Lê Thánh Tông

His reforms were designed to replace the Thanh Hoá oligarchy of Dai Viet's southern region with a corps of bureaucrats selected through the Confucian civil service examinations.[4]

Following the Chinese model, Lê Thánh Tông divided the government into six ministries; they were Finance, Rites, Justice, Personnel, Army, and Public Works.[5] Nine grades of rank were set up for both the civil administration and the military.[1] A Board of Censors was set up with royal authority to monitor governmental officials and reported exclusively to the emperor. However, governmental authority did not extend all the way to the village level.[6] The villages were ruled by their own councils.[6]

In 1469, all of Dai Viet was mapped and a full census was taken, listing all the villages in the kingdom. Around this time the country was divided into 13 dao (provinces).[7] Each was administrated by a Governor, Judge, and the local army commander. Thánh Tông also ordered that a new census should be taken every six years.[8] Other public works that were undertaken included building and repair of granaries, using the army to rebuild and repair irrigation systems after floods, and sending out doctors to areas afflicted by outbreaks of disease. Even though the emperor, at 25, was relatively young, he had already restored Vietnam's stability, which was a marked contrast from the turbulent times marking the reigns of the two emperors before him. By 1471, the kingdom employed more than 5,300 officials (0.1 percent of the population), equally divided between the court and the provinces, with at least one supervising officer every three villages.[8]

A national-wide census was conducted in 1490, reported approximately 8,000 village-level jurisdictions throughout the country including the thirty-six urban wards that lay between the royal compound and the Red River at Dong Kinh, the only city in the country;[9][10] with the total population was approximately 4.4 million people, the Red River delta had been the most densely inhabited region of Southeast Asia in the early-modern era.[11][12]

The new government proved to be effective and represented a successful adaptation of the Chinese Confucian system of government outside of China. However, following the deaths of Thánh Tông and of his son and successor, Lê Hiến Tông (r. 1498–1504), this new model of government crashed not once but twice in the next three following centuries.[1]

A Chu Đậu Blue and white patterns dish, was made during the reign of Lê Thánh Tông. Musée Guimet, Paris.

In 1483 Lê Thánh Tông created a new code for Đại Việt, called the Hồng Đức Code, which is Vietnam's National Treasures and is kept in the National Library in form of woodblocks No A.314.

The new laws were

"based on Chinese law but included distinctly Vietnamese features, such as recognition of the higher position of women in Vietnamese society than in Chinese society. Under the new code, parental consent was not required for marriage, and daughters were granted equal inheritance rights with sons. U.S. Library of Congress Country Studies – Vietnam

Ewer in shape of a dragon made in Chu Đậu, Vietnam during the years of 1460-1497, Cleveland Museum of Art

Coins issued by Emperor Lê Thánh Tông during his later reign from 1469 to 1497

During the reign of Thánh Tông, Vietnamese export porcelains from Hải Dương kilns were found as far as West Asia.[13] Trowulan, capital of Majapahit, has yielded numerous Vietnamese ceramic products of the fifteenth century.[13]

First page of an essay to encourage people study Confucian literature, written by Thánh Tông

Thánh Tông encouraged the spread of Confucian values throughout the kingdom by having temples of literature built in all the provinces. There, Confucius was venerated and classic works on Confucianism could be found. He also halted the building of any new Buddhist or Taoist temples and ordered that monks were not to be allowed to purchase any new land.[14]

During his reign, Vietnamese Confucian scholarship had reached its golden era, with over 501 tiến sĩ (royal scholars) graduated,[8] out of the total 2,896 tiến sĩ graduated from 1076 to 1911.[10]

Stele dated 1478 inscribes names of graduated scholars

During the reign of Thánh Tông, two related events put the Ming tributary system to the test. The first was the final destruction of Champa in 1471, and the other, the invasion of Laos between 1479 and 1481. After destroying Champa in 1471, the Vietnamese informed the Ming court that the fall of Champa's ruling house had come about as "a result of civil war."[15] In 1472, as Vietnamese pirates attacked Chinese and merchant ships in Hainan and the coast of Guangzhou, the Ming emperor called on Thánh Tông to end such activities. The court of Đại Việt denied its people would do such things.[16]

The kingdom of Đại Việt during the reign of Lê Thánh Tông

In 1470, a Cham army numbered 100,000 under king Maha Sajan arrived and besieged the Vietnamese garrison at Huế. The local commander sent appeals to Hanoi for help.[17] Champa was defeated and the balance of power between the Cham and the Vietnamese for more than 500 years came to an end. The Ming annals recorded that in 1485 that "Champa is a distant and dangerous place, and Annam is still employing troops there."[18]

Map shows the Vietnamese conquest and immigration to the south (Nam tiến).

Back in 1448, the Vietnamese had annexed the land of Muang Phuan in what is today the Plain of Jars in northeastern Laos, and Thánh Tông made that territory a prefecture of Đại Việt in 1471.[18] Began in 1478, Thánh Tông felt it was the time to take his revenge on King Chakkaphat of Laos, he collected his army along the Annamite border in preparation for an invasion.[19] Around the same time a white elephant had been captured and brought to King Chakkaphat. The elephant being a potent symbol of kingship was common throughout Southeast Asia, and Thánh Tông requested the animal's hair to be brought as a gift to the Đại Việt court. The request was seen as an affront, and according to legend a box filled with dung was sent instead.[19] Thánh Tông also realized that Laos was expanding its authority over Tai peoples who had previously acknowledged Vietnamese suzerainty and had regularly paid tribute to Đại Việt. Thus, the campaigns to reassert Dai Viet's authority over the Tai tribes led to the invasion of Laos.[20]

In fall 1479, Thánh Tông led an army of 180,000 men marched westward, attacked Muang Phuan, Lan Xang and Nan.[21] Luang Phabang was captured and the Laotian ruler Chakkaphat was killed. His forces pushed further to the upper Irrawaddy River, around Kengtung in modern-day Myanmar.[21] In 1482 Momeik borrowed troops of Dai Viet to invade Hsenwi and Lan Na.[21] By November 1484, his forces had withdrawn back to Dai Viet.[18][22] According to the Ming Shilu, in 1488 Burmese Ava embassy in China complained about Dai Viet’s incursion into its territory. In the next year (1489) the Ming court sent envoys to admonish Dai Viet to stop.[21]

According to the Ming Shilu, Thánh Tông led ninety thousand troops to invade Lan Xang but was chased by the troops of the Malacca Sultanate, who killed thirty thousand Vietnamese soldiers.[23] In 1485, envoys of Champa, Lan Xang, Melaka, Ayutthaya, and Java arrived Dai Viet.[24] Also in 1475, pirates from Ryukyu Islands and Champa raided the port of Qui Nhơn.[25]

Blue and white bowl with dragon decoration, during Lê Thánh Tông's years (1460-1497). Metropolitan Museum of Art

A group of 28 poets was formally recognized by the court (the Tao Dan) Lê Thánh Tông himself was a poet and some of his poem has survived. He wrote the following at the start of his campaign against the Champa:

One hundred thousand officers and men,
Start out on a distant journey.
Falling on the sails, the rain

Softens the sounds of the army.