Lê Lợi lost to the Ming, regrouped, and won Vietnam back
A landowner's son from the Thanh Hóa hills spent a decade fighting one of the largest empires on Earth. Lê Lợi raised his revolt against Ming China in 1418, was beaten so badly by 1422 that he sued for peace, and still drove the occupiers out by 1427, founding a dynasty that restored Đại Việt.
Vietnam had been battered long before the Ming arrived. Through the 14th century, ecological breakdown weakened the ruling Trần dynasty, and armies from Champa under Chế Bồng Nga sacked the capital Thăng Long several times. The Ming then conquered the kingdom and ran it as Jiaozhi Province, pressing Chinese clothing, Confucian schooling and customs on the population. Support in the capital was patchy and the countryside resisted: between 1415 and 1424, 31 separate revolts broke out against the occupation.
Born in 1385 in Lam Sơn, the youngest of three sons of a wealthy family, possibly of Mường origin, Lê Lợi joined earlier revolts led by Trần princes and was imprisoned by the Chinese from 1413 to 1415. Afterwards he even worked as a tutor and translator for a Ming official, before a feud with a neighbour who denounced him to the authorities pushed him back to open rebellion. Just after the New Year festival of 1418, he declared himself Prince of Pacification at his home village, backed by powerful local families including the Trịnh and the Nguyễn.
His strength was guerrilla war: moving camps constantly and striking larger Ming columns with small bands. It did not always work. In 1421 a Laotian army of 30,000 men and 100 elephants, which he had hoped would help him, joined the Ming instead, and by 1423 he was forced back to Lam Sơn under a peace deal. When the Ming arrested his messenger, he abandoned the truce.
Politics in China then shifted in his favour. A new emperor, Zhu Gaozhi, took the throne in 1424, cut back costly foreign ventures and recalled the able administrator Huang Fu. Lê Lợi seized the moment, marching south through the mountains into Nghệ An, recruiting highland minorities and winning over lowland villagers by keeping his troops disciplined. With the scholar Nguyễn Trãi helping to plan strategy, his forces controlled everything from Thanh Hóa southward by the end of 1425, and in 1427 the Ming left. He is still counted among Vietnam's greatest national heroes.
Source: Lê Lợi
