A Vietnamese Family Chronicle

by Nguyen Trieu Dan

  After the flush of victory, the restored Le monarchy had to come to grips with governing a newly-conquered territory. It needed the services of northern scholars, in particular those coming from old families which for many generations had produced graduates and servants of the state. The new regime started seeking out former Mac mandarins who were still taking refuge in areas outside its control, offering them honors and positions to come over to the Le. Colleagues who had rallied earlier could have served as intermediaries for Nguyen Hoang. Several names come to mind; in the first instance, those of Do Uong and Nhu Tong, who went with Hoang’s father to China. They were doing well under the new dynasty. Do Uong was made Finance minister and both he and Nhu Tong were sent by the Le king to the border to negotiate with the Chinese. Were they instrumental in bringing Nguyen Hoang over to the Le? I doubt that they were. Radical elements in the Le camp would have opposed Nguyen Hoang because of the role played by his grandfather in the overthrow of the Le some sixty years before. New converts like Do Uong and Nhu Tong would not have dared to advance Hoang’s name lest they be accused of sympathy towards a descendant of a “traitor.” Someone else must have been involved, one whose commitment and service to the Le were such that no one could question his loyalty.

  Our chronicle hints at the identity of such a person. It is said of a Vietnamese that he has not one, but three families: his own, his mother’s and his wife’s. The traditional “extended family” was, in fact, constituted by all three of them. We cannot trace the families of either Nguyen Hoang’s wife or his mother. But we know that his stepmother was a lady from the Phung family. As it happened, the prophet Nguyen Binh Khiem’s mother married a second time, to a scholar with the same surname Phung from Son Tay. They had a son named Phung Khac Khoan, who later became a famous statesman under the Le. Khoan was younger than his stepbrother Khiem by as many as thirty-seven years, which made some people think that his relationship with the prophet was just a creation of folklore, but such a big gap was not impossible in those times when girls were married in their early teens. Did Hoang’s stepmother belong to the same family? I think it was quite possible as Phung is not a very common family name and furthermore, Son Tay is a neighboring province of ours. I have even hazarded the guess that the prophet may have had a hand in the lady Phung’s marriage to his fellow graduate-and our second ancestor-Nguyen Uyen. If that was the case Nguyen Hoang would have had ties, through his stepmother, with Phung Khac Khoan.

  Khoan studied under his stepbrother the prophet, then a duke of the Mac. When a young man, he was told by him to go south and serve the Le. This looked like taking an insurance with both sides of the conflict; but later historians explained that the prophet did so because he could foresee that the Le would win the mandate of Heaven and gain final victory. He would have gone himself, they commented, but for an old mother to care for in the north. A compromise had to be made between his conflicting duties to the country and to the family. Phung Khac Khoan left for the south in the end of the 1540s, obtained his doctorate there and became a trusted adviser to the Trinh overlord. Forty years later, he returned to the north in victory. With the rank of deputy minister, he was entrusted with the important task of winning over the population in the newly occupied territories and calling on refugees to reintegrate their villages. Khoan must have been older than Nguyen Hoang. As he left the north at a young age, the two of them may not have known each other. Even if they had, many decades had passed during which they served in opposing camps. Now they were separated by the abyss between winner and loser in a long and bitter civil war. Being on the losing side, Hoang had lost everything except his pride; he would not be the one to make the first move towards establishing contact. Khoan, the winner, would. Moreover, to get good and respected former mandarins to rally to the new regime was one of the best ways to pacify the country which was still in the grip of widespread unrest. But there could be no question of him imposing himself on a scholar and a peer of his. In the event, links would have been established between the two by the women in the family, who often played a bridging role in such situations. On Hoang’s side, his stepmother Phung or his wife Trinh Khiet would have prepared the ground for a reconciliation. Then, at an appropriate time, Khoan would have offered to Hoang an opportunity to be again of service to the country by rallying to the Le king. The role played by the lady Phung at that juncture could have been the reason for her name being preserved in the chronicle, while following generations had forgotten that of Nguyen Uyen’s first wife and Hoang’s mother.

