Nguyen Hue

Emperor of Vietnam (r. 1788-1792)

• Born: c. 1752
• Birthplace: Tay Son village, Vietnam
• Died: 1792
• Place of death: Phu Xuan (now Hue), Vietnam

Together with his two brothers, Nguyen Hue successfully fought the two feudal dynasties that divided Vietnam, annihilating a Thai army supporting his southern Vietnamese adversary and conquering northern Vietnam. His greatest triumph was his defeat of an invading Chinese army during the Tet Festival of 1789, which turned him into a national hero. Recognized as emperor and ruling nearly all of Vietnam, he died before his reforms took root.

Early Life

Nguyen Hue (ehn-gi-EHN HWAY) was born in the central Vietnamese village of Tay Son, about twenty-five miles inland from the coast and on the road to the highland city of Play Cu (Pleiku). His father, Ho (later Nguyen) Phi Phuc, was a descendant of Chinese immigrants to northern Vietnam. During civil warfare in the previous century (in 1655), the family was captured by a Nguyen army and sent south to settle in Tay Son. Nyugen’s father was headman of the village, and the family was prosperous by local standards. His mother, Nguyen Thi Dong, was Vietnamese. Some historians believe that she was a Cham, from the original inhabitants of the land conquered by the Vietnamese.

While growing up, Nyugen Hue got involved in the family business of trading with coastal Vietnamese. He dealt in natural goods, such as areca nuts and betel leaves. He also traded in eaglewood, collected by Chams chosen in a religious rite. He was informally educated by a dissident teacher named Hien, who opposed the feudal system of the Nguyen lords ruling southern Vietnam. A contemporary description of the young-adult Nyugen Hue calls him remarkably tall, thin, with curly black hair and a pockmarked face, dark complexion, a full beard, and brightly shining eyes. Historians view these features as indicators of his mixed ethnic heritage.

Life’s Work

When Nyugen Hue was about nineteen years old, he joined his oldest brother Nhac, followed by their brother Lu, in taking to the hills of their village and starting an uprising. They chose the popular last name of their mother, Nguyen, even though they were not related to the ruling Nguyen lords. Taking its name from their village, the Tay Son rebellion quickly gathered strength. Nyugen Hue supported Nhac, who utilized local resentment against heavy taxation. In 1773, they celebrated their first triumph when Nhac captured Qui Nhon, which would serve as the brothers’ headquarters.

Nyugen Hue distinguished himself when the Trinh, the northern enemies of the Nguyen, invaded the south in 1774 to take advantage of the Tay Son rebellion. In 1775, he stormed the Phu Yen headquarters of the Nguyen lords. For this, his older brother promoted him to general. When Nhac allied himself with the Trinh to fight the Nguyen, Nyugen Hue participated in the 1777 Tay Son raid on Gia Dinh (next to modern Saigon). The raid led to the killing of all but one young noble survivor, Nguyen Phuc Anh, who would become the mortal enemy of the Tay Son brothers.

Back in Qui Nhon in 1778, Nyugen Hue was promoted by Nhac, who proclaimed himself Emperor Thai Duc of central Vietnam. In March, 1782, Nyugen Hue participated in another raid on Gia Dinh during which ten thousand Chinese residents were murdered. When Nguyen Anh retook the city in October, 1782, Nyugen Hue and his brother Lu returned en force in early 1783. They reconquered the place using seaborne elephant regiments and incendiary rockets, but Nguyen Anh escaped to Thailand.

Nyugen Hue’s first victory of national importance came on January 19, 1785. He ambushed and defeated an army of twenty thousand Thai soldiers supported by up to three hundred warships that Rama I, king of Thailand, loaned to Nguyen Anh to reestablish his rule. Only two or three thousand Thai soldiers survived to flee home, and Nguyen Anh escaped again.

In 1786, famine struck the realm of the Trinh lords. Nguyen Hue was ordered by his brother Nhac to invade the north. In June, 1786, Nyugen Hue conquered Phu Xuan (modern Hue). Instead of stopping as ordered, Nyugen Hue was persuaded by one of his generals to strike at the northern capital. Encountering very little resistance, and with the captured lord Trinh Khai committing suicide, Nyugen Hue entered Vietnam’s capital of Thang Long (modern Hanoi) on July 21, 1786.

Nyugen Hue then visited Emperor Le Hien Tong on July 26 and professed his loyalty. In return, the nearly seventy-year-old emperor made Nyugen Hue a duke and gave him as his wife his twenty-first daughter, the well-educated, intelligent, and beautiful poet Ngoc Han. A few days later, the emperor died and was succeeded by his grandson Le Man De, who resented Nyugen Hue.

