The Marxist-Leninist thesis on the military organization of the proletariat is primarily based on the practice and experience of proletarian revolutions and national wars in Europe in the time of capitalism and imperialism, and also on the practice and experience of military struggle and the military organization of various classes and peoples through different ages.
When we study the history of struggle against foreign aggression and the history of military organization of our people, we notice salient features which differ from those of the military struggles and military organization of many European countries. What Engels wished for with regard to nation-wide insurrections and people’s war and with regard to the arming of the masses in Europe in the 19th century had occurred rather frequently in our country many centuries before, even under feudalism. The original, vivid and rich practice and experience of our people have further demonstrated the genius of Marx, Engels and Lenin in working out the principles of nation-wide insurrection and people’s war as well as that of the military organization of the proletariat and nations struggling for liberation.
Unlike many Western countries, where the formation of nations was generally related to the disintegration of feudalism and the appearance of capitalism, our nation was formed and developed from the struggles in ancient times against the aggression and rule of foreign feudalism. Many national uprisings and national wars occurred continually in the course of the many centuries of our history.
Viet Nam was one of the cradles of mankind. From the time when the Hung kings founded the State of Van Lang, through the two thousand years or so before our era, in the struggles against nature and against other tribes to survive and grow, the Viet tribes had gradually built up fairly solid bases from which the nation was to take shape: they lived for a long time over a definite area of land; they had their own language; they set up an economy and a socio-political system with a certain level of development; they created their own cultural and moral traditions. And so our people developed a national feeling and consciousness, a sense of being masters in their own land, at a very early date, and their vitality was very strong. In the course of struggles against powerful aggressors, the Vietnamese people succeeded in preserving their native land; they fought heroically and intelligently and worked with diligence and tenacity so as to survive and develop.
Ours is a rich and beautiful land, with vast natural resources, located in a strategic position in Southeast Asia, at the crossroads of important land and sea routes from north to south and from east to west, like a starting base from the mainland to the ocean, a bridgehead from the ocean to the mainland. That is why powerful aggressive forces always coveted and tried to attack our country with a view to exploiting and enslaving our people and using our land as a springboard to expand their influence to other directions. So, all through their long history, our people have had continually to face wars of aggression and to wage wars to defend the Fatherland and preserve national independence, continually to rise up in insurrections and fight wars of liberation to win back national independence. National feeling and national consciousness, the sense of being masters in their own land, a resolute determination to struggle to safeguard and win back national independence have developed through those insurrections and wars. Our people have gradually built and vigorously enriched a precious tradition: a tradition of heroic struggle against foreign aggression, for independence and freedom.
Ours is a small country, without a large area or population. At the beginning of the Christian era, our people lived mainly in the present area of Bac Bo and Northern Trung Bo. The population was about one million in the time of the Trung sisters; later on, our territory was extended and our population increased. But the aggressors usually commanded much greater forces. In circumstances when they had to oppose a small force to greater forces, in order to preserve the native land, and to defeat cruel enemies, our people had to bring into full play the strength of the whole people, of the whole nation, and could not rely on the army alone.
All of our people’s struggles against foreign aggression were just ones. Our people were always animated by an ardent patriotism, a high sense of national cohesion and sovereignty, a resolute and undaunted will to fight against overwhelming numbers. That is why in the national insurrections and national wars of our history, as regards the military organization the force usually consisted of the armed people organized into insurgent units, or the national army and generally, there was a combination between the armed people and the national army and vice versa. Our people soon built up and developed the tradition of “the whole nation joining forces”(1) against foreign aggression. That was the key to victory which the national hero Tran Quoc Tuan(2) set forth as a principle as early as the 13th century, basing himself on the combat experience of our people thousands of years before. This principle has evolved into the line of “unity of the whole people“ in our own time. It was under the Tran that the saying “everyone a soldier” became common.(3) And since time immemorial, there has been the popular saying: “When the enemy comes to your house, even the women should fight.” That is an impressive practice but also a very familiar one in our nation’s life and struggles.
The participation of the masses in the national uprisings and wars in our country, the tradition of “the whole nation joining forces” and of the whole people fighting the enemy, enable us to affirm that national uprisings and wars in our history have long been people’s uprisings and people’s wars. Those people’s uprisings and people’s wars, led mainly by the feudal class, occurred fairly frequently and attained a fairly high level of development, although there were limitations with regard to the leading class and other historical conditions. A further question arises: what about class struggles within our nation and the military organization in such struggles?
Like all class societies and ones divided by class antagonism, our Vietnamese society also evolved and developed through fierce class struggles within the nation, mainly between the feudal class and the peasants. The army of the feudal State in our country was also an instrument of the feudal class to maintain its rule, with an internal function of repressing the people, primarily the peasants, and an external function of fighting the aggressors and waging aggressive wars against other countries. When the class antagonism within the nation became acute, usually when no foreign aggression was occurring, the Vietnamese peasants, who had a fairly high sense of revolution and democracy, often rose up in fierce struggles, organizing their own armed forces and waging peasant insurrections and peasant wars against feudalism in the country. This is an important problem but it falls outside the scope of this essay.