  At the top of his career, Khoan was made a duke and given the title of Great Guardian, the second highest mandarinal title. One of the most trusted servants of the Le, he was chosen to lead the first diplomatic mission of the restored dynasty to Peking. His position would have allowed him to sponsor Hoang’s return, in spite of what Hoang’s grandfather did when the Le lost their throne. Khoan was a man of strong convictions, and very outspoken. Few mandarins would have liked to cross his path. Only the Trinh overlord could have overruled him in this case, but obviously he did not, and Hoang was eventually appointed to a high position at the Le court. Khoan sometimes was outspoken to the point of recklessness. Once, he contradicted the king in public and was demoted to a subaltern provincial post. In the 1597 diplomatic mission to China, he fearlessly protested to the Ming emperor at the full imperial audience. The aims of his mission were to resume the sending of tributes to China and to get the Chinese to again recognize the restored Le king as King of An Nam. During the Mac period, the Vietnamese king only received from Peking the inferior title of Supreme Military Commander of An Nam. The Ming court agreed to the resumption of tribute missions but not to the second request. True to his character, when he was handed over the decree conferring on his king the title of Supreme Military Commander of An Nam at the imperial audience, Khoan refused to accept it. He submitted to the Ming emperor that the decree had put the legitimate Le king on a par with the Mac “usurper.” The emperor who, let it be recalled, had high regard for Khoan and conferred on him the title of First Laureate of Both Countries, reacted in a friendly manner. He said that he did not want to compare the Le with the Mac, but “since your king has just reconquered the country, it is to be feared that the people’s minds were not yet at rest. You should accept the decree now. At a later date, a higher title will be conferred and it will not be too late. You should go along with this.” Perhaps to soothe his feelings, the emperor gave Khoan a gold coin engraved with the symbols of his dynastic title, and to Khoan’s deputy, a silver coin. When they were back at their diplomatic residence, Khoan threw his coin to the ground in anger. His deputy was shocked. This could easily be taken as a crime of lese-majeste. Quickly, he picked the coin up: “Are you mad?” he asked Khoan. “Suppose the Chinese staff report this to the court. Do you want to spend the rest of your life in Peking? Do you not remember Le Quang Bi?” He was referring to the envoy who said something that the Chinese objected to and was kept as their “guest” in China for eighteen years.

  “The emperor showed contempt for our king by not recognizing him as King of An Nam,” Khoan said. “I do not want to keep his coin.”

  “The Ming are still favorable to the Mac, there would be hostilities if we oppose them,” his deputy replied, adding: “If you do not like to keep yours, I will.”

  Khoan said, “I do not want to have anything to do with that coin. But if you want to keep both as souvenirs, you can.”

  Khoan’s trip to Peking started in the spring of 1597. It lasted for one year and four months. Probably, Hoang came back to work for the Le before Khoan left. To serve two dynasties had been the lot of many a Vietnamese in the tormented history of our nation. Whatever the reasons for it, it always carried a mark of indignity, so strongly entrenched in our culture was the Confucian rule that “a faithful servant does not have two masters.” Nguyen Hoang must have gone through torture and agony before making up his mind. His grandfather before him was faced with a similar choice and it was
a quirk of fate that Nguyen Tue opted for the Mac against the Le, while his grandson did the opposite and returned to serve the restored Le dynasty. Their situations, however, were quite different. Nguyen Tue was among a group of mandarins who took the revolutionary step of siding with Mac Dang Dung and deposing the Le king. He was an active participant in events which changed the course of our history. Nguyen Hoang, on the contrary, was a victim of events. Whatever course of action he took, he would have felt a prisoner of forces beyond his control. Loyalty to the former dynasty and to the memory of his father and grandfather, both servants of the Mac state, must have weighed heavily in his mind and it would not be surprising to see him suffer the Mac defeat and spend the rest of his life in exile. But he finally decided otherwise.