In August, Nhac arrived and ordered Nyugen Hue to move south and make his capital at Phu Xuan. Nyugen Hue obeyed, but as soon as the Tay Son brothers left, another Trinh lord took control of Thang Long. Early in 1787, Nyugen Hue and Nyugen Nhac fought over war booty. Nyugen Hue besieged Nhac’s capital of Qui Nhon, and Lu sent relief troops from the south that weakened the Tay Son there. Finally, Nyugen Hue agreed to a division of rule: Nhac would control central Vietnam as emperor, Nyugen Hue would be the north pacification king, and Lu would rule the south.

After this division of power, Nyugen Hue used one general to depose the final Trinh lord, and then another to have this general torn apart by four elephants before using a third general to stab to death the second, indicating great instability at Thang Long. In 1788, emperor Le Man De fled to China. Under the influence of the ambitious border general Sun Shiyi, the Qianlong emperor sent 200,000 Chinese troops to invade Vietnam in November, 1788.

This led to Nyugen Hue’s finest hour. Declaring himself Emperor Quang Trung on November 22, 1788, he called his 100,000 Vietnamese Tay Son troops to a war of national liberation on November 26. After the Chinese occupied Thang Long on December 17, Quang Trung sent out false reports of submission while force-marching his army north. Deciding to strike during the Tet holidays, Quang Trung overran the first enemy garrison on January 25, 1789, and conquered the first Chinese fort on January 28. The next morning, Quang Trung launched his assault on the forts that guarded Thang Long. Personally commanding his troops from atop an elephant, Quang Trung defeated the Chinese in fierce combat. General Sun fled at night to China, where he was joined by the fugitive Le Man De.

In the afternoon of January 30, 1789, on the seventh day of Tet, Quang Trung entered the capital in armor that was black with soot from gunpowder. He quickly concluded peace negotiations. In exchange for nominal tribute, China recognized Quang Trung as emperor of Vietnam. Yet Quang Trung soon left to rule from Phu Xuan and secretly sent a double to his official coronation at Thang Long in July of 1789; he did the same for his state visit to China in 1790.

However great his victory over the Chinese, Quang Trung ruled Vietnam only up to the domain of Nhac. In the south, Nguyen Anh recaptured Gia Dinh on September 7, 1788, ejecting Lu, who died at Qui Nhon. As Quang Trung set about to reform Vietnamese society in the north, Nguyen Anh continued his raids.

Four years later, on September 16, 1792, Quang Trung died of a stroke. He was succeeded by his ten-year-old son, Nguyen Quang Toan, who became Emperor Canh Thinh. His widow, Ngoc Han, lamented his death in a beautiful elegy.

Significance

Nguyen Hue, later Emperor Quang Trung, is most celebrated for his crushing defeat of the invading Chinese army in 1789, which ensured Vietnamese independence. His strategy of attacking a dormant enemy during the holidays enabled him to destroy a numerically superior army. Similarly, Vietnamese historians celebrate his 1785 defeat of his Vietnamese rival’s Thai army as national victory.

Nyugen Hue’s social program favoring a distribution of land and economic justice has endeared him to contemporary Marxist Vietnamese historians. There is scholarly debate concerning the extent to which the Tay Son rebellion was a local, minority, and anti-Vietnamese uprising. The rebels’ use of red banners, for example, is believed to be linked to the worship of a Western Cham deity linked to the sinking mountain sun.

Finally, for all his military triumphs, Nyugen Hue never succeeded in eliminating his fierce southern rival, Nguyen Anh. Ten years after Nyugen Hue’s death, when internal dissent weakened the surviving Tay Son, Nguyen Anh ultimately defeated the Tay Son. While Nguyen Hue shook up the centuries’ long feudal division of Vietnam, complete reunification would be accomplished by his great rival, who became Emperor Gia Long in 1802. Under Gia Long’s dynasty Vietnam remained united and free until the French conquest of the late nineteenth century.

Bibliography

Chapuis, Oscar. A History of Vietnam. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1995. Discusses Nyugen Hue’s life in great detail, but with occasional jumps back and forth in time. Devotes chapter 6 to “The Nguyen Hue Epic.” Maps, bibliography, index.

Hall, Daniel George. A History of Southeast Asia. 4th ed. London: Macmillan, 1981. Still a standard work on the period. Chapter 24 thoroughly covers Nyugen Hue’s life. Illustrations, maps, bibliography, and index.

Karnow, Stanley. Vietnam: A History. 2d ed. New York: Viking Press, 1997. Still the most widely available source in English. Places Nyugen Hue’s rebellion in the context of rising European influence in Vietnam but does not mention his defeat of the Chinese. Photographs, chronology, index.

Li, Tana. Nguyen Cochinchina. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1998. Places Nyugen Hue in the context of the heterogeneous society of southern Vietnam of his time. The final chapter strongly argues that the Tay Son rebellion was a local rather than social uprising. Also emphasizes Nyugen Hue’s mixed ethnic heritage. Maps, notes.