He was known for his effective guerrilla tactics, including constantly moving his camps and using small bands of irregulars to ambush the larger Ming forces.

In 1377 Champa defeated and killed Đại Việt's king Trần Duệ Tông in a battle near Vijaya, then marched north and against sacked Thăng Long four more times from 1378 to 1383.

[4][5] In 1406 215,000 Chinese troops crossed the border commanded by generals Zhang Fu and Mu Sheng; they quickly defeated Hồ Quý Ly's army, conquered Vietnam, and renamed the country Jiaozhi.

[7] The Ming government enjoyed some support from the Vietnamese, at least in the capital of Thăng Long, but their efforts to assert control in the surrounding countryside were met with stiff resistance.

His father Lê Khoáng, was a wealthy Vietnamese aristocrat nobleman/land owner in the village, although there is some evidence to suggest his family was Mường in origin.

The area of Lam Sơn, Thanh Hóa back then in the late 14th century was a mixed region with various ethnic groups such as Vietnamese, Mường, Hmong and Tai villagers.

Yongle's grand secretary Yang Shiqi noted that Zhang Fu time and again criticized Ma Ji's wanton behavior in Jiaozhi.

[15] In early 1418, Lê Lợi again raised the flag of resistance at his home village of Lam Sơn, declaring himself Bình Định vương (平定王, Prince of Pacification).

[16] From the start, the Ming had tried to ensure that local opposition forces would not obtain the new weapons technology, including the Chinese musket known as the magic handgun.

[13] The Ming occupying army of Jiaozhi consisted 87,000 regulars, scattered in 39 citadels and towns in Northern Vietnam, but clustered in the Red River Delta areas.

[18] The first record of firearm usage in Đại Việt was in 1390 when Vietnamese soldiers used cannons and killed the Cham king Chế Bồng Nga.

[19] Lê Lợi's Lam Son rebels employed firearms, copied in rebel-built arsenals from Ming weapons used against Hồ Quý Ly army ten years earlier.

[8] When the Lam Son uprising took place, the Ming commanding officer was Marquis Li Bin, who stern attitude toward the Annamites of Jiaozhi and disregard for their sensibilities and political aspirations only intensified their hatred for the Chinese.

[12] In 1419 Lê Lợi attacked and seized a Ming outpost near Lam Son held by a local noble who was working for the Chinese, and beheaded 300 enemies captured here.

[12] The Chinese marquis, Li Bin responded by mobilizing Ming and local military forces to against him, but Lê Lợi defeated them, gained the control over Quan Hoa district on the upper Mã River.

[12] In late 1421, a large Ming army marched to the Mã River valley to attack Lê Lợi and the Vietnamese rebels.

The Ming army offered a peace treaty, in which Lê Lợi paid an indemnity with unspecified amounts of gold and silver [12] in return for food, salt, rice, and farm implements.

Lê Lợi rebuilt his partisan army, follow his comrade, Nguyễn Chích to march south through the mountains into Nghệ An, where they ambushed a Ming force in Quỳ Châu district.

[8] By the end of 1425, Lê Lợi's Vietnamese rebels liberated all land from Thanh Hoa to the south, and besieged all the Ming forces in the region.

[22] In the next year, Zhang Fu requested permission to resume command of Ming Jiaozhi army to deal with the worsening situation there, the emperor refused.

[22] In 1426 Lê Lợi sent his armies led by his generals, Trịnh Khả, Lý Triện, Đỗ Bí, Lưu Nhân Chú, Bùi Bị, Đinh Lễ and Nguyễn Xí through the mountains north of Tây Đô to emerge at the head of the Red River plain, threatening Dongguan and cutting it off from the road to Yunnan.

The Chinese general, Wang Tong, at Dongguan as Huang Fu's replacement, was prepared to surrender, but local people who were loyal to Ming persuaded him to resist.

These were Dongguan and Tây Đô; Cổ Long, a fortress built to guard the southern entrance to the Red River delta in Y Yen district, near Vu Ban in Nam Định Province, on the road between Dongguan and Tây Đô; a fortress at Chí Linh, near Phả Lại, that guarded the eastern part of the Red River delta; and Xương Giang, a citadel at the modern city of Bắc Giang that guarded the route out of the Red River Delta to the northern border.

Lê Lợi established his headquarters at Bồ Đề, in Gia Lâm district, directly across the Red River from Dongguan.

"[35] Lê Lợi's proclamation of independence reflected the Sino-Vietnamese tensions as well as Vietnamese pride and patriotism: Our Great Viet is a country where prosperity abounds.

[37] In return, Lê Lợi sent diplomatic messages to the Ming imperial court, promising his loyalty as a nominate tributary state of China and cooperation, and paid 50,000 gold taels for obtaining investiture.

[40] He also elevated his longtime comrades and generals such as Nguyễn Trãi, Tran Nguyen Han, Lê Sát, Pham Van Sao, and Trịnh Khả to high official rank.

After he became king, he would return to that area and set up a shrine, conferring the woman the title of Hộ Quốc Phu Nhân, or Lady Protector of the Nation.

Believing that the Heaven had entrusted him with the great cause of freeing the land, Lê Lợi took up arms and rallied people under his banner.

The stories largely agree on what happened to the sword: One day, not long after the Chinese had accepted Vietnam as independent, Lê Lợi was out boating on a lake in Hanoi.