nam as a prisoner. In the 10th inoon of 1459 BANG-KI was murdered by the followers of his elder brother R NGHI-DAN, who proclaimed himself king, and reigned during eight months. His name is not included in the list of sovereigns in the Annals, as he was considered a rebel. 4th King—H THAN-TONG. having disappeared, his brother

1460-1498.–Nghi-dan TU-THANH, fourth During his reign

son of THAI-TONG, was proclaimed king. the kingdom of Ciampa was destroyed, and its territories incorporated with Annam. The Annals are loud in the praise of this king, who evidently raised the country to its highest degree of splendour and wealth.

5th King.-HIEN-TONG. 1498-1505.-Out of thirty four sons left by the last monarch, the crown passed to the elder, called ✯ TANG, who devoted himself to the organisation of the army, although the kingdom had the good fortune of remaining in a peaceful state during his reign.

6th Kign.- TUC-TONG. 1505.-The Prince TUAN, third son of the last king, only occupied the throne during six months. His history may be briefly summed up by stating that as soon as he had performed the burial rites over the remains of his father, he died himself.

OAI-MUc-de.

1505-1509.-This

7th KingPrince was the second son of king HIEN-TONG. Proclaimed king by a palace intrigue, he immediately showed his cruel nature by ordering the murder of the Queen Dowager and of the Minister of Rites. During his reign the MAC family began to assume the first position in the kingdom. The disorderly conduct of this monarch very soon disgusted the mandarins as well as the people; and the army, which then began to be of first importance in the country, revolted under the command of General LE-NINH. The king, being incapable of putting down this rebellion, committed suicide by taking poison, on the 1st day of the 12th moon of 1509.

8th King-FUONG-DUC-DE. 1509-1517.-During this rebellion General MINH had proclaimed as king of Annam

his own brother

HONG

TONG, whose history will be found with that of the rebels. When TONG died, MINH seized the throne for himself in the last moon of 1509, taking THUAN for the name of his reign. The example of his revolt and success was contagious, rebels appearing in all the provinces, and in 1511 the king very nearly lost his throne, being saved by the personal valour of General TRINH. This king did not attend to the well-being of his people, but devoted himself entirely to his own pleasures. He ordered the construction of boats to be manned by naked women, and invented many other ways of pandering to his lustful desires. To the mild remonstrances made on this subject by General TRINH, the king replied by ordering him to be bambooed. The General revenged himself by revelling with his troops, and he murdered the king in 1517.

TRINH, being then master of the country, took advantage of this to proclaim as king a boy of eight years called QUANG-TRI, who reigned only three days, and was later on strangled in the province of

Another general called the General TRINH, and he

Thanh-hoa.

NGUYEN appeared in arms against proclaimed as king the Prince Y. At that time the rebels had in their power more than half the kingdom, and allusion will subsequently be made to their struggles. Then began the rivalry between the two families of TRINH and B NGUYEN. Their power increased to such an extent that they ended by abolishing the royal authority altogether. The NGUYEN family were soon compelled to retire to Quang-nam, where they became independent, giving birth to the kingdom of Cochinchina, which two hundred years afterwards conquered Tunquin.

The Trinh, being Lords of the Palace, except on very rare occasions, always lived at the royal court of the LE kings. They were at the head of the army, they appointed successors to the kings, and they governed the country under the veil of a king who was made to disappear when he did not serve the

interests of the Lords. This great authority at length became hereditary, and thus called forth another dynasty side by side with the Royal LE.

Another family of successful Generals then appeared on the scene, and ultimately becoming more powerful than the two last-named, drove out the LE Dynasty and usurped the throne. This was the MAC family, whose real power began in 1508, when one of its members was appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Thien-vo, the king's guards. The history of this family will be treated in chapter XVIII.

