Luc Dan

The old chronicles say

In the eleventh year of Chiwu of the Wu, that is, 248, the barbarian rebels of Giao Chi and Cuu Chan attacked and seized the walled towns, and the whole province of Giao was in turmoil. The Wu took Luc Dan, then serving as commandant supervising the army at Hengyang, and sent him south as regional inspector of Giao Chau, with the added title of Colonel Who Pacifies the South. His biography in the Tam quoc chi is a short one appended to that of his elder brother Luc Khai; the account of the Wu ruler records that year quite fully but has not a word about Giao Chi and Cuu Chan, and the name Luc Dan appears nowhere in that whole book.⁴⁵

The biography describes no battle. It describes a campaign to win surrender: Dan entered the southern lands and appealed to them with kindness and good faith, his aim being to draw them in. The band of Hoang Ngo, a chieftain of Cao Luong, surrendered: more than three thousand households. He led his troops south, again showed his sincerity, and gave them wealth as gifts; then more than a hundred rebel leaders, and more than fifty thousand households from deep and hidden places that had never accepted any bond, all without exception bowed their heads. The lands of Giao were at peace, and he was raised to General Who Pacifies the South. The only person on the rebel side named in this passage is Hoang Ngo.⁴

The name Luc Dan is tied to the woman called Trieu Au through other books: the Giao Chau ky passage of Liu Xinqi says the regional inspector Luc Dan, a man of Wu commandery, put her down, and that passage gives no year, so the only thing tying her to 248 is his name. The Thai Binh hoan vu ky changes one character of his name, to Luc Duan; the Viet su luoc likewise gives only one line: Luc Duan, a man of Wu, with not a word about what he did.⁶¹²

The woodblock Complete Annals write his name as Lang Dan, with a note adding that some books write Lang Thuong; the characters for Luc and for Lang look much alike, so this may be a confusion of similar strokes. The number who surrendered differs too: the Complete Annals give more than thirty thousand households, where the Tam quoc chi and the Tongjian give more than fifty thousand. The Nguyen court’s Cuong muc puts his name back to Luc Dan but still keeps the Complete Annals’ figure of thirty thousand households, and raises into the headline entry of that year: Trieu Au of Cuu Chan gathered a crowd and raided the commanderies and districts; the regional inspector Luc Dan attacked and put her down.³⁷⁸