However, when facing the peril of foreign aggression or under a continuous threat from aggressive forces in peace time, when the contradictions between our nation and foreign feudalist aggressors came to the fore, the various classes within our nation rallied together and temporarily set aside their contradictions to concentrate the forces of the whole nation against foreign aggression, except for a few cases when the feudalists betrayed the nation and surrendered to the aggressors. National struggle, in the view of Marxism, is also a form of class struggle; in our country, during those times, it was the struggle between the alliance of feudalists and peasants to defend the country on one side, and the foreign feudal class which committed aggression on the other side. The feudal class in our country, in the early stages of their rise, also possessed a national spirit. They took certain democratic measures to encourage the people to fight against foreign aggression. Tran Quoc Tuan had the idea of “sparing the people’s forces” to create “deep roots and solid bases” for the regime, considering it “the best policy for the defence of the country”. That is why the national movement in our country was not separated from the feudal class in their organizing and leading activities at the time when this class still played a positive role in our history, above all, it could not be separated from the strong forces of the peasants, who were ardent patriots and then made up the vast majority of our people. Therefore, when the feudal class became decadent and betrayed the nation, our peasants rose up against feudalism. They seized the banner of national independence as happened during the Tay Son movement led by Nguyen Hue. The Tay Son peasant movement became a national movement and brought our national uprising and war to a very high level of development, overthrowing the country’s feudalists, defeating foreign aggression, achieving great victories.
The birth and development of our nation, the tradition of the whole country fighting the enemy and the whole people becoming soldiers as exemplified in the national uprisings and wars are obviously original features and great realities in our history. They have dominated many aspects of our nation’s social activities. They have had a profound effect on the insurrections and wars, on the military organization of our nation during past national uprisings and wars.
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The struggles against foreign aggression and the military organization of our people during the centuries before our era are to some extent reflected in legends, mythology and historical documents.
It was not without reason that, during the time of the Hung kings and the State of Van Lang, besides the myth of Son Tinh — Thuy Tinh (The Mountain Genie and the River Genie) referring to our people’s arduous struggle against natural forces, there was also the legend of Thanh Giong praising our forefathers’ heroic fight against foreign invaders. The Legend of Thanh Giong crystallizes the typical features of our nation’s tradition of fighting foreign aggression: its indomitable fighting spirit, the invincible strength of the people in arms, etc. Thanh Giong magically grew up when he heard the call for national salvation. He used both an iron staff and bamboos to fight the enemy and was followed by peasants holding hoes, fishermen with their lines and little buffalo-tenders with their sticks... This pure and symbolic legend was the picture of “the whole nation fighting the enemy” and “the whole people in arms” in the remote past.
Also there were, in very early times, armed people who spontaneously rose up against foreign aggression. In the third century B.C., the Au Lac people and other Viet tribes fought for dozens of years against the Chin aggressors, chose the cleverest men as generals, conducted surprise attacks at night, killed hundreds of thousands of enemy troops and eventually won victory. This way of fighting and organizing forces was characteristic of the popular masses who, prompted by hatred of the enemy rose up to annihilate them. This reminds us of the valiant and mobile way of fighting with scattered formations used by the American insurgents in the war of independence against British colonialist rule in the 18th century which Engels praised. The people in arms, fighting spontaneously in such a way, were really “guerilla fighters” in the case of our people in antiquity.
In our history, the organization of a national army to fight foreign invaders also appeared at a very early time. King An Duong Vuong’s army included ground troops and naval troops, the Co Loa Citadel was both a land base and a naval base. That army had a very effective weapon, the “multiple-arrow crossbow” which could discharge several arrows at a time, using the famous bronze arrowheads, made in great quantities, thousands of which have recently been unearthed in the Co Loa area. All that speaks for the early development of military organization in our country. The appearance of the “multiple-arrow crossbow” and bronze arrowheads marked a big step forward in military techniques at the time. Was this the origin of the myth of “the magic crossbow”? But even with such “magic crossbows” King An Duong Vuong met with disaster as he did not rely on the people and slackened vigilance. He was defeated by Trieu Da.
Then began the period of domination by foreign feudalists. For ten long centuries, our people continually rose up in struggle to liberate the country and win back national independence. It was a period when national uprisings succeeded each other in every century, and several of them turned into wars of liberation. It began with the uprising of the Trung Sisters which defeated the enemy over the whole country, followed by insurrections led respectively by Chu Dat, Luong Long, Lady Trieu, Ly Bi, Ly Tu Tien and Dinh Kien, Mai Thuc Loan, Phung Hung, Duong Thanh and crowned by the uprising of Khuc Thua Du and the victory of Ngo Quyen on the Bach Dang River, which put an end to foreign domination and won back independence for the nation.
Generally speaking, during that period of foreign rule, our nation could not, naturally, have its own army. The people’s armed forces consisted mainly of insurgent troops built up during the uprisings and led by the lac hau (civilian chiefs,) lac tuong (military chiefs) and patriotic notables, the representatives of the feudal class of that time. Those troops had the character of armed forces of the insurgent people, and to some extent they were more or less like an army. The insurgent forces were sometimes limited and sometimes large, but included elements from various social strata — patriotic people, lowlanders and highlanders, patriotic notables, tribal chiefs and mandarins, etc.
