Mongol invasions of Vietnam

The Mongol invasions of Vietnam were a series of campaigns by the Mongol Empire, and later by Kublai Khan's Yuan dynasty, against the kingdom of Đại Việt in the north of modern Vietnam and the kingdom of Champa further south. They took place in 1258, 1282 to 1284, 1285 and 1287 to 1288. The Mongols captured the Vietnamese capital each time they invaded but could not hold the country, and their later armies were driven out with heavy losses. Both kingdoms nonetheless agreed to send tribute to the Yuan, so historians judge the outcome in different ways.

In the 1250s the Mongols were seeking a way to attack the Song dynasty of southern China from the south-west. After conquering the kingdom of Dali in Yunnan, the general Uriyangkhadai sent envoys to the Đại Việt ruler Trần Thái Tông demanding submission and passage for his army. The envoys were imprisoned. Early in 1258 Uriyangkhadai invaded with a force that modern estimates put at a few thousand Mongols plus several thousand or more troops from Yunnan. The Vietnamese, fighting with war elephants, were defeated, and the Mongols took the capital, Thăng Long, modern Hanoi, and massacred its inhabitants. After nine days they moved on north to attack the Song. Trần Thái Tông then opened tributary relations with the Mongols, while keeping his ties with the Song.

After the Song fell in the 1270s, the new Yuan state turned south. Kublai Khan demanded more tribute and direct oversight from both kingdoms, and asked that the Vietnamese king come to China in person, which successive kings refused. In 1282 to 1283 a Yuan fleet under Sogetu landed in Champa and took its capital, but the Cham king withdrew to the hills and fought on. In early 1285 a large Yuan army under Kublai's son Toghon entered Đại Việt, officially on its way to Champa. The Vietnamese defence was led by Prince Trần Quốc Tuấn, better known as Trần Hưng Đạo. The Yuan won the early battles, occupied the capital and drove the court south, and several Vietnamese princes went over to them. But the invaders found the capital emptied of grain, their supply lines stretched, and heat and disease took their toll. From May 1285 the Vietnamese counter-attacked; Sogetu was killed, and by late June the Yuan army had retreated to China.

In 1287 Kublai sent Toghon back with an even larger army, reportedly around 170,000 men including naval crews, intending to put the defector Prince Trần Ích Tắc on the throne. Again the Yuan took Thăng Long. But in early 1288 the Vietnamese navy destroyed the Yuan supply fleet, and Toghon's hungry army began to withdraw. In April 1288 Trần Hưng Đạo ambushed the retreating Yuan fleet on the Bạch Đằng River, using iron-tipped stakes hidden in the riverbed, the same trick used there in the Battle of Bạch Đằng of 938. The fleet was destroyed and its commander Omar captured, while Toghon escaped overland through the forests.

Kublai considered another invasion but died in 1294, and his successor ended the war. To avoid further conflict, both Đại Việt and Champa accepted Yuan supremacy as tributary states, though no Trần king ever went to China in person. The invasions left Đại Việt badly damaged: the capital had been sacked, Buddhist sites destroyed, and famine followed in the early 1290s. The campaigns also helped spread gunpowder weapons into Southeast Asia, carried by refugees from Song China.

Some historians regard the campaigns as a partial Mongol success, since they brought both kingdoms into a tributary relationship. Vietnamese historiography stresses instead the repeated defeat of the invaders, and Trần Hưng Đạo is honoured as one of Vietnam's greatest national heroes.

Our 1279 map shows Đại Việt and Champa beside the expanding Yuan state between the invasions, and the 1300 map shows the region after the wars ended.