and soldiers alike, out to block Lu Tuan at Thach Ky. On the other side were two sons of the governor Ly Ton, Ly Dich and Ly Thoat, who had fled there, banded together with the Ly and the Lao peoples, each with his own retainers, and gone over to Lu Tuan.¹²

Then came the battle at Long Bien. The Song shu records: on the Canh Ty day of the sixth month, Tuan reached the south landing at dawn, and ordered his whole army to take the city first and eat afterwards. That meal never came: Tue Do brought out all the private wealth of his clan to pay as rewards, then they loosed fire arrows and pheasant-tail torches; foot soldiers lined both banks and shot from either side; every one of Tuan's ships caught fire, and in a moment his force broke apart. As for Tuan's death, the Song shu records that he was struck by an arrow and leapt into the water and died; the Jin shu tells it differently: before he died he poisoned his wife and children, asked his concubines which of them would die with him, and then threw himself into the water, and Tue Do pulled the body out and cut off its head. The Complete Annals chose to follow the Jin shu's version.²¹⁵

Do Tue Do was there for the Lam Ap raid of 413, and the two sides record different endings. The Thuy kinh chu quotes a book called the Lam Ap ky: he came to the mouth of the Cuu Chan river, fought the Lam Ap king Pham Ho Dat, and captured and beheaded two of Ho Dat's sons. The Complete Annals say instead that Ho Dat raided Cuu Chan, and that Tue Do fought him and beheaded him. In one, two sons are beheaded; in the other, the king himself.³⁴

The Song shu places Do Tue Do's life in its chapter of Good Officials, and describes how he ruled: he stamped out the shrines of illicit cults and restored the schools; in years of bad harvest, when the people went hungry, he gave out relief from his own salary. The history praises him: it came to the point that the city gates were not shut at night, and no one on the road picked up what others had dropped. He was made Marquis of Long Bien district, with the revenue of a thousand households; his son, Do Hoang Van, also appears in that same biography.²