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In 931, a patriot, Duong Dinh Nghe, took up the fight
and made himself governor. After Duong Dinh Nghe died,
murdered by one of his aides, the fight was led by Ngo
Quyen, who in 938 clashed with a Southern Han
expeditionary corps approaching by sea. The Southern Han
fleet entered
Vietnam
via the Bach Dang estuary (mouth of the river which
flows into
Halong
Bay)
where iron-tipped stakes had been sunk into the riverbed
by Ngo Quyen. At high-tide a Vietnamese flotilla
attacked the enemy then, pretending to escape, lured the
Southern Han boats into the estuary beyond the stakes
still covered by the tide. At low-tide, the entire
Vietnamese fleet counter-attacked, forcing the enemy to
flee and sink, impaled on the barrage of stakes.
The Bach Dang victory in 938 put an end
to the period of Chinese imperial domination. In 939 Ngo
Quyen proclaimed himself king, established his capital
at Co Loa (previously a capital in the 3rd century B.C.)
and set up a centralized government. It was the first
truly independent Vietnamese state.
Domestically, the main obstacle to the founding of a
centralized power structure capable of assuming
direction of the economy - management of the dyke system
in particular - and of successfully resisting foreign
aggression was the existence of feudal lords who each
ruled an area of territory. On the death of Ngo Quyen in
944, 12 warlords divided the country among themselves
and began to fight one another.
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