The
Trung Sisters (c. 12 - 43
AD , abbreviated as AD or A.D., and Before Christ, abbreviated as BC or B.C., are designations used to number years in the Julian and Gregorian calendars....
), known in
VietnameseVietnamese , formerly known under French colonization as Annamese , is the national and official language of Vietnam...
as
Hai Bà Trưng (literally "the two Ladies Trưng"), and individually as
Trưng Trắc (徵側) and
Trưng Nhị (徵貳), were two 1st century
VietnameseThe Vietnamese people are an ethnic group originating from what is now northern Vietnam and southern China. They are the majority ethnic group of Vietnam, comprising 86% of the population as of the 1999 census, and are officially known as Kinh to distinguish them from other ethnic groups in Vietnam...
women leaders who successfully repelled
ChineseChina is a cultural region, an ancient civilization, and, depending on perspective, a national or multinational entity extending over a large area in East Asia....
invasions for three years, and are regarded as national heroines of
VietnamVietnam , officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam , is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea to the east...
.
The sisters were born in Northern Vietnam, the dates of their birth are unknown, but Trưng Trắc was older than Trưng Nhị.
The
Trung Sisters (c. 12 - 43
AD , abbreviated as AD or A.D., and Before Christ, abbreviated as BC or B.C., are designations used to number years in the Julian and Gregorian calendars....
), known in
VietnameseVietnamese , formerly known under French colonization as Annamese , is the national and official language of Vietnam...
as
Hai Bà Trưng (literally "the two Ladies Trưng"), and individually as
Trưng Trắc (徵側) and
Trưng Nhị (徵貳), were two 1st century
VietnameseThe Vietnamese people are an ethnic group originating from what is now northern Vietnam and southern China. They are the majority ethnic group of Vietnam, comprising 86% of the population as of the 1999 census, and are officially known as Kinh to distinguish them from other ethnic groups in Vietnam...
women leaders who successfully repelled
ChineseChina is a cultural region, an ancient civilization, and, depending on perspective, a national or multinational entity extending over a large area in East Asia....
invasions for three years, and are regarded as national heroines of
VietnamVietnam , officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam , is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea to the east...
.
The sisters were born in Northern Vietnam, the dates of their birth are unknown, but Trưng Trắc was older than Trưng Nhị. The exact date of their death is unknown but both died in 43 AD.
Traditional Vietnamese account
The third book of
Đại Việt Sử ký toàn thư (大越史記全書
Complete Annals of Great Viet), published in editions between 1272 and 1697, has the following to say about the Trưng Sisters:
- Lê Văn Hưu (one of the historians editing the annals) wrote: Trưng Trắc, Trưng Nhị are women, with a single cry led the prefectures of Cửu Chân, Nhật Nam, Hợp Phố, and 65 strongholds heed their call. They established a nation and proclaimed their rule as easily as their turning over their hands. It awakened all of us that we can be independent. Unfortunately, between the fall of the Triệu Dynasty and the rise of the Ngô Dynasty
The Ngô Dynasty was a dynasty in Vietnam.Around the year 930 AD, as Ngô Quyền rose to power, northern Vietnam was a province and vassal state of China and was referred to as Giao Chỉ . Every year the governor/administrator of Giao Chỉ had to pay tribute and give offerings to China...
, in the span of more than one thousand years, men of this land only bowed their heads and accepted the fate of servitude to the people from the North (Chinese).
- The reign of Trưng Nữ Vương [Trưng Queens], started in the year of Canh Tý and ended in Nhâm Dần, for a total of 3 years (40-42).
Early years
The Trưng sisters were born in a rural Vietnamese village, into a
militaryA military is an organization authorized by its nation to use force, usually including use of weapons, in defending its country by combating actual or perceived threats. As an adjective the term "military" is also used to refer to any property or aspect of a military...
family. Their father was a prefect of Mê Linh (麊泠), therefore the sisters grew up in a house well-versed in the martial arts. They also witnessed the cruel treatment of the Viets by their Chinese overlords. The Trưng sisters spent much time studying the art of warfare, as well as learning fighting skills.
When a neighbouring prefect came to visit Mê Linh, he brought with him his son, Thi Sách. Thi Sách met and fell in love with Trưng Trắc during the visit, and they were soon married.
Rebellion
With Chinese rule growing intolerably exacting, and the policy of forcible assimilation into the Chinese mold, Thi Sách made a stand against the Chinese. The Chinese responded by executing Thi Sách as a warning to all those who contemplated rebellion. His death spurred his wife to take up his cause and the flames of insurrection spread.
