Lê Lợi

Coins issued by the Lam Sơn 's National Liberation army

Lê Lợi began his revolt against the Ming Chinese on the day after Tết (New Year) February 1418. He was supported by several prominent families from his native Thanh Hóa, most famously were the Trịnh and the Nguyễn families. Initially, Lê Lợi campaigned on the basis of restoring the Trần family to power. A relative of the Trần king was chosen as the figurehead of the revolt but within a few years, the Trần pretender was removed and the unquestioned leader of the revolt was Lê Lợi himself.[21]

Jiaozhi Province (northern Vietnam) when it was under Ming occupation (1407–1427)

From the start, the Ming had tried to ensure that local opposition forces would not obtain the new weapons technology, including the Chinese musket known as the "magic handgun". The Yongle Emperor had ordered all firearms counted; “not a single piece is allowed to be missing.”[18] The Ming occupying army of Jiaozhi consisted 87,000 regulars, scattered in 39 citadels and towns in Northern Vietnam, but clustered in the Red River Delta area.[22] They also employed a significant local auxiliaries. Chinese armies had employed firearms before the fifteenth century, but they came to possess superior weapons from Annam during the Vietnamese campaigns of the early fifteenth century.[23] They also captured one of the leading Vietnamese firearms experts, Hồ Nguyên Trừng (1374—1446), the eldest son of Hồ Quý Ly, who was charged with manufacturing their superior muskets and explosive weapons. The Artillery Camp was thus built around these Vietnamese firearm specialists, who instructed Ming soldiers under the supervision of palace eunuchs.[23] The first record of firearm usage in Đại Việt was in 1390 when Vietnamese soldiers used cannons and killed the Cham king Chế Bồng Nga.[24] Lê Lợi's Lam Son rebels employed firearms, copied in rebel-built arsenals from Ming weapons used against Hồ Quý Ly army ten years earlier.[14]

When the Lam Son uprising took place, the Ming commanding officer was Marquis Li Bin, who stern attitude toward the Annamite people of Jiaozhi and disregard for their sensibilities and political aspirations only intensified their hatred for the Chinese.[19] In early 1418, Lê Lợi and his men successful managed and ambushed a Ming patrol column on the upper Chu River, near Lam Son but was then betrayed by a turncoat who showed Ming units a way to attack him by surprise from the rear.[17] His partisan party scattered and he briefly went into hiding before regaining enough strength to ambush the Ming patrol and force it to withdraw.[17] In 1419 Lê Lợi attacked and seized a Ming outpost near Lam Son held by a local noble who was working for the Chinese , and beheaded 300 enemies captured here.[17] In the next year, Lê Lợi spent time marching around the western highlands to recruit more men. In late 1420 his force ambushed a Ming patrol.[17] The Chinese marquis, Li Bin responded by mobilizing Ming and local military forces to against him, but Lê Lợi defeated them, gained the control over Quan Hoa district on the upper Mã River.[17]

In late 1421, a large Ming army marched to the Mã River valley to attack Lê Lợi and the Vietnamese rebels. A Laotian army with 30,000 men and 100 elephants from Lan Xang approached down the valley from the opposite direction.[25] Lê Lợi was under the illusion that the Laotians were his allies.[17] However, they sided with the Ming and joined the Chinese to laid siege on Lê Lợi.[26] By the end of 1422, Lê Lợi was utterly defeated and sued for peace.[17] In 1423 he was forced to disband his partisans, then returned to Lam Son, paid an indemnity with unspecified amounts of gold and silver, and promised the Ming that he would live in peace.[17] In return, the Ming would provide him with fish, salt, rice, and farm implements.[17] This was the situation when then news arrived in 1424 of the Ming emperor's death.