9th King.– Chieu-tong. 1517-1523.-Was the Prince Y, who practically neither reigned nor governed. He had no personal history, and that of his country is reduced to a record of the contests between the Generals TRINH, NGUYEN, and MAC. The latter had the advantage for a time, and MAC DANG-DUNG had the good fortune of overcoming not only his rivals, but also the rebels who existed in the provinces. He obtained from the king the appointment as Lieutenant-General of the kingdom, and his power was so great, that the king himself tried to escape from it, and one night quietly ran away from the palace to General TRINH's camp to obtain assistance. MAC at once took advantage of the situation, and after having appointed as king the Prince

Xuan, pursued the fugitive monarch as far as the Laos frontier, where he was made a prisoner, kept in captivity for five years, and finally murdered.

name of

10th King— Ê CUNG-HOANG. 1523-1527.–The Prince XUAN mentioned above was proclaimed king under the THONG-NGUYEN, and led a happy life to the end of his reign. He was relieved of the duties of his position by MAC DANG-DUNG, who enlivened his days with every sort of pleasure up to the 4th moon of 1527, when the king was forced to abdicate in favour of his first general, who lost no time in signing the king's death sentence. Then Mac Dang-dung proclaimed himself king of Annam under the

name of MINH-DUC, and occupied the whole country until 1533, when he had to retire to the North.

1533-1549-One son of

11th King.-TRANG-TONG. the Prince Y, called NINH, came down from the Ai-lao, where he had taken refuge, in company with General NGUYEN-CAM, and with an army of ten thousand followers began the work of reconquering his kingdom from the usurper. His first act was to send an embassy to China to explain to the Emperor KIA-TSING the political occurrences which had taken place in Annam. In consequence of this, an Imperial Commissioner was appointed in 1536, and supported by a strong army, passed over the frontier from the province of Kuang-si. On the strength of the Commissioner's report to the Emperor, the sovereignty over Cochinchina was given to the descendant of the LE family, and Tunquin was left to be occupied by the MACS. But Prince Ninh, who reigned under the name of NGUYEN-HOA, continued the war against the Macs, taking from them the provinces of Thanh-hoa and

Son-nam.

12th King.- TRUNG-TONG. 1549-1557.-During this reign began the supremacy of the TRINH family, to whom all the Le kings were soon subordinate. General NGUYENCAM the restorer of the Le, had died of poison, and as his two sons were still of tender years, his position was occupied by General TRING-KIEM. The whole of this reign was passed by this general in making war against the Macs, and fearing the power that might be exercised by the two sons of Nguyen-cam on arriving at majority, he made them feudal lords of the provinces of Thuan-hoa and Quangnam then occupied by the Macs. The history of the principality thus formed, and from the rulers of which the present dynasty descended, will be found in chapter XIX.

13th King.— ANH-TONG. 1557-1572.–TRINH-KIEM followed up the war against the Macs, and with an army of fifty thousand men entered the province of Son-nam where he

was defeated. He soon, however, got men together again, and in 1560 reached the neighbourhood of Ha-noi, the capital of the Macs. In 1569 he transferred his power to his son TRINH-TONG, who was unable to occupy his position until he had fought against one of his brothers. He continued the war against the Macs in the province of Thanh-hoa, and for the first time, in 1572, sent the royal troops to fight against the NGUYEN in the Quang-nam; but they were defeated.

The power and authority of Trinh-tong in the palace were so great that the king was practically put aside. Desirous of ending this thraldom, Anh-tong ran away secretly to the province of Nghe-an. TRINH-TONG acted as the Macs had done previously; he appointed another king and went to Nghe-an where he made Anh-tong prisoner, and murdered him.

14th King-THE-TONG. 1572-1599.-This king, who was proclaimed by TRINH-TONG, was naturally under his tutelage. The wars against the Macs went on, the king sometimes having to protect his territories against their invasions, and at other times invading Tunquin from the provinces of Ninh-binh, 南定 Nan-dinh, and興化 Hunghoa.

TRINH-TONG'S good fortune carried him as far as the walls of Hanoi, which capital he took by storm in 1592, burning and destroying it, and capturing MAU-HIEP, the Mac king. The same fate befell MAC TUYEN and MAC KINH-CHI, and after some diplomatic negotiations with the Emperor of China, Thrinh-tong was allowed to exercise royal authority over the new provinces conquered from the Macs, who had only one small state left on the frontier. Then (1599) Trinh-tong was appointed Binh-an-vuong, or Peaceful Prince. The king being sick he nominated his successor to the throne.

15th King. KINH-TONG. 1599-1619.-He was made king by the will of his father, but by the authority of Trinhtong. This powerful Lord had to quell several military rebellions, and at one time he was very seriously menaced by