Lê Lợi

Lê Lợi (Vietnamese: [le˧ lɤj˨˩ˀ], chữ Hán: 黎利; 10 September 1385 – 5 October 1433), also known by his temple name as Lê Thái Tổ (黎太祖) and by his royal title Bình Định vương (平定王; "King of Pacification"), was a Vietnamese rebel leader who founded the Later Lê dynasty and became the first monarch of the restored kingdom of Đại Việt following the conquest of Đại Ngu by the Ming dynasty. In 1418, Lê Lợi and his followers rose up against Ming rule. He was known for his effective guerrilla tactics, including constantly moving his camps and using small bands of irregulars to ambush the larger Ming forces. In 1427, Lê Lợi's resistance movement successfully drove the Ming armies out of Vietnam and restored Vietnamese independence. Lê Lợi is among the most famous figures of Vietnamese history and often considered one of its greatest national heroes.

Background

From the mid-1300s, Đại Việt faced serious troubles that damaged much of the kingdom. The fourteenth century ecological breakdown led to a social crisis as the ruling Trần dynasty weakened. Even in the capital, Thăng Long, turmoil broke out in 1369–70, provoking a princely coup and a short, bloody civil war. From the south, the Chams under Chế Bồng Nga repeatedly fought against Đại Việt, and even sacked Thăng Long in 1371. In 1377 Champa defeated and killed Đại Việt's emperor Trần Duệ Tông in a battle near Vijaya, then marched north and against sacked Thăng Long four more times from 1378 to 1383. The repeated destruction of a radical intellectual and reformer, Hồ Quý Ly (c. 1336 – 1408). In 1399 Hồ Quý Ly deposed the Trần royal family and declared himself as ruler of Đại Việt. This provoked a response from the Ming dynasty, who invaded Vietnam under the pretext of restoring the deposed Trần dynasty. In 1406 215,000 Chinese troops crossed the border commanded by generals Zhang Fu and Mu Sheng; they quickly defeated Hồ Quý Ly's army, conquered Vietnam, and renamed the country Jiaozhi.

The Ming Chinese began building up their colonial administration in Jiaozhi Province, encouraging the Ming Confucian ideology, bureaucratic and Classic Chinese study to the local people, forced the Vietnamese to wear Chinese clothes and adopt Chinese culture. The Ming government enjoyed some support from the Vietnamese, at least in the capital of Thăng Long, but their efforts to assert control in the surrounding countryside were met with stiff resistance. A general popular dissatisfaction with the colonial arrangement seems clear. Between 1415 and 1424, 31 uprising and revolt leaders against the Ming emerged in Lạng Giang, Nghệ An, Hanoi, Ninh Kiều, Lạng Sơn, and other prefecture capitals where the Ming troops were stationed.

Early life

Lê Lợi was born on the sixth day of August, 1385 in Lam Giang village, Lam Sơn, Thanh Hóa province to a noble family and he was the youngest among three sons. His father, Lê Khoáng, was a wealthy Vietnamese aristocrat nobleman/land owner in the village, although there is some evidence to suggest his family was Mường in origin. There has also been hypotheses suggesting that Lê Lợi was a Mường military leader. However, recent genealogical studies of the Lê family have discovered that the primogenitor of Lê Lợi is Lê Mỗi, who is from Bái Đô (now part of Xuân Bái commune, Thọ Xuân district). Lê Mỗi had five children, and Lê Hối is his second son who is Lê Lợi's paternal great-grandfather. Bái Đô is an area that was historically never settled by Mường people. Regarding Lê Lợi's maternal lineage, the maternal side also originated from Kinh people who migrated to develop the Thủy Chú region. Therefore, it is confirmed that Lê Lợi is of Kinh ethnicity, not Mường. The Lê/Lê Duy clan was the powerful clan in Lam Sơn for hundreds of years. The area of Lam Sơn, Thanh Hóa back then in the late 14th century was a mixed region with various ethnic groups such as Vietnamese, Mường, Hmong and Tai villagers.