After the victory of the insurrections or when they turned into wars of liberation, the leaders tried to organize a national army of a certain level to conduct the wars.
The people’s movements of struggle and insurgents’ uprisings had an effect on Vietnamese soldiers in the pay of the foreign administration: many mutinies broke out. In the mutiny of 803, the Vietnamese commander Vuong Quy Quyen joined his men in rising up and chasing out the foreign mandarins.
Our people’s national consciousness and patriotism in this period revealed itself clearly in the many uprisings, the most typical of which was that of the Trung Sisters at the beginning of our era. Its originality lay in the fact that the uprising in Me Linh led by the two Sisters met with “simultaneous response”(4) from the people and civilian and military chiefs throughout the 65 districts and towns. i.e. the whole country at that time. That “simultaneous response” by the whole country to the Trung Sisters’ call for national salvation was indeed a rare event in history. It could be said to be a “concerted uprising”, a people’s insurrection, reflecting the marked national consciousness of the chiefs and people in the various tribes that formed the old Kingdom of Au Lac.
The insurrection led by the Trung Sisters was successful. Our national independence was restored. The Sisters founded a court, organized a State and an army of the nation. Three years later, the aggressors invaded our country once again. The Sisters’ young army was defeated by the enemy.
Ly Bi’s insurrection in the middle of the 6th century was carried out on a very large scale as it succeeded in “rallying valiant fighters from various districts” in a simultaneous uprising, and overthrew foreign rule within three months. Ly Bi’s insurgent troops immediately seized the city of Long Bien and successively defeated the two counter-offensives by the Luong aggressive army.
After victory, the State of Van Xuan and the army of the independent State were established. In the subsequent national war of resistance, Ly Bi’s troops were defeated. But Trieu Quang Phuc reorganized the forces, withdrew to the Da Trach base and advocated a “protracted fighting strategy”(5) resorting to small attacks, isolated engagements, surprise assaults and night raids to wear out the enemy, then taking advantage of great disorders under the Luong dynasty, he launched a counter-offensive to defeat the aggressors and win back independence. The Van Xuan independent State lasted over half a century. That was a great victory of our people at that time. The idea of protracted fighting thus appeared. The tactics of small attacks, isolated engagements, surprise assaults and night raids developed to a new level.
After the defeat of the State of Van Xuan, during the next three centuries, our people never ceased to rise up in arms and launched many insurrections. Then in the 10th century the struggles gained impetus. Relying on this movement and while the Tang dynasty was weakened by successive peasant revolts, the Tang governor was dismissed and killed and Khuc Thua Du rose up with the support of the people and proclaimed himself governor, winning back national sovereignty. During the subsequent twenty years, this sovereignty underwent hard trials and was successively lost and recovered. It was only in 938 that Ngo Quyen’s army, with the Bach Dang River victory, defeated the Nam Han aggressors and our nation really won back independence. This naval battle, using war vessels and iron-tipped wooden piles and fought in a valiant and resourceful manner, shows the level of fighting and development of our national army at the time. The historian Le Van Huu wrote, in praise of Ngo Quyen’s exploit, that Ngo Quyen had “used the newly founded army of our Viet nation to defeat hundreds of thousands of Luu Hoang Thao’s troops”; he “made use of clever tactics and clever fighting”, “founded a State and proclaimed himself king”, thus preventing the aggressors from invading our country once again.
The Bach Dang victory marked a great turning point in our history. That was the beginning of a period when our nation, having won complete independence and having built up and developed an ever more prosperous feudal State, consolidated and preserved this independence for many centuries. Through various dynasties, the centralized feudal State worked out ever more perfected ways by which to build up and consolidate the administrative machinery at the central and various local levels, to step up economic construction and cultural development, to consolidate and strengthen national defence. Our people, under the leadership of the feudal class — which was playing a positive role in national development — waged various wars for the defence of the Fatherland, to preserve national independence. When the land was temporarily lost to the enemy, our people rose up in armed insurrections and waged wars of liberation to win back independence.
The development of the armed forces of our nation in this period was closely related to these wars and insurrections. It reflected the all-round development of an independent State set up on the basis of a feudal regime which was gradually being consolidated in every field.
A striking difference in the building of the armed forces of the feudal State in our country and many feudal States in Europe is the system of “everyone a soldier“ instead of that of “mercenaries”. The system of “arming the whole people” in Europe referred to by Engels appeared only during the first years of the French bourgeois revolution.
The system of “everyone a soldier” was set up and gradually completed through various dynasties.
In the Dinh-Le period, after putting down the “rebellion of the twelve su quan” (feudal warlords), the centralized feudal State just founded, began a system of census of the population to recruit soldiers. The armed forces were organized in such a way that “men were called up when needed, (...) and were sent back to farm work after their service.”(6) That is why, with a not very large force in active service as the core, the feudal State at that time was able to form ten army corps totalling about one million men under the command of General Le Hoan. That figure must represent all able-bodied men in the population at the time. It really was a form of arming the whole people, a rare fact in feudal times, but quite necessary for such a small nation as ours to fight foreign aggression.
