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Trịnh Tạc ( Hán: ; 11 April 1606 – 24 September 1682) ruled northern
Dai Viet Dai may refer to: Names * Dai (given name), a Welsh or Japanese masculine given name * Dai (surname) (戴), a Chinese surname * Bảo Đại (保大), Emperor of Vietnam from 1926 to 1945 Places and regimes * Dai Commandery, a commandery of ...
in 1657–1682. Trịnh Tạc was one of the most successful of the
Trịnh lords Trịnh is a Vietnamese family name In many societies, a surname, family name, or last name is the mostly hereditary portion of one's personal name that indicates one's family. It is typically combined with a given name to form the full na ...
to rule northern Vietnam. During his rule, he made peace with the Nguyễn, beginning a century of peace in Vietnam. Trịnh Tạc also ended the last remnants of the pretender Mạc dynasty.


Early career

In 1648 Trịnh Tạc gained more political power in the court as his father Trinh Trang’s health failed. In 1649 the Dutch reported that the young king Le Duy Huu and his uncle had allegedly poisoned Trịnh Tạc. In 1655, Nguyễn forces advanced to Nghe An, threatening the Trịnh regime. The situation became so critical that in the autumn of that year, Trịnh Tạc and reinforcements arrived at the battlefield, managed and drove the Nguyễn back to the Gianh River. In the next year, the southerners launched a naval attack on Nghe An and Trịnh Tạc sent his eldest son Trịnh Căn with a new army to confront the Nguyễn. While Trịnh Tạc's brother Trinh Toan was the commander-in-chief of the northern army, Trịnh Tạc himself distrusted his brother. Nonetheless, Trịnh Tạc finally stopped the southern advanced in mid-1656. The Nguyễn continued occupying Nghe An and Ha Tinh, and a large number of northern Vietnamese who defected to the Nguyễn were allowed to resettle further south.


Lord of Tonkin


Military campaigns

In 1658 the Nguyễn resumed their offensive, reaching the northern border of Nghe An near Quynh Luu. By the end of the year Trịnh Căn had pushed the southerners back to southern banks of the Ca River. Fighting between the Trịnh and the Nguyễn came to a lull in the next two years, 1659 and 1660. Trịnh Tạc's agents rushed into villages in enemy's occupying territories, lowering the Nguyễn morale. In late 1660 Trịnh Tạc planned for an extensive military preparation against the Nguyễn regime in the south and to fend off a potential Qing offensive, which ultimately had little success. In 1667 Trịnh Tạc's army moved north and attacked the Mạc remnants in Cao Bang, who were formerly under Ming protection. However the new
Qing The Qing dynasty ( ), officially the Great Qing, was a Manchu-led Dynasties of China, imperial dynasty of China and an early modern empire in East Asia. The last imperial dynasty in Chinese history, the Qing dynasty was preceded by the ...
empire continued to support the Mạc and forced the Trịnh to withdraw. In 1671 he sent a request to the Dutch government in Batavia to assist his last military campaign against the Nguyễn in the south. The Dutch did nothing but apologized for their inability to assist him in his demands. Regardless, Trịnh Tạc began 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 to reinforce the wall and successfully repelled the northerner attack. The costly campaign ended inclusively, and the lord turned to attack the Mạc family in the north. In 1677 his army finally destroyed the last Mạc 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), Trịnh Tạc and his scholars had reestablished and revived the civil bureaucratic government that had been set up by king Le Thanh Tong 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, Trịnh Tạc 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 Nguyễn 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 Macau or Macao is a special administrative region of the People's Republic of China (PRC). With a population of about people and a land area of , it is the most densely populated region in the world. Formerly a Portuguese colony, the ter ...
. While Trịnh Tạc threatened to prohibit Christianity, he continued to tolerate the Jesuits and their converts. In 1662 he declared Taoism and Buddhism the state religions while outlawing Christianity. Also in November of the same year the old king Le Duy Ky died, and Trịnh Tạc 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. Trịnh Tạc 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 the English
East India Company The East India Company (EIC) was an English, and later British, joint-stock company that was founded in 1600 and dissolved in 1874. It was formed to Indian Ocean trade, trade in the Indian Ocean region, initially with the East Indies (South A ...
to open a factory in Hanoi. Because of his failed campaign in the same year, Trịnh Tạc turned his anger against the Jesuits and expelled Giovanni Filippo Marini in spring 1673. After peace returned,
Confucianism Confucianism, also known as Ruism or Ru classicism, is a system of thought and behavior originating in ancient China, and is variously described as a tradition, philosophy, Religious Confucianism, religion, theory of government, or way of li ...
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 The Lê dynasty, also known in historiography as the Later Lê dynasty (, chữ Hán: 朝後黎, chữ Nôm: 茹後黎), officially Đại Việt (; Chữ Hán: 大越), was the longest-ruling List of Vietnamese dynasties, Vietnamese dynasty, h ...
* List of Vietnamese dynasties


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