Trinh Sam’s decision regarding his own succession then threw the Trinh into a grave crisis. He had a young consort named Dang Thi Hue, of whom he grew very fond. She came from the village of Phu Dong in Bac Ninh, the seat of the mythical Heavenly Prince, who transformed himself from child into warrior and saved the country from the rebels, in a legendary past. My grandmother came from the same village and the same family, five or six generations after the Dang lady. History books mentioned that the latter was a “commoner” who was recruited as a maidservant to one of the ladies at the Trinh palace. She caught the eyes of the overlord and became his favorite. The mandarins, eunuchs and other followers at the palace first thought that she was just “a woman with a pretty face,” who did not even come from a scholarly family. There was nothing to be concerned about her, they believed. They were soon proved wrong. Dang Thi Hue bore the overlord a son, named Trinh Can, and such was her hold over him that he made Trinh Can his official heir, instead of his elder son Trinh Khai. Dang Thi Hue gathered around her a circle of supporters and the palace became divided into two camps, one following her and the other following Trinh Khai. A few years later, Trinh Sam died of illness. His testament made Trinh Can, then only six, the new overlord. The elder son, Trinh Khai, allied himself with the Palatial Guard. Two months later the guards revolted. They killed the regent appointed by Trinh Sam and arrested Dang Thi Hue and her son. Trinh Khai became overlord, but he could not control the guards, who held sway in the capital and elsewhere, killing, pillaging and plunging the country into anarchy. Dang Thi Hue was imprisoned and tortured, but she refused to beg for forgiveness for her “crimes.” At the anniversary of Trinh Sam’s death, she committed suicide. Her dignified end was praised by scholars and won her public sympathy. Popular belief also had it that the Trinh rule, which had never won the affection of the people, was destroyed by her. In fact, although she did cause it to weaken, the two hundred-year Trinh rule was brought to an end by an irresistible movement originating from the central highlands, the Tay Son.
Trinh Khai’s overlordship began in 1783. As he and his mandarins tried to keep the guards in check, the Tay Son, who earlier had made their submission to Trinh Sam, consolidated their hold over the highlands. Further south, in the Mekong River delta, a seventeen-year-old descendant of the Nguyen overlord, Nguyen Anh, was husbanding his forces to make a comeback. The scene was set for the most turbulent period of our history. In the next two decades, the country would go through a succession of regimes. A military intervention by China would be defeated. Our history would turn a corner; having done so, it would then turn again, and again. The Tay Son were people “wearing rough cloth,” meaning they were poor, from the village of Tay Son in the province of Qui Nhon, hence their name. Three brothers led the movement, with the eldest bearing the title of king. Nguyen Hue was the youngest brother. Sometimes in the history of a nation, there appears an exceptional leader who conquers everything before him. In a very short time, he rises to the greatest heights of glory and makes an indelible imprint in the minds of his countrymen. Nguyen Hue was such a leader. His reign was short. When he disappeared, he left behind him no dynasty worthy of that name. But he was revered by posterity like few dynasties could ever be. History books described him as having “immense physical strength,” a commander who “disposed his troops and directed his generals as if gifted with a supernatural genius.” He relied on the speed with which he moved his troops. In the words of an opponent, these “whirred past you . . . one cannot hit them and it was futile to chase them.” His most feared weapon was his elephants. In a big battle, he would bring with him up to two hundred well-trained elephants and hurl them against his opponent’s rear at a critical moment, sowing panic. Nguyen Hue fought in the south against the Nguyen overlord, capturing Gia Dinh-where Saigon now stands-several times. In 1783, the Siamese king sent in a strong force to help the Nguyen overlord. Nguyen Hue destroyed it in one battle. In 1786, taking advantage of the troubled situation in the north, he attacked Phu Xuan, the former capital of the Nguyen in the south, now in Trinh hands. In the space of a few days, he seized Phu Xuan and came right up to the old dividing line between the Trinh and the Nguyen during their long civil war. Then, he marched north. The mighty Trinh military machine, undermined by the revolt of the guards, crumbled before him. In less than a month, his forces were at the outskirts of Thang Long. Trinh Khai lost the battle to defend the capital and killed himself. The Trinh rule had ended.