The many-sided development of the independent feudal State under the Ly could be clearly seen through the system and policies regarding the organization of the armed forces. There was the policy of ngu binh u nong (placing the military in farming) i.e. military service was brought to the countryside, the farmers being soldiers, and soldiers doing both military duty and farm work. The Ly divided the male population into hoang nam from 18 to 20 years of age and dai hoang nam from 20 to 60 years of age, all of whom had to enlist and take turns in serving in the army and they were all called up when there was a war. That was what is now usually called military service.
Under the Tran, the organization of the armed forces was based on the system of mobilizing the forces of the whole people, the whole nation, according to Tran Quoc Tuan’s idea of “the whole nation joining forces”, embodied in the concept “everyone a soldier” at that time. The historian Phan Huy Chu remarked: “The military was very strong at that epoch. As a rule, the troops were stationed in convenient places in peace time, and were eager to fight when a war broke out. So under the Tran all the people were soldiers; therefore they defeated cruel enemies and strengthened the position of the nation.” The very well-defined system of organizing the army under the Tran reflected the obvious growth and consolidation of the feudal system in our country through three centuries of peaceful construction.
On the basis of “everyone a soldier”, with respect to concrete forms of organization, the feudal State built up various kinds of troops: national troops under the royal court; regional troops under noblemen and tribal chiefs; village troops, militia or local troops in every village or locality. The national troops were called “king’s troops” under the Dinh and Le dynasties, “foot guards” or “royal guards” under the Ly and the Tran. They were in active service, like the standing forces in our time. As for those who were placed in the countryside, “sent back to farm work in peace time, called up all together according to the list in war time”, they were called “outside troops”, similar to the reserve forces nowadays. The huong binh (village troops), tho binh (local troops) were organized by the feudal authorities to ensure feudal order in the villages in peace time; when there was a war, they fought with the people against the aggressors, thus forming the armed forces of the broad masses.
While, during the ten centuries of struggle for independence, our people’s armed forces had consisted mainly of insurgent troops with wide participation from the masses in time of insurrection, during the epoch of building and strengthening national independence, the role of the army came to the fore for national defence in the wars to defend the Fatherland. That was the regular army of the independent feudal State in our country, the organization of which was gradually perfected. The Ly army included foot soldiers, cavalry, elephant troops and naval troops; they were equipped not only with spears, lances, bows and crossbows, etc. but also with stone-throwing catapults. The Tran troops were already armed with cannon of an early type. Our people paid great attention to equipping the army, they knew how to make effective weapons and war material on the basis of the level of development of the forces of production. They also paid great attention to supplying the troops with adequate foods, considering that “the soldiers’ lives depend on their being properly fed”. The men in active service were not very numerous but were well trained, and when a war broke out this force could be expanded very rapidly. Great attention was paid to training the troops too. Tran Quoc Tuan wrote Binh Thu Yeu Luoc (a handbook on military art) and Van Kiep Tong Bi Truyen Thu (dealing with military strategy and tactics) to help train officers and men.
The rules for military organization of the feudal state were described by the historian Phan Huy Chu in his book Binh Che Chi (monograph on army organization), part of his great work Lich Trieu Hien Chuong Loai Chi under the following headings 1) Military ranks; 2) Recruiting methods; 3) Rules for supplies and allowances to the troops; 4) Methods of training; 5) Prohibitions; 6) Methods of examination; 7) Rules of ceremony. This testifies to the fairly high degree of perfection of the military organization in our country in former times and to the vigilance of our forefathers who, after long years of peace, took great care to build up the armed forces, encourage the people to take military training and consolidate national defence so as to defend national independence. Naturally, the army of the feudal state did not have only the function of “defending the country”, it also had the function of “suppressing rebellions”, i.e. putting down the struggles of the people in the country.
As our nation had recovered independence and built a well-structured State, the patriotism and indomitable fighting spirit of our people rose to new heights. Whereas during the period of foreign rule, it was embodied in the determination to persevere in the fight to win back independence, in the period of independence, it manifested itself in the self-reliance in building the country, the resolute determination to fight to safeguard the territory and preserve the beautiful land that their forefathers had won back at the cost of great sacrifices and developed by their skill and by the sweat of their brows. Through this patriotism and high spirit of the whole nation, with the armed forces built on the basis of an ever more prosperous feudal system, and thanks to the military genius of our national heroes, our people were able to win some of their most brilliant victories in defence of the country during that period. Our country, though built up and strengthened in every field, remained a small one. Relying on the system of “everyone a soldier”, with small but very well-trained armies, our people gloriously defeated many of the largest, most powerful and most ferocious armies of aggression in that epoch, safeguarding the Fatherland’s independence and freedom.
General Le Hoan defeated the Sung aggressive army in the battles of Chi Lang and Bach Dang.
