Trung Trac and Trung Nhi staged a rebellion against Han China's rule of the country in the mid-1st century AD.
It is logical that a country like Vietnam , shaken by a war experience as terrible as the one that led to its independence in those strange two decades of war (1955-1975), in which France, the United States, Cambodia and Laos ended up participating in one way or another, -apart from of the civil conflict between north and south-, it is logical, I say, that it resorts to history to highlight examples of similar movements that become the backbone of its spirit as a new nation. One of them, currently commemorated with a festivity in February and the baptism of streets in many cities, as well as dedications of temples and monuments, is that of the Trung sisters .
The Vietnamese territory had been annexed by Emperor Wu in 111 BC. through the so-called Han-Nanyue War (Nanyue was the name given by the conquerors to the country, then larger than today and which included what is now the southeastern part of China). However, the Chinese governor To Dihn was used abusively , eliminating ancestral customs, annulling the traditional organization of the people and imposing heavy taxes, for which discontent soon spread.
Circa AD 40 the first uprisings broke out against the invader, with a focus on Yue, a northern rural area. That is where the sisters appear, although almost everything related to their lives prior to these events is unknown because the available sources do not say anything about it. There are two fundamentally, one Chinese and the other Vietnamese:the first is the Book of the Last Han , a work written by the historian Fan Ye in the 5th century; the second, the Complete Annals of Dai Viet , which was published in 1479.
From both it is concluded that the Trung were natives of the locality of Jiaozhi , where they would have been born around the year 12, knowing that they were the daughters of the prefect of Mi Linh, who would have trained them inmartial arts and war tactics .
The eldest was Trung Trac, who married Thi Sach (Shi Suo in the Chinese version), the son of another neighboring prefect who, like the previous one, ruled subject to foreigners but hated them. The excesses of the Chinese, which logically do not figure in Fan Ye's work, led Thi Sach to take charge of a conspiracy in the spring of the year 40.
Discovered the plot, in the subsequent repression Thi Sach ended up arrested and executed. He was the spark that lit the fuse of the insurrection. To the surprise of the Chinese, the wife of the deceased leader took her place and continued the fight. Not only that, but she also incorporated as officers some thirty women , some of which were from her own family.
That strange contingent managed to face his men for three years, winning seventy cities for their cause while Trung Trac was proclaimed Vuong (Queen), establishing her capital at Mi Linh and aspiring to re-establish the Hung dynasty after driving out the Chinese. Emperor Guang Wu , although he was slow to take the problem seriously (probably because it was limited to the countryside, while the cities remained under his control), he finally sent an expedition of ten thousand men under the command of the prestigious general Ma Yuan .
With the pompous title of Fubo Jiangjun (General that calms the waves), Ma Yuan began a military campaign supported by a fleet that facilitated the supply of food, since the field of operations was close to the coast, focused mainly on the Red River delta. The advance of the Chinese troops was slow but unstoppable .
Of course, such an adventure could not last long. Around the spring of the year 43 the Trungs were finally defeated and lost their lives, according to one account on the battlefield and according to another at the hands of the executioner. The most lurid details speak of previous rape and that their heads were sent to the emperor as a kind of trophy. However, there are many legends in this regard, from those who say they never died to those who refer to a suicide.
In fact, the gossip was not limited to them, since another story that spread was that of a warrior who gave birth in full combat and continued fighting with the baby in tow, or the most unheard of of all:Ma Yuan ordered his soldiers to appear naked on the battlefield causing the female army, overwhelmed with shame, to scatter.
In this sense, the analysis of the Vietnamese texts by historians points rather to opposite conclusions:in contrast to the classic hagiographic version that speaks of a considerable importance of the matriarchal organization, the women would have been left alone in the rebellion because their male counterpartsdidn't take them seriously and refused to serve under him. Machismo, then, would have put an end to the liberation of Vietnam.