The north was his. But, like the Trinh before him, Nguyen Hue refrained from doing away with the Le monarchy. He kept the Le king who conferred on him a dukedom and gave him his daughter in marriage. Dissension appeared within the Tay Son camp. Suspecting his brother of establishing a power base in the north, the Tay Son king rushed to the Le capital and brought Nguyen Hue back to the south. Power was left in the hands of the Le, but neither the king nor his court was able to keep it. A confused period ensued, in which descendants of the Trinh and lieutenants sent out by Nguyen Hue fought and tried to grab power for themselves. Eventually, Le Chieu Thong, the Le king, fled from the capital. The queen and queen mother went to China to ask for help to recover the throne. Emperor Qian Long of the Ching had designs over our country, he readily responded to the request and sent in a two hundred thousand strong army under the command of Sun Shi Yi, the governor of the two Guang provinces bordering Vietnam. In 1788, the Chinese occupied Thang Long and put Le Chieu Thong back on the throne. From his headquarters in the south, Nguyen Hue saw the imminent danger of the Chinese domination. He decided to take matters into his own hands. Before the assembled troops, he proclaimed himself Emperor Quang Trung, thus rejecting both the Le monarchy and his own brother the Tay Son king. Then, he led the troops north.
In a masterly campaign lasting just six days, he annihilated the vast Chinese army. Sun Shi Yi escaped from Thang Long in the middle of the night without having time to saddle his horse and wear his armor. After his victory, Quang Trung immediately set about making peace with the Chinese. He told his aides that China being ten times bigger than our country, it would be dangerous if, having lost a battle, she planned revenge. “I need time to make our country strong,” he said. Quang Trung was as successful in diplomacy as in war. The Chinese accepted his peace moves, recognized him as King of An Nam and asked him to appear before the emperor in Peking. Not a man short of stratagems, Quang Trung dispatched a man looking like him. The old Emperor Qian Long, although his army was beaten, or perhaps because of that, had great consideration for Quang Trung. He received the “false king” like a father would his prodigal son, entertained him in his private chambers and had him meet members of the imperial family. Before he left, the emperor had a portrait of him made for his keeping. The “king” was false, but he proved to be an excellent actor and diplomat.
The Le king fled to China hoping that with Chinese help he would be able to get back to his throne. But the Chinese had changed their policy and the young king met with one rebuff after another from his hosts. He died in shame and despair in 1793 at only twenty-eight. How extraordinary was the fate of the Le family! No other dynasty had been able to hold our people’s affection the way they did, and over such a long time. In 1428, they liberated the country from Chinese domination and ruled for one hundred years. They lost to the Mac, but after more than sixty years of Mac rule, the population continued to be attached to them. The Trinh defeated the Mac, but had to be content with being the de facto ruler, while the Le were restored to the throne. From 1592 to 1786, the Le were deprived of all powers. Successive Le kings were proclaimed and deposed at will by the overlord. The Le were marionettes in the hands of the Trinh, yet people persisted in looking up to them. They became the symbol of “legitimacy.” All rebels and challengers to the Trinh claimed to fight in support of the Le. Even a man like Nguyen Hue had to, at first, go along with popular feeling and keep them as monarch. Then, the Le made the mistake of calling on the Chinese to intervene in Vietnam. More than a mistake, that was treachery
. “To carry pickaback a snake home, so that it can eat your own chicken,” was how our people sneered at and condemned those who sought the support of the Chinese for their own political ends, without regard for the greater interests of the country. But even such an action did not turn public opinion against the Le. On the contrary, people felt sorry for the last Le king and the ill-treatment he received from the Chinese. Many mourned his death. In 1802, under the new Nguyen dynasty, his remains were dug up to be brought back to Vietnam. It was said that when the coffin was opened, his body had decomposed except for a “red heart” which remained intact. Can such a story be true? The fact is that the king’s heart became, in popular folklore, the proof of his indestructible love for his country.
