In AD 40 two sisters from an aristocratic Lạc Việt family, Trưng Trắc and Trưng Nhị, led a rising against Chinese rule in what is now northern Vietnam. For about three years the elder sister ruled as queen over a large part of the region, until a Han army crushed the revolt in 43. Known in Vietnamese as Hai Bà Trưng, "the Two Ladies Trưng", they are honoured as national heroines and symbols of resistance to foreign domination.
Under Han rule
The Red River lands had passed under Chinese control in 111 BC, when Emperor Wu of Han annexed the kingdom of Nanyue and divided it into commanderies, three of them in present-day northern Vietnam. Local Lạc lords kept much of their status under Han governors. The sisters' father was a Lạc lord in Mê Linh, near modern Hanoi, and Trưng Trắc married Thi Sách, the son of another lord, from Chu Diên.
What the Chinese record says
Almost everything known comes from brief passages in the Book of the Later Han, compiled in the fifth century by Fan Ye, more than 350 years after the events. It states that in the sixteenth year of the Jianwu era, AD 40, Zheng Ce (Trưng Trắc) and her younger sister Zheng Er rebelled after the governor of Jiaozhi, Su Ding, tried to restrain her through the law. Peoples in the neighbouring commanderies of Jiuzhen, Rinan and Hepu joined them, about sixty-five strongholds fell, and Trưng Trắc made herself queen while Han officials could only hold out in their forts.
In 42 the emperor Guangwu sent the general Ma Yuan south. The text gives his force as more than 10,000 men in one chapter and about 20,000 in another, with some 2,000 ships. He defeated the rebels at Lãng Bạc, pursued them into a gorge and, in 43, had both sisters beheaded and their heads sent to the capital, Luoyang. He then subdued remaining resistance in Jiuzhen and reorganised the local administration under Han law. An older, now-lost account quoted in a sixth-century geography differs in detail, describing Thi Sách as alive and rebelling alongside his wife.
What Vietnamese tradition adds
Vietnamese chronicles, above all the Complete Annals of Đại Việt finished in 1479, tell a fuller story. In their version Su Ding was greedy and cruel and had put Trưng Trắc's husband to death, and she rose to avenge him. They name her capital as Mê Linh and record a reign of three years. The annals say her followers deserted at the decisive moment, doubting a woman could win, and that both sisters died fighting the Han in 43. Popular tradition goes further, holding that the sisters took their own lives rather than be captured, a version the Chinese record does not support. The role of Trưng Nhị is unclear: later works variously describe her as co-ruler or as deputy to her sister.
Memory and meaning
Medieval Vietnamese historians used the sisters to shame men who had served Chinese masters, and temples to them were built over the centuries, including one in Hanoi founded by the emperor Lý Anh Tông in 1158. Some historians have taken the episode as a sign that women held a higher position in early Vietnamese society than after centuries of Chinese influence. Today a central district of Hanoi, many streets and an annual commemoration bear their name, and they are often shown riding war elephants into battle. In 1962 the South Vietnamese leader's sister-in-law, Madame Nhu, put up a statue of them in Saigon, which crowds tore down after the 1963 coup.
On our maps
Our 1 AD and 100 AD maps show the Han dynasty holding the coast of what is now Vietnam, the territory the sisters briefly freed.