During Lê Lợi's early adult time, the Ming invasion and occupation suddenly happened. During two Trần princes's revolts against the Chinese rules (1408 – 1414), Lê Lợi joined the revolt as nominally in charge of the royal guard. He was arrested and imprisoned by the Chinese from 1413 to 1415 after the Trần princes were defeated, and other revolts were suppressed in 1411 and 1420. After his release, he worked as a tutor officer and translator for the Ming colonial administrator in Ngã Lạc county, Lạng Sơn (modern-day Bình Gia District, Lạng Sơn Province). He then became involved in a feud with a neighboring strongman who denounced him as a rebel to the Ming. The Ming chased him back to his village. It was widely reported that when Lê Lợi's daughter was nine years old, a Chinese eunuch, Ma Ji (fl. 1410–1427) had taken her away from her parents and sent her into Yongle's harem. Yongle's grand secretary Yang Shiqi noted that Zhang Fu time and again criticized Ma Ji's wanton behavior in Jiaozhi. Although Ma Ji did the bidding of His Majesty, his conduct provided the catalyst that brought the new uprising. The Chinese also said that Lê Lợi escaped to Laos and Cambodia several times. In early 1418, Lê Lợi again raised the flag of resistance at his home village of Lam Sơn, declaring himself Bình Định vương (平定王, Prince of Pacification).

Revolt against Ming rule

Lam Sơn revolt (1418–1423)

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 emperor 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.

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 and well-guarded. The Ming occupying army of Jiaozhi consisted of 87,000 regulars, scattered in 39 citadels and towns in Northern Vietnam, but clustered in the Red River Delta areas. They also employed a significant number of 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. 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. 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. 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.

When the Lam Son uprising took place, the Ming commanding officer was Marquis Li Bin, who stern attitude toward the Annamites of Jiaozhi and disregard for their sensibilities and political aspirations only intensified their hatred for the Chinese. 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. His partisan party scattered and he briefly went into hiding before regaining enough strength to ambush the Ming patrol and force it to withdraw. 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. 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. 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.

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. Lê Lợi was under the illusion that the Laotians were his allies. However, they sided with the Ming and joined the Chinese to laid siege on Lê Lợi. By the end of 1422, Lê Lợi was utterly defeated and sued for peace. In 1423, he was forced to return to Lam Son. The Ming army offered a peace treaty, in which Lê Lợi paid an indemnity with unspecified amounts of gold and silver in return for food, salt, rice, and farm implements. However, the Ming arrested the messenger Lê Trăn. This raised suspicion to Lê Lợi and he cancelled the peace pact.

Capture of Nghệ An

Within a month of taking the throne, Emperor Zhu Gaozhi (r. 1424–1425), Zhu Di's son and successor, issued a proclamation indicating a dramatic change of Ming policy in Jiaozhi. 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. 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), continued his father policies.

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. He returned the resistance movement as the rebel leader in the Thanh Hoa highlands. Lê Lợi rebuilt his partisan army, follow his comrade, Nguyễn Chích to march south through the mountains into Nghệ An, where they ambushed a Ming force in Quỳ Châu district. The Lam Son partisans advanced to Con Cuong district on the upper Cả River. By the end of 1424, Le Loi's rebels had forced the Ming army being clustered in Vinh, which is provincial capital of Nghệ An. Le Loi recruited thousands soldiers from ethnic minority in the highland west of the Cả River delta for his army. His forces then defeated an army of ethnic minority troops who had joined the Ming cause. Then they headed east down into the coastal lowlands of Nghệ An. He sought to convince the densely ethnic-Kinh population areas in Nghe An by demonstrating discipline and refraining from exactions.

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

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

Pushing north

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. In the next year, 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 Jiaozhi except for land taxes to be paid in rice, needed to supply Ming garrisons.

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