  After Mac Kinh Chi’s gallant but brief episode, followers of the Mac dispersed. The History of Dai Viet noted that “remnants of the Mac family split into twenty or so groups and held different areas.” Trinh Tung’s army could only deal with one or two groups at any one time and many areas remained out of control of the government. But no group posed a serious threat to the new regime. As time passed, it must have become increasingly clear to Nguyen Hoang that there would be no Mac restoration. His choice was between continuing the life of a fugitive and accepting Khoan’s offer to be again of service to the country at the cost, however, of swallowing his pride and giving himself up. He might have found it easier to do so in view of the special place that the Le continued to hold in the hearts of the Vietnamese. Years of decline made them lose the throne to the Mac, but although the latter were not bad kings, people never forgot the former dynasty. The memory of past Le kings continued to be revered, in particular Le Loi, the founder of the dynasty who liberated the country from the yoke of the Ming in 1427, and the enlightened King Le Thanh Ton (1460-1497), who gave to Vietnam an era of glory and prosperity such as had never been known before. The people’s affection was the main reason why the Trinh overlord, who held all powers, still had to recognize the Le as legitimate king. Other considerations may have played a part in Nguyen Hoang’s decision. While fighting continued in the country, a great drought caused the harvest to fail in 1595 and again in 1596. The result was a calamity seldom seen in our history. Starvation and epidemics killed “more than half of the population,” according to the History of Dai Viet. Bandits and robbers, “in groups of a few hundreds or more,” terrorized the whole countryside. Only in the capital and large towns could people live in security under the protection of the army. Nguyen Hoang may have had to return to the capital because there was no other safe place for his family to stay. Also, he knew that if he remained an outlawed Mac “rebel,” his descendants would be barred from the civil service examinations. Without diplomas and mandarinal positions, a family of scholars would decline and even drop out of the scholarly class. Perhaps also, as he approached old age-he was then in his early sixties-Nguyen Hoang had felt more intensely the need to go back to Kim Bai, there to lie down in the land of his forebears, when his time would come. Many motives and reasons could explain his action. Perhaps it was simply the hand of Fate which guided Nguyen Hoang towards the final part of his life.

  He was given back his rank and title by the Le court, but the promotion to the post of deputy minister at the Justice ministry would have only come later, after he had given sufficient proof of his loyalty and ability. The ministry of Justice was responsible for the administration of criminal law. It ordered the apprehension of criminals, supervised the prison system and acted as a high court of appeal for serious crimes. The Justice minister was assisted by two deputies, a first deputy called “of the left” and a second deputy called “of the right.” Nguyen Hoang was deputy minister of the right, the junior of the two, although both deputies were on the same lower third mandarinal grade. Like his grandfather, he held the title of ba, or count. But in the troubled situation following the restoration, where the government did not control much of the countryside, he might just have been ba in name and did not receive the large land grants which traditionally went with the title. Meanwhile, conditions worsened in 1597, for drought in that year was followed by floods. The Le historian noted that the delta population, harassed furthermore by local officials, “could not stand it anymore. Many joined the ranks of the rebels.” People’s minds turned back to the “good times” under the Mac. The situation led to a strong Mac revival and much unrest in the countryside. As a rallied mandarin, Hoang might not have considered it safe to return to Kim Bai. Meanwhile, troubles were brewing at the Le court in Thang Long. Mandarins who rallied were given important positions in the government. Do Uong, their leader, was made Duke of Thong and Finance minister. In 1598, he received the grand title of Great Protector of the Second Rank. As deputy minister of Justice, Nguyen Hoang was holding a difficult and sensitive appointment. But in spite of honors and high positions, the former Mac mandarins held little power. The master of the country was the overlord Trinh Tung and he relied on a corps of mandarins who served the Southern court since the days of the civil war, most of whom came from the southern provinces of Thanh Hoa and Nghe An, his power base. Trinh Tung needed northern scholars to govern the north, but did not trust them. The scholars, for their part, felt deceived for they surrendered to the restored Le king only to find that their real master was the Trinh overlord. However, of greater concern to Trinh Tung was the attitude of former commanders of the Mac who rallied. These resented his arrogance and excessive powers, and they had troops under their command. Their simmering opposition was encouraged by Trinh Tung’s maternal uncle Nguyen Hoang, a namesake of our ancestor and a duke of the Le.