Ly Thuong Kiet took the initiative in preemptive attacks on the enemy territory, destroying the important starting bases of the aggressors. During the subsequent war or resistance in the country, the enemy was intercepted both by the big army of the Court which fought several battles along the river Nhu Nguyet defence lines, destroying over half of the enemy forces, and by tens of thousands of troops in various regions including the tho binh and the huong binh (local and village guards) in the enemy rear, who attacked small detachments of the enemy’s combat and transport troops in coordination with the main army. In the area of Lang Son, the Tay people commanded by Than Canh Phuc withdrew into the jungle and made very effective use of the tactics of surprise and night raids, etc. Thus appeared the fighting coordination between the main army and the regional forces, which gave rise to the strategic conjuncture of attacking the enemy both in front and in its rear. This form of fighting combination was really an original feature in the military art of a small nation fighting against a stronger aggressor. The Sung war of aggression was defeated. The Sung had to recognize our country as an independent kingdom.
During the three resistance wars against the Yuan (Mongol) invaders in the 13th century, it was thanks to the existence of the army and the local village guards, organized on the basis of the system of “everyone a soldier”, that Tran Quoc Tuan could cleverly combine the tactics of concentrated and big battles by the regular army with that of small attacks on the spot by the local and village guards and the armed people from the beginning to the end of the wars. The army obviously had a very important, direct and decisive role. Many outstanding battles of annihilation were successfully conducted in Dong Bo Dau, Ham Tu, Chuong Duong, Van Kiep, Bach Dang etc. But the armed people were in great numbers and played a very important role too. The people in mountainous areas intercepted, pinned down, wore out and annihilated many enemy forces. The militia in the delta areas fought the enemy on the spot, with their own villages as base camps. From early times, our people had the experience of fighting in the villages, which might be said to be “fighting villages” such as we have now. The people also tried to hide their supplies, leaving “empty gardens and deserted houses” to the enemy, thus causing many difficulties to the enemy’s food supply. The two words Sat that (Kill the Tartars) tattooed on the arms of officers and men expressed the very high determination to resist and the readiness to fight and to sacrifice themselves displayed by our people at that time. That really was a war of the entire people, of the whole nation. That was a true people’s war in feudal times. The Mongol Yuan troops of aggression who had sown devastation over Asia and Europe, who had conquered and erased many states from the map of the world, attacked Viet Nam three times but were three times ignominiously defeated by the Vietnamese people. The great victory of the resistance war in the Tran epoch led by the national hero Tran Quoc Tuan, which was due basically to the “whole nation joining forces” as Tran Quoc Tuan summed up the experience, spoke for the fairly high level of development of the military organization at the time and the great efficiency of the army and the armed people in the war to defend the Fatherland. This was a very glorious victory in a patriotic war waged on the basis of the feudal system, in the conditions of a country that had been built up and strengthened in every field and actively prepared in national defence during several centuries of peace.
By the middle of the 14th century, the Tran feudal group began to decline, and they intensified the oppression and exploitation of the people. Constant revolts of peasants and domestic serfs broke out during nearly half a century. Ho Quy Ly took advantage of that to usurp the throne and founded the Ho dynasty. The people were divided. The resistance organized by Ho Quy Ly against the Ming aggressors relied solely on the army, sophisticated weapons and fortresses and not on the people; therefore it failed.
But the aggressors could not impose their rule on our people. Insurrections multiplied.
Le Loi began his uprising in Lam Son with some 2,000 insurgents. The uprising developed into a war of liberation. His force included both the insurgent troops and the armed people rising up at his call. As the uprising developed into a war of liberation, the insurgents were organized into an army, and when victory was won this army numbered over two hundred thousand men, with an increasingly perfect organization as it was able to inherit and develop the experience of the previous Ly and Tran dynasties.
Nguyen Trai’s celebrated line “raising the stick as banner, rallying the downtrodden from all parts”(7) reflected the broad mass character of the insurgent forces. The insurgent banner was a bamboo stick, the forces were made up of “farmhands and paupers”. It might be said that these were made up of the large forces of labouring peasants in our country, who had fought without success against the Tran feudalists for nearly fifty years in the previous century, and who rallied around the national banner of Le Loi and Nguyen Trai. Moreover, the Lam Son uprising broke out in conditions different from those occurring during the ten centuries of foreign rule earlier. Our country lived under Ming rule for twenty years, but before that our people had built up an independent feudal State and consolidated and preserved its independence for nearly five centuries by successively defeating many wars of aggression by more powerful enemies. Therefore, though they met with difficulties in the early years when they had to withdraw more than once into the jungle and engaged only in small, isolated skirmishes to counter the enemy offensives, the insurgent forces developed very rapidly, especially after they had made a well-directed thrust by seizing Nghe An as a springboard and liberating Thanh Hoa, then Tan Binh and Thuan Hoa. The insurgent forces were followed everywhere by the people who rose up in support, giving them supplies, joining them, arming themselves to fight in coordination, besieging and annihilating the enemy, shattering the foreign administration in the districts and liberating large areas.
