Lý Bí’s rising against the Liang and the kingdom of Vạn Xuân

According to the Comprehensive Mirror to Aid in Government (Zizhi tongjian), Li Ben came from a family of local magnates of Jiaozhi and had found no success in an official career. With Bing Shao, a man of letters who had been refused a worthy post at the Liang capital, he plotted a rising, and when the governor of Jiao province, Xiao Zi, lost support through his harshness, Li Ben, then in charge of Dezhou, joined with the magnates of several provinces; Xiao Zi bribed him and fled to Guangzhou. The Vietnamese annals add that Lý Bí’s ancestors were northerners who had fled south in Wang Mang’s time. A Liang army sent against him was ravaged by disease at Hepu and broke up (the Vietnamese tradition speaks of Lý Bí’s victory there); its commanders were ordered to take their own lives, and the mutiny of their followers at Guangzhou was crushed by Chen Baxian, the grand administrator of Gaoyao. In 543 Lý Bí’s general Phạm Tu repulsed an invasion from Linyi at Jiude, and in the first month of 544 Lý Bí proclaimed himself Emperor of Yue — Nam Việt Đế in the Vietnamese annals — appointed officials and took the era name Thiên Đức; the annals say that he called his state Vạn Xuân.

In 545 Emperor Wu sent a new governor, Yang Piao, with Chen Baxian leading the vanguard. Lý Bí’s army of 30,000 was beaten at Chu Diên and at the mouth of the Tô Lịch River; he held out in the citadel of Gia Ninh until early 546 and then fled into the hills of the Lao. In the autumn he came down again with 20,000 men to Lake Điển Triệt and filled it with boats, but a sudden flood let Chen Baxian’s troops sweep down on his fleet, and his army scattered. He took refuge in the caves of the Khuất Lão, where he died in 548: according to the Chinese histories, the Lao cut off his head and sent it to Jiankang; according to the Vietnamese annals, he died of illness. His elder brother Lý Thiên Bảo and his commander Triệu Quang Phục fought on, and the Early Lý period lasted until the Sui reconquest of 602; Chen Baxian marched north against the rebel Hou Jing and in 557 founded the Chen dynasty.