Battle of Bạch Đằng (1288)

On 9 April 1288, on the Bạch Đằng River in what is now Quảng Ninh province, forces of Đại Việt under Prince Trần Hưng Đạo (Trần Quốc Tuấn) lured a retreating fleet of the Yuan dynasty onto hidden stakes and destroyed it. The ambush ended the third of the Mongol invasions of Vietnam and with it the ambition of Kublai Khan to conquer Đại Việt. Vietnamese tradition ranks it among the country's finest feats of arms.

The Yuan had already invaded in 1285. A fleet under the experienced admiral Omar, son of the Yunnan governor Nasr al-Din, came close to capturing the Vietnamese king Trần Nhân Tông, but the invaders ran short of food and their commander, Prince Toghon, ordered a retreat in June. In the confusion the general Sogetu was killed, while Omar escaped to China in a small boat.

In late 1287 the Yuan tried again with an army reported at between 100,000 and 170,000 men. Toghon led the land forces, while Omar, Fan Yi and Mahmud commanded a fleet said to include 500 warships, 70 transports and 18,000 soldiers. Leaving Qinzhou on 17 December, the fleet sailed up the Bạch Đằng to join Toghon at Vạn Kiếp. On 3 February 1288 the Yuan took the capital, Thăng Long (Hanoi), but found no grain there.

Everything now depended on a supply convoy under Zhang Wenhu. Trần Hưng Đạo and Prince Trần Khánh Dư waited for it near the island of Vân Đồn with 30 warships, mauled it and forced it back towards Hainan, while storms scattered other supply ships. Starving, Toghon abandoned Thăng Long on 5 March and soon decided to return to China. His army withdrew overland through country where the Vietnamese had broken roads and bridges, and most of it was killed or captured; the fleet was to go home down the Bạch Đằng.

Trần Hưng Đạo copied the tactic Ngô Quyền had used on the same river against the Southern Han in 938, at the earlier Battle of Bạch Đằng. After studying the tides, he had iron-tipped poles driven into the beds of the Chanh, Kênh and Rút rivers, branches of the Bạch Đằng, so that they would be hidden at high water and exposed as the tide fell. Small flotillas hid behind reefs and in side channels, and troops were posted along the banks.

Early on 9 April Omar's fleet, escorted by infantry, entered the river at high tide. A few Vietnamese boats attacked and then fell back, drawing the Yuan ships after them. As the water dropped, the stakes emerged and caught the heavy warships fast. The Vietnamese then turned and attacked the stranded fleet; thousands of Yuan soldiers drowned or were killed in the water. Fan Yi was killed trying to escape and Omar was captured. The fighting lasted from sunrise to sunset, and the Vietnamese seized some 400 warships. Total losses are uncertain; some estimates put Yuan dead and captured as high as 80,000.

Kublai banished Toghon to Yangzhou for life. The two sides exchanged prisoners, but Omar never reached home: in 1289 the ship returning him sank, an outcome Trần Hưng Đạo is said to have arranged. To avoid further war, Trần Nhân Tông accepted nominal Yuan supremacy, and under Kublai's successor Temür (r. 1294–1307) relations settled into a nominal tributary arrangement. The battle became a fixture of Vietnamese literature, celebrated in poems by the emperor Trần Minh Tông and the scholar Nguyễn Trãi, and in a patriotic song of the 1940s.

Our 1279 and 1300 maps show Đại Việt in the north of modern Vietnam, with Champa to the south.