Within a month of taking the throne, Zhu Gaozhi (r. 1424–1425), Zhu Di’s son and successor, issued a proclamation indicating a dramatic change of Ming policy in Jiaozhi.[17] calling for “reform”, he abolished the collection of commodities. In other initiatives, he moved to end Zheng He’s voyages, and he downgraded the role of the military. He wanted to consolidate the core of what had been achieved by his father and grandfather but had no taste for costly adventures.[27] He recalled Huang Fu from Jiaozhi and lowered the priority of holding that distant place. After only one year as emperor, Zhu Gaozhi died suddenly of a heart attack, but his son and successor, Zhu Zhanji (r. 1425–1435). Zhanji continued his father policies.[27]

In late 1424, news of the new emperor’s proclamation and of Huang Fu’s recall prompted Lê Lợi to set out on a new trajectory. His earlier five-year career as a rebel leader in the Thanh Hoa uplands had ended with him back at where he had begun.[27] Lê Lợi rebuilt his partisan army, follow his comrade, Nguyễn Chích to strike south through the mountains into Nghệ An. After ambushing a Ming force in Quỳ Châu district, he advanced to Con Cuong district on the upper Cả River.[28] From there he moved downriver, defeating Ming and local pro-Ming armies until by the end of the year he had forced his enemies to take refuge at modern Vinh, which at that time was the provincial headquarters for Nghệ An. He rallied thousands of new recruits into his armies from the upland population of the Cả River basin.[28] In 1424, Lê Lợi deployed his forces along the western frontier into the upland region between Nghệ An province and the Lao border, defeating an army of ethnic minority troops who had joined the Ming cause. Then they headed east down into the coastal lowlands of Nghệ An. They sought to win over the densely settled Viet population by demonstrating discipline and refraining from exactions.[29]

In 1425, as the Ming court was preoccupied with the death of one emperor and the accession of another, Lê Lợi sent armies both to the south and to the north. In the south, his men under Trần Nguyên Hãn defeated a Ming army in modern Quảng Bình and then marched through modern Quảng Trị and Thừa Thiên to gain control of the southern border.[28] In the north, Lê Lợi’s men captured a Ming supply fleet in northern Nghệ An, then pursued Ming forces through Thanh Hoa to besiege them at Tây Đô.[28] Nguyễn Trãi, a Confucian scholar who was a comrade of Lê Lợi, helped him mapped the army's strategy and tactics.[14]

As a result of these victories, from the end of 1425, Lê Lợi's Vietnamese rebels liberated all land from Thanh Hoa to the south, and besieged all the Ming's forces in the region.

Illustration of Primitive tank from Chinese book Wujing Zongyao

In 1425, the Ming Emperor Zhu Zhanji expressed his opinion that it would be better to restore the Trần dynasty and return to the old tributary relationship.[27] When in 1426, Zhang Fu requested permission to resume command of Ming Jiaozhi army to deal with the worsening situation there, the emperor refused. In 1426, Zhu Zhanji proclaimed a general amnesty and abolished all taxes in Giao Chi except for land taxes to be paid in rice, needed to supply Ming garrisons.[27]

Gaining momentum from these spectacular successes, in 1426 Lê Lợi sent his armies led by his generals, Trịnh Khả, Lý Triện, Đỗ Bí, Lưu Nhân Chú, Bùi Bị, Đinh Lễ, Nguyễn Xí through the mountains north of Tây Đô to emerge at the head of the Red River plain, threatening Dongguan and cutting it off from the road to Yunnan. When Ming soldiers were recalled from Vinh to reinforce Dongguan, Lê Lợi, leaving some troops to besiege Vinh, followed the Ming forces as they moved north, rallying thousands of men from Thanh Hoa as he went. Pushing into the Red River Delta he proclaimed as king a certain Trần Cảo, supposedly a Trần prince.[28] Men from the Red River plain began to join his ranks as he called for those who had favored the Ming to come to his side and arrested those who did not. The Chinese general, Wang Tong, at Dongguan as Huang Fu’s replacement, was prepared to surrender, but local people who were loyal to Ming persuaded him to resist. Lê Lợi was later recorded as saying that at first he had no intention of overthrowing the Ming regime or of becoming king: he had simply been trying to stay alive and one event had led to another.[28] This seeming diffidence may have been true in the years 1418–1423 when personal enemies aroused Ming and Laotian armies against him in the Thanh Hoa uplands. However, upon news of the death of Zhu Di, he embarked on a three-year campaign that showed forethought and a bold, aggressive spirit. Attacking Ming and allied forces at their most isolated and vulnerable points, he quickly gained control of the southern provinces and recruited into his armies large numbers of men from both the uplands and the lowlands. Without pause he had rushed his men into the Red River Delta and swiftly placed his enemies under siege.[28] People in the Red River Delta welcomed and supported the Lam Son army where they came.[30]