The Ming sent in reinforcements. However, with an army “of hundreds of thousands of men but of one mind”, which was different from the Ho army “which numbered a million but of a million minds”. Le Loi and Nguyen Trai and their outstanding generals conducted many great battles and won resounding victories in Tot Dong — Chuc Dong, Chi Lang — Xuong Giang, annihilating hundreds of thousands of enemy troops. The people in various regions rose up at their call. The insurgents were everywhere “followed by large crowds and offered wine along their way”, they “won more successes as they fought on, they destroyed the enemy as they would rotten things or dead wood.”(8) The people also took a direct part in fighting the enemy with various strategems. A woman innkeeper of the Luong family in the Co Long citadel devised a trick to kill the enemy and seize the citadel: she later received the title of “Builder of the Country” from Le Loi.
Nguyen Trai also conducted “attacks on the minds”, i.e. propaganda work among the enemy, persuading and forcing the enemy to surrender in many cities: Nghe An, Dien Chau, Thi Cau, Dong Quan etc. One hundred thousand enemy troops surrendered and tens of thousands of locally recruited mercenaries crossed over to the people’s side.
The victory of the resistance against the Ming was that of a people’s war under the leadership of Le Loi and Nguyen Trai. But unlike the patriotic war under the Tran, this one was a national insurrection which developed into a war of liberation with fighting by the insurgents who developed into an army, combined with widespread uprisings by the people. “Once the insurgent banner war raised, people rose up like a beehive”, and they had various ways of fighting, now “like thunder and lightning” now “like an ant hole undermining the dyke”, destroying enemy forces and overthrowing foreign local authorities, liberating the whole country, winning back national independence. Without uprising by the people, it would not have been possible to overthrow foreign local authorities, to give the insurgents greater prestige and wider fields of operation. But without the insurgent troops which later developed into an army which could conduct big battles of annihilation, it would not have been possible to defeat the war of aggression and shatter the foreign administration. The combination of the national army and the armed people recorded a further development as compared with the national defence war under the Tran and was characterized by widespread uprising by the people.
After victory, Le Loi and Nguyen Trai speedily proceeded to rebuild the country, bringing the centralized feudal regime to a new stage of prosperity. The development of the military organization under the Le reflected this prosperity. Inheriting and developing the tradition of “everyone a soldier” and the Ly’s and Tran’s experience, the Le also organized royal troops at central level, regional troops in various districts and military areas, village guards and militia in every locality. Noblemen did not have their own troops. The army was reduced to about one hundred thousand men in active service, the rest being demobilized. There was also a system of registering for the purposes of recruitment and call-up in case of war. “The names were listed in civil registers, revised every three years so that there could be no mistakes. When necessary, soldiers and civilians were called up according to those registers and all the people became soldiers.” That was also the experience in organizing the armed forces in peace time, in strengthening national defence in coordination with economic construction, preparing the country for a war to defend the fatherland in case of foreign aggression. Naturally, it was also aimed at consolidating the rule of the feudal State.
The feudal system in our country shifted from prosperity to a period of decadence in the 16th century. For several centuries the feudal troops were engaged in mutual destruction. The civil war between the Trinh and the Mac lasted for over half a century and was followed by another atrocious civil war of fifty years between the Trinh and the Nguyen, which led to the division of our country for over a century. The decadent feudalists intensified the oppression and exploitation of the peasants. For fear of popular uprisings, they ordered the seizure of firearms and restricted their manufacture by the people. They used their army to suppress the peasants’ struggles mercilessly. A succession of large-scale peasant uprisings and peasant wars broke out especially in the 18th century, and culminated in the Tay Son insurrection led by Nguyen Hue.
The Tay Son insurrection marked a further development of insurrection and war, of the combination of the armed people and the army in our country. It originated from the peasant movement which grew into a national movement and from the close combination of those two movements. While the decadent feudal class surrendered to the aggressors, the banner of national salvation was raised by the national hero Nguyen Hue, the outstanding leader of the peasant movement. Therefore, peasant insurrection and national war in those times had new and tremendous vigour in offensive.
At first, the insurgents’ slogan “Take from the rich and give to the poor” encouraged the peasants and poor people to rise up. The insurrection spread far and wide, then developed into a peasant war to overthrow the feudal regime in the country and into a national war to defeat aggression by foreign feudalists.
The armed forces of the peasant insurrection developing into this national war were built up from the insurgent forces, then were gradually organized into an army, with the broad participation of the peasants and other strata of the people. This was a further development of the military organization of our nation as regards political objectives as well as in the size of its forces, the level of organization and military art. The first insurgent force in Tay Son was clearly an armed formation of the poor people: peasants, artisans, etc., who equipped themselves with various weapons: bamboo staffs, lances, spears, swords and firearms. In the course of the insurrection, Nguyen Hue’s troops were followed everywhere by peasants and other oppressed people who rose up in arms, joined the insurgents and smashed the power of the decadent feudal class. Nguyen Hue’s prestige was very great. His troops grew up very quickly in numbers, and were gradually organized into the Tay Son army. It was a peasant army which later on became a national army. It had a high level of organization and equipment being made up of infantry, cavalry, elephant troops and naval troops and equipped with firearms and cannon of various calibers, with different kinds of war vessels the biggest of which could carry combat elephants, hundreds of troops and big guns. Nguyen Hue also made use of cannon mounted on boats or elephants as a kind of field artillery.
