Luu Dien Huu

The old chronicles say

Luu Dien Huu has no biography of his own in the Old Book of Tang. He is recorded as an appendix, as a younger kinsman, to the biography of Luu Dan Chi, in the chapter called Wenyuan, the garden of letters, reserved for men of letters. According to the biography, he was a man of Pengcheng who passed the jinshi examination, was once sent to try the remaining followers of Xu Jingye and judged them leniently, then went out to serve as Prefect of Jizhou, and was transferred to be Protector of Annam. The Xu Jingye affair happened in 684, so he came to Annam after that year, not in 679 as the Viet su luoc has it. One detail is worth keeping: the official remembered for a harsh tax order has a biography that opens with a lenient judge, and was placed in the chapter for men of letters.¹⁴

Dien Huu's order to pay the tax in full made those under him resent it and plot to rebel; he struck first, killing their ringleader, Ly Tu Tien. But killing the ringleader did not end it: in the third year of Chuigong (687), Tu Tien's confederates led their forces to besiege the seat of Annam, when there were no more than a few hundred fit soldiers inside the walls, against the four thousand two hundred troops the same book once recorded for this seat. Dien Huu shut the gates and held out, waiting for relief from the neighbouring regions, but the nearby army of Phung Tu Du did not move.¹⁵

Dien Huu was killed, but the histories do not agree on who did it. The Old Book of Tang records that he was killed by Tu Than. The New Book of Tang only records that he was killed, without saying by whom. The Complete Annals differs from both: it records that Dinh Kien killed Dien Huu. The Tu tri thong giam says the seat was stormed and taken, not merely besieged, and that Tu Than and his men were the killers. According to the Old Book of Tang, the adjutant of Que Chau, Tao Huyen Tinh, then led troops against Tu Than and his men, captured them, and beheaded them all beneath the walls of Annam; the New Book of Tang has the man Huyen Tinh beheaded as Dinh Kien.¹⁴³²

How later ages remembered

The Cuong muc's own summary line for 687 names no leader on the rebel side, recording only that the Ly households rose in revolt and killed the Protector, Luu Dien Huu. Ngo Thi Si, in the eighteenth century, in a comment the Cuong muc quotes under the year 803, called the affair by one man's name, Dinh Kien: Dien Huu oppressed the Ly households, and so opened the way to the revolt of Dinh Kien, and closed his comment with a sentence about officials: whether the officials on the frontier are worthy or not, that is where so much depends.⁶⁷