In early December 1426, Lý Triện and Đinh Lễ's 3,000 Vietnamese rebels achieved a surprise victory over the Ming army led by Wang Tong with about 30,000 Chinese soldiers were killed or captured in Tốt Động (32 km south of Hanoi) while countless horses, supplies, weapons, and so on fell into Vietnamese hand. Among these Ming troops were 510 soldiers led by the regional military commander of the Firearms Battalion, Xie Rong, whom had been sent on May 8, 1426, by the Ming emperor to follow Wang Tong.[16][31]

By 1427, captured northern and Muslim prisoners also furnished the rebels with siege techniques, primitive tanks, flying horse carts, Muslim trebuchets (hui hui pao 回回砲), and possibly another artillery piece that the Chinese called a “thousand-ball thunder cannon".[29][32]

By the beginning of 1427, five major strongholds were under siege. These were Dongguan and Tây Đô; Cổ Long, a fortress built to guard the southern entrance to the Red River delta in Y Yen district, near Vu Ban in Nam Định Province, on the road between Dongguan and Tây Đô; a fortress at Chí Linh, near Phả Lại, that guarded the eastern part of the Red River plain; and Xương Giang, a fortress at the modern city of Bắc Giang that guarded the route out of the Red River plain to the northern border. All the Ming garrisons south of Tay Do had surrendered. Lê Lợi established his headquarters at Bồ Đề, in Gia Lâm district, directly across the Red River from Dongguan.[33]

In two monumental battles in 1426 and 1427, those whom the Chinese had once called southern “serpent-like” barbarians (Nanman) drove them out of Đại Việt. Lê Lợi’s successful attack on the Ming-held fortress of Xương Giang ended the war. After a six-month siege, Vietnamese troops “built earth-hills from which they shot into the city,” tunneled under it, and carried out assaults with captured weapons such as fire lances, rocket arrows, cannon, and “Duke Lü’s overlook and assault carts.”[29]

In March 29, 1427, around 120,000 Chinese reinforcements led by Liu Sheng and Mu Sheng advanced into Jiaozhi from Yunnan and Guangxi, included 10,000 crack troops who had followed Zheng He on his expeditions.[34]

At first, Lê Lợi commanded the residents be moved Lạng Giang, Bắc Giang, Quy Hoa, Tuyên Quang to segregate Ming troops. He knew Liu Sheng kept the main forces, so he sent Le Sat, Le Nhan Chu, Le Van Linh, Dinh Liet to wait at Chi Lang, and at the same time commanded Le Van An, Le Ly to take alternative forces to support. With Mu Sheng's forces, he knew Thanh was an experienced general and will be waiting for Liu Sheng's results before taking actions, so Lê Lợi commanded Pham Van Xao and Trinh Kha entrenched all time.

Mu Sheng heard Liu Sheng was killed and beheaded so he scared and ran away. Pham Van Xao and Trinh Kha followed, killed 10,000 soldiers, arrested 1,000 ones and horses.[35]

Le Loi understood that Ming Jiaozhi was at its end. The Ming were unlikely to make any serious effort to reassert their control in Jiaozhi. By making Trần Cảo king, Lê Lợi satisfied the aim of restoring the Trần that had ostensibly led to the initial Ming intervention and that Zhu Zhanji now considered to be the basis for terminating intervention. Nevertheless, with imperial forces under siege, Ming could not be idle. Maintaining the appearance of empire required efforts to reinforce or to rescue the besieged remnants of Jiaozhi.[33] At a more prosaic level, the routine habits of Ming military officials produced soldiers in response to Wang Tong’s call from Dongguan for help, although they would be relatively few and without the quality of leadership that had been demonstrated in the past by Zhang Fu. While waiting for this final crack of Ming’s whip, Lê Lợi pressed the siege of remaining Ming fortresses, prepared to defend the borders, and began to act like a king.[33] The Xuande Emperor of the Ming dynasty decided to end the war in Northern Vietnam.[36] After this final victory, the Vietnamese repatriated 86,640 Ming prisoners to China and confiscated all their weapons. The defeat is considered by historian Ben Kiernan as the greatest policy disaster suffered by the early Ming empire. China would not again invade its southern neighbor for 360 years.[37] According to a Ming report, Le Bi (黎秘), the chief eunuch of Lê Lợi and 10,000 Vietnamese were killed after Ming forces crushed and defeated their invasion in 1427 of a Chinese town in Guangxi.[38]

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