Quang Trung only reigned for four years. His territory extended over the north and most of the central part of the country. Further south was the territory of his eldest brother, the Tay Son king. Quang Trung was a conqueror. He looked north, west, and south. He sent his troops west to Laos to exact tribute and to take their elephants which had played an important role in his battlefield tactics. He conducted a census of the population and increased conscription in preparation for an attack on China. His brother was unable to contain the Nguyen overlord in the south, so he also laid plans for an expedition there. In 1792, he sent a mission to China to ask for a Chinese princess in marriage and to request the “return of the two provinces of Guangdong and Guangxi” to Vietnam. Ancient history books had it that back in the third century B.C., our border lay in the Wu Ling mountains north of the two Guang and now Quang Trung wanted these provinces back. Did he really intend to take on our giant neighbor, or was it just a feint to keep China guessing while he went to the south to deal with the Nguyen overlord? Who can say where lay the horizon of a warrior who had acquired a reputation of “fighting a hundred battles and winning a hundred victories,” and whom Western travellers in Asia at the time had dubbed “the new Attila?” The fact is that Quang Trung had been recruiting Chinese rebels and pirates and sending them to China to harass the Ching authorities. But his immediate concern was the south, where with the help of the French, Nguyen Anh was pushing back the Tay Son forces under his brother. Quang Trung had readied his forces. He had issued a proclamation to the people of the south prior to the start of his campaign. But he died suddenly, on September 16, 1792, aged forty. His son Quang Toan, a ten-year-old child, succeeded him. Ten years later, Nguyen Anh vanquished the Tay Son and unified the country under his rule. Nearly three centuries of internal conflict had ended. He founded the Nguyen dynasty which would last until 1945.
While all those momentous events were pressing upon one another on the national scene, our family stayed back in our village. A proverb says: “A man makes his opportunities in times of upheaval.” It is a measure of our deep decline that our ninth ancestor Dinh Phuong was not able even to move away from the bamboo enclosure of Kim Bai. True, the time was for rough and tough warriors, not for pen-holding scholars. “Can you write a poem to chase the bandits away?” a general under Nguyen Hue asked a civilian adviser as hundreds of thousands Chinese troops swarmed over Vietnam. “As for us,” he went on, “we only know how to draw our swords out of their sheaths.” A scholar’s path passed through the examinations, but none were held between 1782 and 1788, when Dinh Phuong would be in his twenties and at an age to sit for them. After Quang Trung came to the throne, he wanted to encourage the popular language, which was the expression of our national character, to the expense of the scholarly language inherited from China. Popular language became the administrative language and examinations rules were changed to accommodate the new policy. Candidates trained in the study of Chinese classics, like those in our family, found themselves at a disadvantage. Mandarinal families in the north resented the move, which they considered as a way by the Tay Son regime to keep them away from public offices. As a matter of fact, among northern mandarins, many remained loyal to the Le. They retired or went into hiding in the mountains, so as not to serve the new emperor.
When examinations were resumed, it appears that Dinh Phuong did sit for them, but without success. He spent his life as a village teacher. He married the only daughter of the Pham, a family of fellow villagers. The Pham had no male descendant. As recorded in our chronicle, they “treated Dinh Phuong like their own son and entrusted him with their land and properties.” The support given by his in-laws made life easier, although both Dinh Phuong and his wife had to work hard to bring up four children. In gratitude, he gave as middle name to his son the word Quang, taken from Quang Thanh, his father-in-law’s pseudonym, instead of the customary word Dinh. Our tenth ancestor was thus named Nguyen Quang So, meaning Place of Light. At the death of the Pham, the heritage went to Dinh Phuong and it fell to him to celebrate the worship of their spirits. It was then that a second altar was set up in our ancestral home, devoted to the cult of ancestors on the maternal side.
Of Dinh Phuong’s four children, three were daughters. The one-son pattern had returned, adding its gloom to the life of an unsuccessful and impoverished scholar. The eldest daughter married into the Chu family in Kim Bai, already allied to ours in the last generation. She had two sons and a daughter. The second child, also a girl, became another daughter-in-law of the Chu and had two sons. The third born was a son who became our tenth ancestor. It will be seen that his wife also was a Chu, though from a different branch living in a neighboring village. The youngest daughter died in childhood. Ties between the Nguyen Dinh and the Chu would continue right up to the twentieth century, for my great-grandmother again was a Chu. The two families would become preeminant in Kim Bai and would stay so until the communist revolution in 1945.
