Tây Sơn wars: A Visual History

The Tay Son wars (1771-1802) began when the brothers Nguyen Nhac, Nguyen Lu and Nguyen Hue rose in the Tay Son highlands against the Nguyen lords of southern Vietnam. They took the south, massacred the Nguyen family (the boy Nguyen Anh escaped), destroyed a Siamese invasion at Rach Gam-Xoai Mut (1785), overthrew the Trinh lords in the north (1786) and the Le dynasty (1788), and Nguyen Hue, as Emperor Quang Trung, annihilated a Qing army sent to restore the Le at Ngoc Hoi-Dong Da during Tet 1789. Quang Trung died in 1792; Nguyen Anh, with French volunteers, retook the south from Gia Dinh (Saigon), took Hue in 1801 and Hanoi in 1802 and became Emperor Gia Long of a united Vietnam.

When it was fought: the era ribbon

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Territory held by the Tay Son

Timeline of the Tay Son wars

1. 1771
   Tay Son revolt begins
2. 1777
   Nguyen family massacred; Nguyen Anh escapes
3. 1785
   Rach Gam-Xoai MutSiamese invasion destroyed.
4. 1786
   Trinh overthrown
5. 1789
   Ngoc Hoi-Dong DaQing army routed at Tet.
6. 1792
   Quang Trung dies
7. 1801
   Nguyen Anh takes Hue
8. 1802
   Hanoi falls; Gia Long emperor

Rise of the brothers

Vietnam had been divided for 200 years between the Trinh in the north and the Nguyen in the south, both ruling in the name of a powerless Le emperor. The Tay Son brothers, betel traders of Binh Dinh, revolted against Nguyen misgovernment in 1771 with peasant support and a Robin Hood reputation, taking Qui Nhon and, by 1777, Saigon, where they killed the Nguyen princes. Nguyen Anh, aged 15, fled to the Mekong islands and, later, to Siam.

Quang Trung's victories

Nguyen Hue destroyed a Siamese fleet and army sent to restore Nguyen Anh in an ambush on the Mekong in January 1785. He marched north in 1786, ended the Trinh regime, married a Le princess, and when the last Le emperor fled to China and returned with a 200,000-strong Qing army in late 1788, proclaimed himself emperor and force-marched his men north to strike the Chinese camps at Thang Long during the lunar new year, routing them in five days. He then sent tribute to the Qianlong emperor and won recognition, planned reforms and a script in Vietnamese, and died suddenly in 1792 aged 39.

Nguyen Anh's return

Nguyen Anh retook Saigon in 1788 and built a state in the Mekong delta with the help of Bishop Pigneau de Behaine, who recruited French officers and adventurers to build ships and forts. Each dry season he sailed north; the Tay Son, divided among Nhac's heirs and Quang Trung's boy successor, lost Qui Nhon after long sieges, then Hue in June 1801 and Hanoi in July 1802. The Tay Son royal family was executed with atrocity; Nguyen Anh became Gia Long, moved the capital to Hue and named the country Viet Nam.

Related empires and wars

Chosen automatically by overlap in time and geography, plus a few hand picked connections.

Empires of the same era and region

• Qing dynasty (1636 to 1912)
• First French colonial empire (1534 to 1814)
• Second French colonial empire (1830 to 1980)
• British Empire (1583 to 1997)
• Spanish Empire (1492 to 1976)
• Dutch Empire (1602 to 1975)

Wars of the same era and region

• Burmese-Siamese wars (1547 to 1855)
• Song-Dai Viet War (1075 to 1077)

8 surprising things about the Tay Son wars

1. Quang Trung's Tet offensive of 1789 is celebrated every lunar new year in Vietnam and prefigured the 1968 Tet Offensive's timing.
2. The Tay Son army marched from Hue to Hanoi in about 10 days, reportedly with soldiers carrying each other in hammocks in relays.
3. Quang Trung asked the Qing for the hand of a Manchu princess and the return of Guangdong and Guangxi; his death ended the plan.
4. Nguyen Anh's French helpers built Vauban-style citadels whose walls still stand at Hue and elsewhere.
5. The Tay Son used elephants with cannon on their backs against the Qing.
6. Nguyen Anh had the bones of the Tay Son emperors ground up and used as target practice, by tradition.
7. Gia Long chose 'Nam Viet' as the country's name; the Qing reversed it to Viet Nam to avoid claims on southern China.
8. The Tay Son are heroes of the Vietnamese communist narrative as peasant revolutionaries; the Nguyen were long villains.

Sources

• Tay Son Encyclopaedia Britannica
• Tay Son wars Wikipedia
• Nguyen dynasty Encyclopaedia Britannica
• George Dutton, The Tay Son Uprising (2006) University of Hawaii Press

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