Person
Duong Tu Huc
The Tang general and eunuch sent to put down Mai Thuc Loan's rising in 722, following Ma Yuan's old road. The basic annals give the campaign one sentence; his own biography tells it at greater length, and differently.
At a glance
- Dates
- Sent out in the tenth year of Kaiyuan, that is 722, by the basic annals1
- Role
- General of Swift Cavalry and palace attendant, that is, a eunuch; sent by the Tang court to attack Mai Thuc Loan after the inspecting commissioner of Linh Nam, Bui Tru Tien, reported the rising (by the New Book of Tang, he asked to go himself). By his biography in the Old Book of Tang, he recruited more than a hundred thousand sons and younger kin of the chieftains, advanced along the old road of the Wave-Subduing General, struck where he was not expected, took the leader (here named Huyen Thanh) and beheaded him in front of the battle line, piled the corpses into a kinh quan and returned; the biography in the New Book of Tang has the Grand Protector-General of An Nam, Quang So Khach, go with him123
Life
The old chronicles say
In the basic annals of the Old Book of Tang he is only the man sent out after a brief dispatch. It is his own biography, in the Biographies of Eunuchs of the same history, that turns Mai Thuc Loan into the Black Emperor — along with the plot with Lam Ap and Chan Lap and the capture of the seat of the An Nam protectorate, none of which the line in the basic annals has. He recruited troops on the spot, followed the old road of the Wave-Subduing General — which the New Book of Tang would later write outright as the old road of Ma Yuan, the man met in the episodes on the first period of Chinese domination — and attacked by surprise.123
The New Book of Tang, completed in 1060, more than three hundred and thirty years after the events, rewrote his biography and added a man: he asked to go himself, an edict had a hundred thousand sons and younger kin of the chieftains recruited, and together with the Grand Protector-General of An Nam, Quang So Khach, he followed Ma Yuan's old road and struck where he was not expected. The ending differs too: gone is the scene in the Old Book of Tang of the leader taken and beheaded in front of the battle line; the bandits stared, with no time to plan, and were utterly defeated, the corpses were heaped into a kinh quan, and the army returned. The biography stops at the words utterly defeated.32
Mentioned in
Sources for this page
Every row of the profile and every passage below points to one of these documents. How we choose and check sources