Trịnh Tạc

Trịnh Tạc ( Hán: 鄭 柞; 11 April 1606 – 24 September 1682) ruled northern Dai Viet in 1657–1682.

Trịnh Tạc was one of the most successful of the Trịnh lords who ruled Bắc Hà. During his rule, he made peace with the Nguyễn, ending the long war. Trịnh Tạc also captured the last small province of Dai Viet ruled by the Mạc dynasty.

Early career

In 1648 Trinh Tac gained more political power in the court as his father Trinh Trang’s failing health. In 1649 the Dutch reported that the young king Le Duy Huu and his uncle had allegedly poisoned Trinh Tac.

In 1655, the Nguyen forces had advanced to Nghe An, threatening the Trinh regime. The situation became so critical that in the autumn of that year, Trinh Tac and reinforcements arrived at the battlefield, managed and drove the Cochinchinese back to the Gianh River. In the next year, the southerners launched a naval attack on Nghe An and Trinh Tac sent his eldest son Trinh Can led a new army to confront the Nguyen. While Trinh Tac's brother Trinh Toan (d. 1674) was the commander-in-chief of the Tonkinese army, Trinh Tac himself distrusted his brother. Nonetheless, Trinh Tac finally stopped the southerner advance in mid-1656. The Nguyen continued occupying Nghe An and Ha Tinh, and a large number of northern Vietnamese defected to the Nguyen were allowed to resettle further south.

Lord of Tonkin

Military campaigns

In 1658 the Nguyen resumed their offensive, reaching the northern border of Nghe An near Quynh Luu. By the end of the year Trinh Can had pushed the southerners back to southern banks of the Ca River.

The battlefield between the Trinh and the Nguyen remained inactive in the next two years, 1659 and 1660. Trinh Tac's agents rushed into villages in enemy's occupying territories, deformed Nguyen troops morale. In late 1660 Trinh Tac planned for an extensive military preparation against the Nguyen regime in the south and to fend off a potential Qing offensive, and resulted in gaining little success. In 1667 Trinh Tac's army moved north and attacked the Mac remnants in Cao Bang, who were formerly under Ming protection. However the new Ch’ing empire continued to support the Mac.

In 1671 he sent a request to the Dutch government in Batavia to assist his last military campaign against the Nguyen in Cochinchina. The Dutch did nothing but apologized for its inability to satisfy the Lord's demands. Trinh Tac started the offensive by sending an army to break the Tran Ninh wall along the Nhật Lệ River, but the southerner prince Ton That Hiep sent general Nguyen Huu Dat reinforce the wall and successfully repelled the northerner attack.

The costly campaign ended in inclusive, and the lord turned to attack against the Mac family in the north. In 1677 his army finally destroyed the last Mac remnants in Cao Bang province, forcing the Mac to flee to Southern China, where they were captured by the Qing army in 1683.

Political career

During the Vinh Tho era (1658–1662), Trinh Tac and his scholars had reestablished and revived the civil bureaucratic government that had been set up by king Le Thanh Tong (r. 1460–1497) in the fifteenth century, by resetting population registers, taxation, reconstructing dykes and roads, reopened state-sponsored schools and civil examinations.

In the beginning of his reign, Trinh Tac continued his father's friendly view toward Christian missionaries and Christian communities. However, his officials and advisors who saw the missionaries as foreigners and spies for the Nguyen regime in Hue, gradually changed his belief. In June 1658, the Swiss superior Onuphre Borges was ordered to recall all the Jesuit missionaries in Hanoi to embark for Macao. While Trinh Tac threatened to prohibit Christianity, he continued to tolerate the Jesuits and their converts. In 1662 he made Taoism, Buddhism and Christianity became outlawed. Also in November of the same year the old king Le Duy Ky died, and Trinh Tac selected 10-year-old Prince Le Duy Vu as king.

In 1663 the Jesuits were banished from north Vietnam. On 13 July 1669 he prohibited foreign vessels to arrive Hanoi, and instead they were docked in Pho Hien, along the Red River. Trinh Tac welcomed the first French ship Compagnie des Indes Orientales led by Lambert de la Motte, two priests Jacques de Bourges (1630–1714) and Gabriel Bouchard in Pho Hien. He permitted the French to build a factory at Pho Hien in hope that he would receive more European cannons and to counter the Dutch and Portuguese businesses in Tonkin. In 1672 he allowed English East India Company to open a factory in Hanoi. Because of his failed campaign in the same year, Trinh Tac turned his anger against the Jesuits and expelled Giovanni Filippo Marini in spring 1673.

After peace returned, Confucianism was revived, and power transferred from the military to the literati. The war policy finally was abandoned. Foreign traders now received more negative views and hostilities from the court. The English left Tonkin in 1697, followed by the Dutch in 1700.

See also

* Lê dynasty
* List of Vietnamese dynasties

References

Citations

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Trinh, Tac
1606 births
1682 deaths
Trịnh lords
17th-century Vietnamese monarchs