Why did Ho Quy Ly send spies to poison the Ming mandarins?

Since Minh Thanh To Chu Di ascended the throne, relations between Dai Ngu and Ming countries have deteriorated even more. The Ho Dynasty proved to be a dynasty ready to fight against the Ming army. On the other side, Zhu Di was a more belligerent king than his father. Chu Di repeatedly sent envoys to Dai Ngu to ask for elephant tribute, gifts, human tribute, and asked all kinds of questions to find an excuse to mobilize troops. Diplomatic pressure from the Ming country gradually increased over time.

Along with sending envoys to Dai Ngu to cause trouble, the Ming Dynasty also sent people to bribe the people in our country to make internal affairs for them. The Vietnamese eunuchs including Nguyen Toan, Nguyen Tong Dao, and Ngo Tin used the excuse to go to envoys and visit relatives, implicitly making a pact with their family members that when the Ming army arrived, they would fly the yellow flag and write letters on the flag. signal, will not be killed. When the Ho court found out about this, the relatives of the eunuchs were all killed. That is to follow the strict rules of feudalism. One person is guilty, they are all punished.

In 1404, the Ming Dynasty sent envoys to our country to demand a pair of black and white elephants. Previously, Champa country tributed that pair of elephants to Dai Ngu country to ask for a postponement of the army. Then, out of anger, Champa sent messengers to the Minh king to tell him that the Ho family had encroached on the land and took away the elephants that Champa intended to pay tribute to the Minh country. When the Ming envoy came to claim, the Ho court had to bring the pair of elephants to the Minh country to leave the matter alone. But it wasn’t long before the Ming kingdom sent the man Ly Ky to provoke him. Ly Ky went to our country to act very unruly, beat people in the convoy escorting him to the capital, forcing him to go fast regardless of the scheduled schedule.

Ly Ky went to the capital, questioned the Ho court about robbing the Tran house, fighting Champa and encroaching on the border. These things were attributed to Tran Thiem Binh, an exiled traitor who reported to the Minh King, plus some additional false information to convince the Ming army to attack our country, so that Thiem Binh could take advantage of it. become king. The Ho Dynasty struggled to argue. Ly Ky in the shop also observed the situation of the capital, wanting to spy on the situation of our country. Ho Quy Ly was slow, until Ly Ky was on his way back, he sent his troops to chase and kill him to avoid revealing confidential matters, but Ly Ky returned home before the Ho army’s pursuers caught up.

Ly Ky went back and told Chu De that the Ho emperor proclaimed himself emperor and wrote poems that insulted King Minh. The Ming dynasty used it as an excuse to propagate in the country about the need to attack Dai Ngu. Originally at that time, the kings of the Chinese empires still considered themselves the only king entitled to claim the title, the kings of other countries were only allowed to claim the title. However, the kings of our country from the time of King Dinh Tien Hoang onward have all proclaimed themselves emperors, although in terms of diplomacy with northern neighbors, they only proclaimed themselves kings.

This should have been just a common thing that the kings of the two countries understood and still had to ignore in the north. But because this is the time when Minh Thanh To Chu Di wanted to mobilize his army, everything can be blamed on our country. For several years in a row, the preparation for the annexation of Dai Ngu was carried out methodically by the Ming Dynasty, from inspecting the army to select generals to sending people to work as internal forces to sabotage Dai Ngu from within. In the process of preparation, diplomacy was still conducted in order to cause internal divisions and find a “legitimate” pretext for the invasion.

In 1405, the official of Tu Minh province, Hoang Quang Thanh, informed that Loc Chau (present-day Loc Binh, Lang Son) of Dai Ngu was the old land belonging to Tu Minh, King Minh sent envoys to Dai Ngu to claim Dai Ngu. Loc Chau land. Because in the past life, the border stretched depending on the times, when the Tran Dynasty prospered and the Nguyen Dynasty declined, the border of our country encroached to the north. Now that the Ming Dynasty is prosperous, it wants to encroach on the land to the south, which is also an excuse for aggression. Emperor Ho Quy Ly, after deliberating, ordered Hanh to command Hoang Hoi Khanh to act as an ambassador to the border with the Ming mandarins to survey and return some of the land that our country had encroached on in a previous life. Hoang Hoi Khanh received orders but acted irresponsibly, at one time cutting 59 villages and returning them to the Minh country.

When he returned to the court, Emperor Ho Quy Ly knew that he was angry and furious, and did not regret cursing and insulting Hoang Hoi Khanh. Ho Quy Ly again sent spies of ethnic minorities in the villages to kill all the land officials arranged by the Ming. In effect, Dai Ngu kept its people in control of the territories newly ceded to the Ming state.

Although the Ho Dynasty knew that war was almost inevitable, and the preparations to fight the enemy were urgent, in 1405, King Ho Han Thuong still wanted to hold on to some hope of peace. The image of the middle-aged man Pham Canh was appointed by the king as chief envoy, and together with the judge, Luu Quang Dinh, was the deputy envoy to bring gifts to the Minh country as a guest speaker, hoping to defeat the military artifice. However, this trip did not work. King Minh still wanted to fight Dai Ngu, let Pham Canh stay, only let Quang Dinh go home.

The diplomacy between Dai Ngu and Ming states can be said to have been non-negotiable since the above event. From 1406, the two countries began to use swords to talk. King Minh planned to use Tran Thiem Binh as a puppet king, sending troops to escort him back to the country to replace the Ho king. The Ming Dynasty hoped that under the guise of restoring the Tran Dynasty, they would be able to easily lure the people in our country to turn their spears towards the Ho court, through which they could destroy the village with only a few soldiers. calculate Dai Ngu country. However, things will not be as simple as the enemy’s plans.