With its reliance on the insurrection of the people, mainly of the peasants and other strata of poor people, and its use of clever tactics and high mobility, the powerful Tay Son army commanded by Nguyen Hue recorded new feats of arms in our history.
After many famous battles — the storming of the Qui Nhon citadel, the seizure of Quang Ngai, the liberation of Phu Yen, the five successful attacks against the Gia Dinh citadel — the Tay Son overthrew the more than two hundred-year-old rule of the Nguyen feudal group. Then, with the resounding victory of Rach Gam — Xoai Mut, in which tens of thousands of Siamese troops were annihilated Nguyen Hue smashed this attack of aggression.
This was followed by lightning troop movements, during which the Tay Son seized the Phu Xuan citadel, marched to the river Gianh and, with the support of the spontaneous rising of the population, routed the Trinh troops there within ten days.
“The army at once sailed to the northern sea.”(9) Nguyen Hue mounted a sudden attack on Vi Hoang, liberated Thang Long(10) and within less than one month, overthrew the rule of the Trinh feudal group which had lasted for almost three hundred years so laying the basis for national unification from Bac Ha to Gia Dinh.
The Le feudal group, trying to cling to their throne, invited in the Ching aggressors. Faced with the danger of foreign occupation, Nguyen Hue marched his army north. With a lightning troop movement, a fierce will to “win victory by a single battle”, a firm determination to show the aggressors that “the heroic land of Viet Nam has its own masters”,(11) the national hero “in coarse clothes and waving a red banner” Nguyen Hue — who had by then been made Emperor — managed to smash the 200,000-strong Ching army, within only five days of the glorious Ngoc Hoi-Dong Da battle, thus shattering their scheme of aggression.
The Tay Son insurrection — a peasant movement developing into a national movement — based on a widespread armed uprising by the people and a very powerful army, overthrew three reactionary feudal groups in the country, smashed two foreign armies of aggression, completed the unification of the country and safeguarded national independence. That was a glorious military exploit, a great success of our revolutionary peasants and our nation, unparalleled in the history of our nation and also rare in the history of peasant movements in other countries.
In the 19th century, our nation was faced with a very serious trial. The French imperialists began their aggression against our country. It was a new enemy, a Western capitalist power which had great economic and military potential, very different from the previous feudal aggressor. In the country, the feudal regime had declined long before, the feudal class had ceased playing the role of a progressive force in national history and its extremely reactionary policies had thrown Vietnamese society into utter disorder and decadence. The feudal State made constant use of its army to suppress peasant revolts, and its army became completely opposed to the people, thus losing any support from the people and the nation. Meanwhile the peasants rose up in arms and staged hundreds of insurrections, big and small, to oppose the severe rule and brutal repression by the feudal class.
Faced with aggression by the French imperialists, and the imminent danger of foreign occupation, the peasant masses rose up everywhere, but the Nguyen feudal group refused all reforms and continued to repress the people. Following the selfish interests of their class, they preferred to surrender to the aggressors rather than ally themselves with the people; therefore our country was lost to the French imperialists. However, our people went on fighting in spite of the ignominious capitulation of the Nguyen rulers. Throughout the nearly one hundred years of French rule, they continued to display the undaunted spirit of struggle of our nation and continuously rose up and organized insurgent troops to carry on various resistance movements, such as those of Truong Cong Dinh, Nguyen Trung Truc... in the South, of Phan Dinh Phung, Nguyen Thien Thuat, Hoang Hoa Tham, etc., in the North. Our people fought very bravely alongside the insurgents, others rose up to take the place of those who had fallen, but they could not achieve victory, because they lacked a correct line and a correct leadership adapted to the historical conditions of a new epoch. Only with the birth of the Vietnamese working class and our Party did our national history reach its great turning point.
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The history of insurrections and wars in our country, and that of the military organization of our nation have proved that our people have had a very glorious tradition of fighting against foreign aggression, a tradition of a small country closely united and joining its forces together to defeat much more powerful aggressors. Insurrections and national wars in our country have been people’s insurrections and people’s wars at a fairly high level of development.
To lead those insurrections and national wars to victory, as regards military organization, our people put into practice the motto “everyone a soldier”, at a very early date, mobilizing the broad masses in various forms, the highest of which was the armed people fighting beside the army. Therefore, in insurrections and national wars, except for a few instances when there were only either the armed people or the army, the military organization of our nation was generally composed of the national army and the armed forces of the masses combined together, under various forms of organization and at various levels of development, with varying positions and roles according to the specific historical conditions and contexts. Thanks to that, insurrections and national wars in our country were able to bring into full play the strength of the whole nation, of the whole people, creatively applying the traditional military art of opposing a small, less numerous force to a bigger, more numerous one; of “using the small to fight the big”, “using the weak to defeat the strong.”
Obviously, the combination of the armed people with the national army, and vice versa, has become a principle of military organization, and even of military art to achieve victory in national insurrections and national wars for the defence of the Fatherland as well as in the wars of liberation waged by our Vietnamese people in former times.