In
AD 39Year 39 was a common year starting on Thursday of the Julian calendar.-Roman Empire:* Tigellinus, minister and favorite of the later Roman emperor Nero, is banished for adultery with Caligula's sisters....
Trưng Trắc and Trưng Nhị, after successfully repelling a small Chinese unit from their village, assembled a large
armyAn army An army An army (from Latin armata "armed (things)" via Old French armée, "armed" (feminine), in the broadest sense, is the land-based Military of a nation. It may also include other branches of the military such as the air force via means of aviation corps...
, consisting mostly of women. Within months, they had taken back many (about 65) citadels from the Chinese, and had liberated Nam Việt. They became
queensA queen regnant is a qualifying reference to a female monarch possessing and exercising all of the monarchical powers of a ruler, in contrast to a "queen consort", who is the wife of a male reigning as monarch and who is without any official powers of state.In Ancient Egypt, Pacific cultures, and...
of the country, and managed to resist all Chinese attacks on Nam Việt for over two years.
Defeat
Their
revolutionA revolution is a fundamental change in power or organizational structures that takes place in a relatively short period of time.Aristotle described two types of political revolution:...
was short lived however, as the Chinese gathered a huge expeditionary army to crush the native fighters. Legend has it that the Chinese army did this by going into battle unclothed. The enemy's brazenness so shamed the Vietnamese female warriors that they fled the battle scene, leaving the weakened forces easily defeated by the Chinese.
Phung Thi ChinhPhùng Thị Chính was a Vietnamese noblewoman who fought alongside the Trưng sisters in order to repel Han invaders from Nam Việt in 43 CE. She was pregnant at the time, and was in charge of protecting the central flank during the incursion to Nam Việt...
, a pregnant noble lady was the captain of a group of soldiers who were to protect the central flank of Nam Việt. She gave
birthChildbirth is the culmination of a human pregnancy or gestation period with birth of one or more newborn infants from a woman's uterus...
on the
front lineThe Forward Line of Troops, or FEBA is a term parlanced by most armed force services worldwide. It is a battlespace control measure that designates the forward-most friendly and hostile forces that are presently on the battlefield during an armed conflict or war; whether it be regular infantry or...
, and with her baby in one arm, and a sword in the other, continued to fight the battle.
Despite the many heroic efforts, the Trưng sisters realised that they had been defeated and that to fight further would mean death at the hands of the Chinese. Therefore to protect their
honourHonour or Honor , is the evaluation of a person's trustworthiness and social status based on that individual's espousals and actions. Honour is deemed exactly what determines a person's character: whether or not the person reflects honesty, respect, integrity, or fairness...
, and to elude ridicule, the two queens committed
suicideSuicide is the intentional killing of one's self. Many dictionaries also note the metaphorical sense of "willful destruction of one's self-interest"...
by drowning themselves in the Hát River (
AD 43Year 43 was a common year starting on Tuesday of the Julian calendar.-Britain:* The long Roman conquest of Britain begins. Aulus Plautius lands with four legions and an equal number of auxiliaries and defeats the Britons, led by Caratacus and Togodumnus, in battles on the rivers Medway and Thames...
). Some of their
loyalLoyalty is faithfulness or a devotion to a person or cause.-Loyalty and Marketing:The practice of providing discounts, prizes, or other incentives to encourage continued patronage of a business. Generally, loyalty programs are considered less expensive to maintain than allowing customer defection...
soldiers continued to fight to the death, whilst others committed suicide (including Phung Thi Chinh, who also took her newborn baby's life). There is a story of one woman who would randomly charge through Chinese camps, screaming and slaying random men. Finally, after killing many more, she committed suicide in the hope of returning to her respected commanders.
Traditional Chinese account
The Chinese traditional historical accounts on the Trưng sisters are remarkably brief. They are found in two different chapters of Hou Han Shu, the history for the Eastern Han Dynasty, against which the Trưng sisters had carried out their uprising.
Chapter eighty six of
Hou Han Shu, entitled
Biographies of the Southern and the Southwestern Barbarians, has this short description:
- In the 16th year of Jianwu [40], Jiaozhi
Tonkin , also spelled Tongkin, Tonquin or Tongking, is the northernmost part of Vietnam, south of China's Yunnan and Guangxi Provinces, east of northern Laos, and west of the Gulf of Tonkin. Locally, it is known as Bắc Kỳ, meaning "Northern Region"...