Academic success and social position eluded Dinh Phuong, but his memory was later honored by the Nguyen dynasty. His great-grandson, my grandfather, rose high in his career and in 1940, Dinh Phuong was bestowed posthumous rank and title by the court of Hue. His title of Lecturer at the Academy and his lower fourth grade put him in the higher echelons of the mandarinate. His wife was made a posthumous Cung Nhan, “Lady at the Palace,” a title accorded to the spouse of a fourth grade mandarin. The merits that those ancestors had gathered during their obscure and humble lives were thus recognized by the court to have played a part in the achievements of their descendant, and duly rewarded.
19. The Businessman
My great-great-grandfather was born in 1792, the year Emperor Quang Trung died. He was ten and had started schooling when the Tay Son dynasty was defeated and the Nguyen overlord became emperor with the dynastic title of Gia Long. Our national history had changed its path once again, this time to go into a period of stability and consolidation. The long series of civil wars had come to an end. For the first time in nearly three hundred years, in fact since King Mac Dang Doanh under whom our first ancestor served, a single dynasty ruled over the whole country. In the sixteenth century, Vietnam’s southern borders stopped at the extremity of Quang Nam province, or a little farther south than where the town of Da Nang stands today. In the next centuries, our people conquered the kingdom of Champa, then the Mekong River delta. Under Gia Long, the country extended from the pass of Nam Quan on the Chinese border to the point of Ca Mau jutting out into the Gulf of Thailand. Vietnam had reached its present day’s boundaries. Gia Long’s career, in contrast to that of Quang Trung, was painstakingly slow. He was a scion of the House of Nguyen Phuc, the overlord in the south. Under the attacks of the Trinh and the Tay Son, the Nguyen Phuc were chased away from their capital and pursued into their last refuges in the newly-settled land of the south. Gia Long, then Nguyen Phuc Anh, was only seventeen when he took up the banner of a house close to extinction. For nearly twenty-five years he fought, often “lying down over thorns and tasting the bitterness of defeat.” At one time, he was reduced to lead the life of an exile in Siam. At other times, all the territory he had left was some forgotten island away from the coast. But he was always able to return to the newly colonized land of the south and resume the fight, f
or it was under the House of Nguyen Phuc that the settlers had gone there to build a new life and they remained loyal to his family. Moreover, much more so than his opponents, Nguyen Phuc Anh was aware of the superiority of Western technology. He sought to obtain it from France, sending his son there in 1787 to conclude a treaty with the French government. The treaty was never implemented, but through a French Catholic priest, Monseigneur Pigneau de Behaine, private assistance in terms of arms, equipment and some twenty technicians were sent to Nguyen Phuc Anh, giving him a decided advantage over the Tay Son. For this, left-wing historians would later attack him as having “carried picka-back a snake home,” using the line reserved to those Vietnamese in receipt of Chinese help. They forgot that the French never gained any influence under him; in fact, he was a master who used Western arms and the service of Frenchmen for his own ends. Later on in 1817, the French government sent a vessel in to claim the benefits of the 1787 treaty. Emperor Gia Long replied that it had been inoperative and therefore he refused to recognize it. It was not he, but his descendants who failed to rise to the challenge of French colonialism, when it came in the second half of the century.
Traditional scholarship suffered an eclipse during the Tay Son period. It came back to the fore under the new dynasty. One of Gia Long’s first edicts was to appeal to the many mandarins and graduates who had refused to work for the Tay Son to come out. “I will give public service positions to the best of you,” the new emperor said, “so that you can make yourself useful to the country and help reduce my load of sovereign.” The training of young talents to serve the state was treated as a matter of priority. New school curriculums were established. Graduated scholars were appointed in the provinces and prefectures to oversee the schools, which were in private hands, and to encourage learning. Examinations to recruit public servants, abandoned in the years of hostilities, were resumed in 1807. Nguyen Quang So, my ancestor, was then fifteen. His training was that of a traditional scholar, through the study of Confucian Classics. Family expectation for him was high; certainly prospects were better for his generation than they were for his father’s.
A Vietnamese Family Chronicle Page 39