The military organization primarily depends on the political system, the class nature of the State. It is constantly and closely linked with the character and aims of insurrections and wars. Thus, if the military organization of our nation was able to mobilize the broad masses and the whole people in the fight against the enemy, it was primarily because of the just character of those insurrections and national wars, their political aims being the recovery and defence of national independence.
In those insurrections and national wars, there was an identity of national interest and of objectives in the fight, between the insurgent troops organized by representatives of the feudal class or the army of the feudal State and the broad masses, although this identity was limited by the nature of the feudal class and historical conditions. That is why those insurgent forces and armies could rely on the ardent patriotism, national cohesion and the indomitable fighting spirit of the people. That is why the people actively joined the army, supported it and took a direct part in the fighting thus giving rise to the combination of the army and the armed people. The forces of huong binh and tho binh were also able to display their fighting strength. The armed forces of the people could sometimes be extended and closely combined with the national army in combat, thereby enhancing the strength of the whole country. The system of “everyone a soldier” enabled every patriotic citizen to take part in national salvation, to contribute to the cause of defending the Fatherland. The feudal class also promulgated certain forms of democracy to mobilize the people in the fight, as we have seen. The national heroes had progressive ideas in building up the army which reflected the just character of the insurrections and national wars. They taught their officers and men “to devote themselves to the nation”, “to die gloriously rather than live in shame”, “to unite like father and son”, “to cherish solidarity rather than numbers”, etc.
In cases when the feudal State made use of the army not to “defend the country”, but to “suppress rebellions”, that is to repress the people, or when, in face of foreign aggression, the ruling feudal class placed its selfish interests above the national interests, using its army to oppose the peasant movement in the country instead of fighting the aggressors, the situation was quite different. This often happened when the feudal class was in decadence. The system of “everyone a soldier” was then abolished. The enlistment for the feudal army became a scourge. The antagonistic contradictions existing between the feudal class and the people become more acute. The people rose up against the feudal State and the reactionary army in various ways, including armed struggle, forming their own armed organizations to overthrow the feudal State and destroy its army.
The military organization built on the basis of the feudal system also depends on the material and technical conditions, on the level of the productive forces of that system. The development of technical equipment, from rudimentary bows to “multiple-arrow crossbows” and bronze-tipped arrows, to other weapons and catapults to cannon and then to large-size war vessels, cannon mounted on elephants, etc., has been one of the factors determining the specific forms of organization, methods of fighting and combat power of the armed forces of our nation in former times.
It should be stressed here that during the whole of this time, the aggressors, though more powerful, were still at the same feudal stage as our country. Therefore, though they had larger armies, their equipment and weapons were not necessarily more sophisticated and sometimes they were less so than ours. The problem that faced our nation and our military organization at those times was how to oppose a small and less numerous force to a larger and more numerous one in conditions of usually equivalent equipment and weapons. Only in our time, when we have to fight the aggressive armies of imperialism, have we had to solve the problem of how to oppose a poorly-equipped armed force, built on the basis of a less developed economy than the enemy’s, to aggressive armies that are not only numerically stronger but also better equipped with modern weapons.
The realities of insurrections and national wars in our country fought with the wide participation of the people have proved the correctness of historical materialism and proletarian military science on the role of the popular masses in history in general and in insurrections and wars in particular. They also have confirmed the brilliant Marxist-Leninist thesis on arming the masses and building up the army in insurrections and wars waged by revolutionary classes and oppressed peoples against the rule of exploiting classes and aggression by foreign powers.
If we compare this with the situation in European countries in the same historical periods, we can conclude that whereas the history of many wars in Europe in the Middle Ages was that of mutual massacre between various feudal groups, with mercenary troops, the history of wars in our country in those times was primarily that of national insurrections and national wars, people’s insurrections and people’s wars.
The tradition of “the whole nation joining forces” in the fight against foreign aggressors, the experience of people’s insurrection and people’s war, the experience of military organization including both the national army and the armed forces of the people have been a very valuable tradition and experience of our people. They have also been quite original features rarely found in the military history of other nations.
When the Vietnamese working class emerged and our Party was born, in the light of Marxism-Leninism and our Party’s political and military lines, this valuable tradition and experience was inherited and developed to new levels by our Party and people, in new historical conditions, in order to defeat the most brutal aggressors of our time.
(1) Tran Quan Tuan “Testament”: Quoc Gia Tinh Luc.
(2) A general under the Tran dynasty.
(3) Kham Dinh Viet Su Thong Giam Cuong Muc, (Texts and Comments on the Viet National History by Imperial Order), Book 6.
(4) Hau Han thu (History of the Late Han).
(5) Dai Viet Su Ky Toan Thu (Complete History of Dai Viet): the early Ly period.
(6) Phan Huy Chu: Lich Trieu Hien Chuong Loai Chi. Rules and Regulations of Different Dynasties Classified by Categories) Binh Che Chi (Military System).
(7) Nguyen Trai: Binh Ngo Dai Cao (Proclamation of Victory over the Ngo).
(8) Nguyen Trai: Binh Ngo Dai Cao (Proclamation of Victory over the Ngo).
(9) Appeal of the Tay Son.
(10) Old name for Hanoi.
(11) Nguyen Hue: Address to Officers and Men in Thanh Hoa.
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