Ngô Quyền's victory at Bạch Đằng and independence
Ngô Quyền destroys a Southern Han fleet with hidden stakes in the Bạch Đằng River, ending Chinese rule.
- A History of the Vietnamese — K. W. Taylor, Cambridge University Press (2013)
- Việt Nam: A History from Earliest Times to the Present — Ben Kiernan, Oxford University Press (2017)
As China’s Tang dynasty collapsed, local strongmen took control of the Red River delta. When the southern Chinese kingdom of Southern Han sent a fleet to reassert control in 938, the commander Ngô Quyền had iron-tipped wooden stakes driven into the bed of the Bạch Đằng River. At high tide his boats lured the enemy fleet upstream; when the tide fell, the Chinese ships were impaled and destroyed.
- A History of the Vietnamese — K. W. Taylor, Cambridge University Press (2013)
- Việt Nam: A History from Earliest Times to the Present — Ben Kiernan, Oxford University Press (2017)
Ngô Quyền declared himself king in 939. His dynasty soon fell into turmoil, but in 968 Đinh Bộ Lĩnh unified the country as Đại Cồ Việt, and in 981 Lê Hoàn beat back an invasion by the Song dynasty. China would invade again, but from this point the Vietnamese lands were, most of the time, a separate kingdom that paid tribute to China while governing itself.
- A History of the Vietnamese — K. W. Taylor, Cambridge University Press (2013)
- Việt Nam: A History from Earliest Times to the Present — Ben Kiernan, Oxford University Press (2017)
Why it matters today
Bạch Đằng is taught as the birth of Vietnamese independence and a model of the weak defeating the strong through cunning and knowledge of their own land, a lesson Vietnamese have drawn again and again, from the Mongols to the twentieth century.