(Giao Chỉ) [modern northern Vietnam and extreme western GuangdongGuangdong is a province on the southern coast of People's Republic of China. The province was previously often written with the alternative English name Kwangtung Province...
and western GuangxiThis article is about a region of China. For the sociological concept, see Guānxi.Guangxi is a Zhuang autonomous region of the People's Republic of China....
] women Zhēng Cè (Trưng Trắc) and Zhēng Èr (Trưng Nhị) rebelled and attacked the commanderyThe commandery was a historical administrative level of China. During the Zhou Dynasty , it was one level below a district . Qin Shi Huang , who unified the Warring States into one heavily-centralized empire, inverted the hierarchy and made commanderies higher than districts...
capital. Zhēng Cè was the daughter of the sheriff of Miling (Mê Linh; 麊泠) County, and she married a man named Shi Suo (Thi Sách; 詩索) from ....(Chu Diên) She was a ferocious warrior. Su Ding (蘇定), the governor of Jiaozhi Commandery, curbed her with laws. Cè became angry and rebelled. The barbarian towns of Jiuzhen, Rinan, and Hepu Commanderies all joined her, and she captured sixty five cities and claimed to be queen. The governors of Jiaozhi Province and the commanderies could only defend themselves. Emperor GuangwuEmperor Guangwu , born Liu Xiu, was an emperor of the Chinese Han Dynasty, restorer of the dynasty in AD 25 and thus founder of the Later Han or Eastern Han...
therefore ordered the ChangshaChangsha is the capital city of Hunan, a province of south-central China, located on the lower reaches of Xiang river, a branch of the Yangtze River. It covers an area of 11,819 sq. kilometers and has a population of 6,017,600 ....
, Hepu, and Jiaozhi Commanderies to prepare wagons and boats, to repair the roads and bridges, to open the mountain passes, and to save food supplies. In the 18th year 42, he sent Ma Yuan the General Fupuo and Duan Zhi (段志) the General Lochuan to lead ten odd thousands of men from Changsha, Guiyang, Linling, and Cangwu Commanderies against them. In the summer of the next year 43, Ma recaptured Jiaozhi and killed Zhēng Cè, Zhēng Èr, and others in battle, and the rest scattered. He also attacked Du Yang (都陽), a rebel of the Jiuzhen Commandery, and Du surrendered and was moved, along with some 300 of his followers to Lingling Commandery. The border regions were thus pacified.
Chapter twenty four, the biographies of Ma and some of his notable male descendants, had a parallel description that also added that Ma was able to impress the locals by creating irrigation networks to help the people and also by simplifying and clarifying the
HanThe Han Dynasty was the second imperial dynasty of China, preceded by the Qin Dynasty and succeeded by the Three Kingdoms . It was founded by the peasant rebel leader Liu Bang, known posthumously as Emperor Gaozu of Han. It was briefly interrupted by the Xin Dynasty of the former regent Wang Mang...
laws, and was able to get the people to follow Han's laws.
The traditional Chinese account therefore does not indicate abuse of the Vietnamese population by the Chinese officials. However, it also implicitly disavowed the traditional Vietnamese accounts of massive cruelty and of the Chinese official killing Trưng Trắc's husband. There was further no indication that the Trưng sisters committed suicide, that other followers followed example and did so, or that the Chinese army fought naked to win the battle. Indeed, Ma, known in Chinese history for his strict military discipline, would not have likely carried out cruel or unusual tactics.
Impact
The Trưng Sisters are highly revered in Vietnam, as they led the first resistance movement against the occupying Chinese after 247 years of domination. Many temples are dedicated to them, and a yearly holiday, occurring in February, to commemorate their deaths is observed by many Vietnamese. A district in
HanoiHanoi , estimated population 6.232.940 , is the capital and second-largest city of Vietnam. From 1010 until 1802, with a few brief interruptions, it was the political centre of an independent Vietnam. It was eclipsed by Huế during the Nguyen Dynasty as the capital of Vietnam, but Hanoi served as...
called the Hai Ba Trung district is named after them. In addition, numerous large streets in major cities and many schools are named after them. They are often depicted riding on elephants into battle.
The stories of the Trưng sisters and of another famous woman warrior,
Triệu Thị TrinhTriệu Thị Trinh , also known as Triệu Ẩu or Bà Triệu was a Vietnamese female warrior in 3rd century Vietnam who managed, for a time, to successfully resist the Kingdom of Wu during their occupation of Vietnam...
, are cited by some historians as hints that Vietnamese society before
SinicizationSinicization, Sinicisation or Sinification, is the linguistic assimilation or cultural assimilation of terms and concepts of the language and culture of China...
was a matriarchal one, where there are no obstacles for women in assuming leadership roles.
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