Trieu Quang Phuc

Legend has it

The old text of the Marsh of One Night does not stop where Tien Dung and Chu Dong Tu rise to heaven; it carries on into another war, some five hundred years later. The Liang emperor sent Tran Ba Tien south with an army, Ly Nam De appointed him to resist, and he took his troops and hid in that very marsh. The marsh was wide and deep, its mud hard to march an army into; he used dugout canoes to dart out in raids, seizing supplies to draw the war out and wear the enemy down. For three or four years the two sides never crossed spears. Ba Tien sighed a pun: in the old days it was called the marsh of rising to heaven in one night, now it is the marsh of robbery in one night.³

The deadlock broke when the Hou Jing revolt came at home, the Liang emperor recalled Ba Tien and left the army to a deputy. He fasted, raised an altar in the middle of the marsh and burned incense in prayer; a divine being came down on a dragon — one version says plainly that it was Chu Dong Tu — and said that where he rose to heaven the power remains, and that since the prayer had been made in earnest he had come to help. Then he drew off a dragon's claw and gave it to him, telling him to fix it to his helmet, and wherever he struck he would win. With it the spirit of his army surged, it broke the Liang force, cut down Ba Tien's deputy on the field, and afterwards he made himself Trieu Viet Vuong.³

The old chronicles say

The passage about him is cut from every telling of Chu Dong Tu today, and it is easy to see why: it belongs to another age and another war. But cutting it costs something. The compiler did not regard the Chu Dong Tu story as a closed fairy tale; to him it was a holy place still in working order, and the proof was that five hundred years later it helped a general defend the country. Legend here is treated as a source of power still in use.³

In the Complete Annals he has an annal all his own, but directly beneath its name the compiler set a line of small print: the old histories do not record Trieu Viet Vuong; now, drawing on unofficial histories and other books, we can at last record the Viet king's title. The short biography opening the annal makes him the son of Trieu Tuc, of Chu Dien district, fierce and bold, who followed Nam De on campaign with distinction and was made General of the Left. By the Complete Annals, when Ly Bi, beaten at the Dien Triet lake, fell back to hold the Khuat Lao cave, he was entrusted with holding the country and leading the army against Ba Tien; the Cuong muc keeps that detail, notes that it is taken from the old history, and calls him general of the left. The Viet su luoc tells it differently: the remaining followers, fearing Ba Tien's army, surrendered in a body, and nobody was handed the country.^14281516

Under the year Dinh Mao, 547, the Complete Annals record that Quang Phuc held out against Tran Ba Tien with neither side winning, judged he could not resist, and fell back to hold the Da Trach marsh in Chu Dien: mud on all four sides, the ground at its centre reachable only in small dugout canoes poled across the water grass. He brought more than twenty thousand men to camp there — the Cuong muc says more than ten thousand — putting out every trace of smoke and fire by day, and by night taking troops out in dugout canoes to strike Ba Tien's camp; the people of the country called him Da Trach Vuong. Under the year Ky Ty, 549, he burned incense and prayed, and received the auspicious sign of a helmet with a dragon claw. The main text says only 'auspicious sign' and not who gave it; the name Chu Dong Tu appears only in an annotation opening with 'it is commonly said'.¹¹⁷⁴¹⁸

Under the year Canh Ngo, 550, by the Complete Annals, Ba Tien was called back over the Hou Jing revolt and handed the war to his deputy general Duong San; the king let loose his troops, San was defeated and died, the Liang army broke and fled north, and the king went to live in the citadel of Long Bien. Ngo Si Lien's comment under 571 says instead that the king captured Duong San. The Chen shu, Ba Tien's own annals, places him that month at Nankang, leading his army north against Hou Jing; in that annal, and in the main text of the three books of the Tongjian covering those years, there is no Trieu Quang Phuc, no Da Trach marsh, no Duong San. That silence does not prove he did not exist; it tells us only that everything we know about him reaches us through Vietnamese books.^5121920

Commenting on the crossbow story, Ngo Si Lien wrote that the business of My Chau scattering feathers to mark the road need not have happened at all, since if it happened once would be enough to record it, and yet the daughter of Trieu Viet Vuong is later given the same scene over again in imitation; perhaps the chronicler, seeing that both the Thuc and the Trieu lost their countries through a son-in-law, took one event and told it twice. Then he closed: An Duong Vuong fell because the crossbow's trigger was swapped and Trieu Viet Vuong fell because a claw was taken from his helmet, and this is only borrowed language, making marvels of objects.¹¹

The Complete Annals put the story of his daughter in the main text, under a note saying this part is taken from unofficial histories. His daughter was Cao Nuong; Nha Lang, son of Ly Phat Tu, asked for her hand, and the king, who loved her dearly, had Nha Lang come and live as a son-in-law. In 570 Cao Nuong, not seeing what her husband was after, secretly showed him the helmet with the dragon claw; Nha Lang quietly worked out a way to swap the claw, then went home and planned with his father to fall on the king by surprise. In 571 Phat Tu broke his oath and raised his army; the king put on his helmet and stood waiting — a sentence that does not mention the swapped claw — and then fled south with his daughter and at the Dai Nha estuary threw himself into the sea; later generations built a temple to him there. The Cuong muc says outright what the Complete Annals leave unspoken: the king had lost the dragon claw.^2110613