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Dong Da Hill is a grassy mound in central Hanoi, just over 2 km (1.2 miles) southwest of Van Mieu (The Temple of Literature). It is an artificial hill covering the thousands of dead Chinese invaders killed by Nguyen Hue, subsequently the Emperor Quang Trung, who defeated a Qing army of 200,000 men in just one week during Ky Dau, the ‘Year of the Cock’, or 1789.<br/><br/> In 1788 a large Qing army was sent south to restore Lê Mẫn Đế (Lê Chiêu Thống) to the Vietnamese throne. They succeeded in taking Thăng Long (Hà Nội, Hanoi) and putting Emperor Lê Chiêu Thống back on the throne.<br/><br/> This situation did not last long as the Tây Sơn leader, Nguyễn Huệ, launched an attack against the Qing forces while they were celebrating the Chinese New Year festival of the year 1789. The Chinese were completely defeated and Nguyễn Huệ was proclaimed Emperor Quang Trung of Vietnam, although he also agreed to pat tribute to the Qing court to avoid further invasions.<br/><br/> Nguyễn Huệ, also known as Emperor Quang Trung (光中皇帝; Quang Trung Hoàng đế ), born in Bình Định in 1753, died in Phú Xuân on 16 September 1792, was the second emperor of the Tây Sơn Dynasty of Vietnam, reigning from 1788 until 1792. He was also one of the most successful military commanders in Vietnam's history.
In 1788 a large Qing army was sent south to restore Lê Mẫn Đế (Lê Chiêu Thống) to the Vietnamese throne. They succeeded in taking Thăng Long (Hà Nội, Hanoi) and putting Emperor Lê Chiêu Thống back on the throne.<br/><br/> This situation did not last long as the Tây Sơn leader, Nguyễn Huệ, launched an attack against the Qing forces while they were celebrating the Chinese New Year festival of the year 1789. The Chinese were completely defeated and Nguyễn Huệ was proclaimed Emperor Quang Trung of Vietnam, although he also agreed to pat tribute to the Qing court to avoid further invasions.<br/><br/> The painting is from the 'Ten Great Campaigns' series produced by Jesuit missionaries at the Qing Court including Giuseppe Castiglione, Jean-Denis Attiret, Ignace Sichelbart and Jean Damascene. The engravings were executed in Paris under the direction of Charles-Nicolas Cochin of the Académie Royal at the Court of Louis XVI and the individual engravers include Le Bas, Aliamet, Prevot, Saint-Aubin, Masquelier, Choffard, and Launay.
In 1788 a large Qing army was sent south to restore Lê Mẫn Đế (Lê Chiêu Thống) to the Vietnamese throne. They succeeded in taking Thăng Long (Hà Nội, Hanoi) and putting Emperor Lê Chiêu Thống back on the throne.<br/><br/> This situation did not last long as the Tây Sơn leader, Nguyễn Huệ, launched an attack against the Qing forces while they were celebrating the Chinese New Year festival of the year 1789. The Chinese were completely defeated and Nguyễn Huệ was proclaimed Emperor Quang Trung of Vietnam, although he also agreed to pat tribute to the Qing court to avoid further invasions.<br/><br/> The painting is from the 'Ten Great Campaigns' series produced by Jesuit missionaries at the Qing Court including Giuseppe Castiglione, Jean-Denis Attiret, Ignace Sichelbart and Jean Damascene. The engravings were executed in Paris under the direction of Charles-Nicolas Cochin of the Académie Royal at the Court of Louis XVI and the individual engravers include Le Bas, Aliamet, Prevot, Saint-Aubin, Masquelier, Choffard, and Launay.
In 1788 a large Qing army was sent south to restore Lê Mẫn Đế (Lê Chiêu Thống) to the Vietnamese throne. They succeeded in taking Thăng Long (Hà Nội, Hanoi) and putting Emperor Lê Chiêu Thống back on the throne.<br/><br/> This situation did not last long as the Tây Sơn leader, Nguyễn Huệ, launched an attack against the Qing forces while they were celebrating the Chinese New Year festival of the year 1789. The Chinese were completely defeated and Nguyễn Huệ was proclaimed Emperor Quang Trung of Vietnam, although he also agreed to pat tribute to the Qing court to avoid further invasions.<br/><br/> The painting is from the 'Ten Great Campaigns' series produced by Jesuit missionaries at the Qing Court including Giuseppe Castiglione, Jean-Denis Attiret, Ignace Sichelbart and Jean Damascene. The engravings were executed in Paris under the direction of Charles-Nicolas Cochin of the Académie Royal at the Court of Louis XVI and the individual engravers include Le Bas, Aliamet, Prevot, Saint-Aubin, Masquelier, Choffard, and Launay.
In 1788 a large Qing army was sent south to restore Lê Mẫn Đế (Lê Chiêu Thống) to the Vietnamese throne. They succeeded in taking Thăng Long (Hà Nội, Hanoi) and putting Emperor Lê Chiêu Thống back on the throne.<br/><br/> This situation did not last long as the Tây Sơn leader, Nguyễn Huệ, launched an attack against the Qing forces while they were celebrating the Chinese New Year festival of the year 1789. The Chinese were completely defeated and Nguyễn Huệ was proclaimed Emperor Quang Trung of Vietnam, although he also agreed to pat tribute to the Qing court to avoid further invasions.<br/><br/> The painting is from the 'Ten Great Campaigns' series produced by Jesuit missionaries at the Qing Court including Giuseppe Castiglione, Jean-Denis Attiret, Ignace Sichelbart and Jean Damascene. The engravings were executed in Paris under the direction of Charles-Nicolas Cochin of the Académie Royal at the Court of Louis XVI and the individual engravers include Le Bas, Aliamet, Prevot, Saint-Aubin, Masquelier, Choffard, and Launay.
