Le Loi's Lam Son uprising defeats Ming rule

In 1418 a landowner and local chief named Le Loi raised a rebellion from the district of Lam Son in the mountains of Thanh Hoa against Ming Chinese rule. After a decade of hard war, the rebels forced the Ming to withdraw in 1427, and in 1428 Le Loi took the throne as Le Thai To, founding the Later Le dynasty.¹²

The war grew from a crisis. In 1400 the minister Ho Quy Ly overthrew the Tran dynasty and tried to reform the state, which made him many enemies. The Ming emperor Yongle used the ouster as cause to invade in 1406, captured Ho Quy Ly in 1407, and annexed Dai Viet as a Chinese province. The Ming imposed heavy taxes and forced labor, tried to push Chinese customs, and carried scholars and craftsmen off to China. Le Loi, who refused to serve the Ming, began with a small band, and he was joined by the scholar and strategist Nguyen Trai. Their forces used guerrilla tactics at first, were nearly wiped out several times, then grew to take the southern provinces and march on the capital.¹³

Decisive victories at Tot Dong in 1426 and Chi Lang in 1427 broke Ming armies, and Ming relief columns were destroyed or retreated. The Ming court accepted a settlement in which Le Loi recognized Chinese overlordship in form. Nguyen Trai then wrote the Binh Ngo Dai Cao, a proclamation of victory that is still read as a foundation text of Vietnamese nationhood. Vietnamese legend says Le Loi had a magic sword from a golden turtle, and that he returned it in a lake in Hanoi, which is now called Hoan Kiem, the Lake of the Returned Sword.¹²