Trần Vietnam beat Mongols and invented local paper cash
The Trần dynasty ruled Đại Việt from 1225 to 1400 after Trần Thủ Độ engineered a child empress’s marriage and abdication. They improved Chinese gunpowder, vassalized Champa, issued Vietnam’s first paper money, and thrice faced Mongol armies.
The family descended from Trần Kinh, a Fujian migrant whose line prospered at Tức Mặc in Nam Định. When rebellions shook Lý Cao Tông’s reign, crown prince Lý Sảm sheltered with the Trần and married Trần Thị Dung in 1209. The girl ruler Lý Chiêu Hoàng, six years old in 1224, was steered by Trần Thủ Độ into marrying Trần Cảnh, who became Thái Tông at eight; Lý princes were pushed to suicide, and Thủ Độ crushed Nguyễn Nộn’s rising.
In 1237, anxious that the emperor still had no son, Thủ Độ took the pregnant wife of Thái Tông’s brother Trần Liễu for the throne. Liễu revolted, and the remorseful emperor fled to become a monk on Yên Tử Mountain until Thủ Độ dragged him back. The period also produced the earliest literature in Chữ Nôm.
Mongols invaded in 1257 to outflank the Song through Yunnan and Dali. Early defeats so frightened the court that the emperor’s younger sibling Trần Nhật Hiệu floated drastic options, but after losing the capital the Trần recovered and in 1258 accepted a tributary deal while keeping Song ties. Kublai Khan then pressed for far heavier tribute: labour, gold, silver, cinnabar, sandalwood, ivory, pearls, rhinoceros horn, silk, and porcelain.
Late in 1284 Prince Toghon led a second invasion overland while general Sogetu’s fleet came up from the south; Trần Quang Khải had to fall back in Nghệ An, but the tide turned when Toghon withdrew in 1285. A third invasion in 1287 took and looted the capital, yet Prince Hưng Đạo had promised the emperor it would fail. Song refugees such as Zhao Zhong and the Fujian-born Daoist Xu Zongdao fought alongside the Trần.
Source: Trần dynasty