In 1788 a large Qing army was sent south to restore Lê Mẫn Đế (Lê Chiêu Thống) to the Vietnamese throne. They succeeded in taking Thăng Long (Hà Nội, Hanoi) and putting Emperor Lê Chiêu Thống back on the throne.<br/><br/> This situation did not last long as the Tây Sơn leader, Nguyễn Huệ, launched an attack against the Qing forces while they were celebrating the Chinese New Year festival of the year 1789. The Chinese were completely defeated and Nguyễn Huệ was proclaimed Emperor Quang Trung of Vietnam, although he also agreed to pat tribute to the Qing court to avoid further invasions.<br/><br/> The painting is from the 'Ten Great Campaigns' series produced by Jesuit missionaries at the Qing Court including Giuseppe Castiglione, Jean-Denis Attiret, Ignace Sichelbart and Jean Damascene. The engravings were executed in Paris under the direction of Charles-Nicolas Cochin of the Académie Royal at the Court of Louis XVI and the individual engravers include Le Bas, Aliamet, Prevot, Saint-Aubin, Masquelier, Choffard, and Launay.
Hồ Xuân Hương (1772–1822) was a Vietnamese poet born at the end of the Lê Dynasty. She grew up in an era of political and social turmoil - the time of the Tây Sơn Rebellion and a three-decade civil war that led to Nguyễn Ánh seizing power as Emperor Gia Long and founding the Nguyen Dynasty.<br/><br/> Rather than using Chữ Hán or Chinese characters, Ho Xuan Hong wrote poetry using Chữ Nôm (Southern Script), which adapts Chinese characters for writing demotic Vietnamese. She is considered one of Vietnam's great classical poets and has been called 'The Queen of Nôm poetry'.<br/><br/> She became famous and obtained a reputation for creating poems that were subtle and witty. She is believed to have married twice as her poems refer to two different husbands: Vinh Tuong (a local official) and Tong Coc (a slightly higher level official). She was the second-rank wife of Tong Coc, in Western terms, a concubine, a role that she was clearly not happy with ('like the maid/but without the pay'). However, her second marriage did not last long as Tong Coc died just six months after the wedding.<br/><br/> She lived the remainder of her life in a small house near the West Lake in Hanoi. She had visitors, often fellow poets, including two specifically named men: Scholar Ton Phong Thi and a man only identified as 'The Imperial Tutor of the Nguyễn Family.' She was able to make a living as a teacher and evidently was able to travel since she composed poems about several places in Northern Vietnam.<br/><br/> A single woman in a Confucian society, her works show her to be independent-minded and resistant to societal norms, especially through her socio-political commentaries and her use of frank sexual humor and expressions. Her poems are usually irreverent, full of double entendres, and erudite.<br/><br/>
The Vinh Lang stele from Lê Lợi's mausoleum, erected in the 6th year of Thuận Thiên reign (1433).<br/><br/> Lê Lợi (1384 or 1385 – 1433), posthumously known with the temple name Lê Thái Tổ, was Emperor of Vietnam and founder of the Later Lê Dynasty. Lê Lợi is among the most famous figures from the medieval period of Vietnamese history and one of its greatest heroes.<br/><br/> Between 1418 and 1427 Le Loi fought the Ming Chinese occupation of Vietnam, ultimately defeating the Ming and re-establishing Vietnamese independence. He was also a diplomat, and having driven out the Chinese he formally established the Lê Dynasty as the Ming Xuande Emperor officially recognized Lê Lợi as the new ruler of Vietnam. In return, Lê Lợi sent diplomatic messages to the Ming Court, promising Vietnam's loyalty as a vassal state of China and cooperation. The Ming accepted this arrangement, much as they accepted the vassal status of Korea under the Joseon Dynasty. The Chinese largely left Vietnam alone for the next 500 years, intervening only about once every hundred years.
The Later Lê Dynasty (Vietnamese: Nhà Hậu Lê), sometimes referred to as the Lê Dynasty (the earlier Lê Dynasty ruled only for a brief period) was the longest-ruling dynasty of Vietnam, ruling the country from 1428 to 1788, with a brief interruption.<br/><br/> The dynasty officially began in 1428 with the coronation of Lê Lợi after he drove the Ming army from Vietnam. In 1527, the Mạc Dynasty usurped the throne; when the Lê Dynasty was restored in 1533, they still had to compete for power with the Mạc Dynasty during the period known as Southern and Northern Dynasties.<br/><br/> The restored Lê emperors held no real power, and by the time the Mạc Dynasty was confined to only a small area in 1592 and finally eradicated in 1677, actual power was in the hands of the Nguyen Lords in the South and the Trịnh Lords in the North, both ruling in the name of the Lê emperor while fighting each other. Their rule officially ended in 1788, when the peasant uprising of the Tây Sơn brothers defeated both the Trịnh and the Nguyen, ironically in order to restore power to the Lê Dynasty.