  After King Le The Ton died in 1599. Trinh Tung refused to install the crown prince on the throne, on the pretext that he “was not intelligent.” Instead, he chose a younger brother of the latter, aged only twelve. Clearly, the Le monarchy was under his thumb. The following year, opposition against him broke out into the open. Three former Mac commanders, all of them now dukes of the Le and including Bui Van Khue, the general whose defection prompted Trinh Tung to launch his final offensive against the Mac in 1593, rebelled. They joined forces with supporters of the Mac and seized several provinces in the delta. Duke Nguyen Hoang volunteered to go and fight the rebels, but that was just a ploy to allow him to take all his troops with him out of Thang Long and of Trinh Tung’s control. He brought them down deep into the south of the country, where he set himself up on his own. The stage was set for Vietnam’s next civil war. From their bases in the northern mountains, Mac troops moved towards the capital. Weakened by defections and internal dissension, Trinh Tung decided to abandon the capital and the delta. In the fifth lunar month of the year of the Rat (1600), he escorted the king back to the safety of his home base in Thanh Hoa, or the Western Capital. His move was made secretly and in great haste. Only his original followers were allowed to join in the withdrawal. Rallied Mac mandarins were left behind. Their opposition to him had been growing and the overlord may very well have used the opportunity to get rid of them. The Dai Viet Register of High Graduates wrote of the fate of Do Uong, the highest ranking northern mandarin:

  He did not join the king’s party to return [to the Western Capital] and was killed. It was not known for sure by whom, but according to the book “A sequel to the national history,” when the king’s party sought to withdraw, he was killed by rebel troops.

  But nineteenth century author Pham Dinh Ho, in his book Essays Written in Rainy Days, gave a different account of Uong’s death:

  Mac troops were on the rise again and the delta became insecure. The Trinh overlord wanted to bring the Le king back to the south. Do Uong tried hard to dissuade him, arguing that he should stay to defend the capital. The Trinh overlord became suspicious of Uong’s motives. Seizing his gold-plated lance, he killed Uong.

  Ho was an author much respected for the accuracy of his writings. Do Uong may be the only one to be informed by Trinh Tung of the withdrawal because of his high rank. Nguyen Hoang and many other mandarins
had no time to flee as Mac troops returned to Thang Long on the heels of the withdrawing Trinh army. A deputy minister of Justice, whose responsibility was to order the apprehension of criminals and opponents to the regime, could not expect to survive in the hands of rebel forces. Nguyen Hoang must have been killed in the first days of the Mac return. He was then sixty-seven.

  Thus, life ended tragically for a talented but unlucky man. Nguyen Hoang’s story reminds me of Kieu, the heroine of our celebrated literary work. Kieu was a beautiful and thoughtful girl from a well-to-do family. She was talented in poetry, music, painting and chess playing, the four traditional scholarly pastimes. She fell in love with a young scholar. The two exchanged promises of marriage and looked destined to a happy life together. Then, one tragedy came after another to Kieu. Her father was imprisoned on a trumped-up charge and, in an act of filial piety she sold herself to a house of prostitution to obtain his release. Later on, a kind man fell for her and bought her out of prostitution. She became his concubine, but could not endure the wrath of his jealous wife and escaped. Again a prostitute, she met a gallant warrior and rebel leader. It was love at first sight for both. He conquered and ruled over a vast region. She was now his official lady, respected and adulated. But he fell into a trap sprung by the king’s men and was killed. The victors gave her to a subaltern officer as his concubine. She sought to end her life by jumping into the river, but was rescued by a Buddhist nun. Through no fault of her own, the life of that talented woman was just a series of woes. It was only at the end of her life that she was reunited with the people she loved and could enjoy some happiness. Under the pen of its author, Nguyen Du, this rather melodramatic story became the most beautiful poem in our language. Every Vietnamese, whether educated or not, knows the Story of Kieu and can recite by heart at least some of its 3254 verses. In reality, through Kieu, it was the tragedy of his own life that Nguyen Du wanted to express. Just as Kieu could not remain faithful to her first love, Nguyen Du could not stay loyal to the first dynasty he served. Like our ancestor Nguyen Hoang, he was a mandarin unfortunate enough to have to renounce his original oath of loyalty. Nguyen Du first served the Le towards the end of the eighteenth century. When the Tay Son replaced the Le in 1788, he refused to submit to the new dynasty and abandoned his career. In 1802, the Tay Son were defeated by the Nguyen. The new regime sought out Nguyen Du and offered him the responsibility of a junior prefecture. He accepted and later rose to high positions, but all his life would carry the shame of having been disloyal to the Le. He wrote the Story of Kieu to justify himself. Although a victim of circumstances, like Kieu, he was afraid that later generations would not understand him and would judge him harshly. Once, he wrote in a poem: