[59] The new tripartite fiscal system included taxes on grain-producing land, both state and private fields; on adult male individuals, not as a quota on the village as a whole; and cash payments in place of a variety of service obligations and handicraft productions.

A year after his death, his son Trịnh Giang (r. 1729–40) began a similar project, obliging the people of three districts of Hải Dương to work day and night on two pagodas there, digging canals, building roads, and transporting timber and stone.

[68] To solve the economic crisis, in the early 1770s lord Nguyễn Phúc Thuần raised high taxes on villages and made efforts to extract revenues from the western mountain areas of the Central Highlands.

Hiến urged Nhạc to see himself as destined to fulfill a long-standing local prophecy: "tây khởi nghĩa, bắc thu công" (in the west there is a righteous uprising, in the north great feats are accomplished).

This highland region straddled important trading routes that stretched from the coastal port at Qui Nhơn westward toward Cambodia and the southern Lao territories, providing access to goods that were carried along them.

Seeking to establish a foothold in lowland coastal regions of their home province, the Tây Sơn rebels needed to capture the walled city of Qui Nhơn, capital of the prefecture by the same name.

That night, with his supporters gathered outside of the citadel walls, Nhạc released himself from the cage, seized the prison sentry's sword, and began attacking the guards, even as he opened the gates of the city, allowing his soldiers to stream in.

In the meantime, and taking advantage of the turmoils in South Vietnam, the Trịnh invaded late in 1774, ostensibly to assist the Nguyen in putting down the Tây Sơn, but clearly seeing a golden opportunity to overpower their long-time political rivals.

They have resented competition from the ethnic Chinese merchants who were by now well established in the southern ports of Gia Định and Hà Tiên and whose trading houses penetrated the Mekong delta and prospered on its burgeoning rice exports.

They hid in the forest in the swamps of Cà Mau at the southern tip of Vietnam to avoid the pursuit of Tay Son army before finding refuge on the island of Pulau Panjang in the Gulf of Siam.

[102][103][104] On hearing news of the Tây Sơn withdraw from Gia Định, he regrouped his remaining forces and advanced from the west via Long Xuyên and Sa Đéc, reentering the region in triumph in early 1778.

[108][109] Contemporary witnesses clearly describe Pigneau's military role: ”Bishop Pierre Joseph Georges, of French nationality, has been chosen to deal with certain matters of war” — J. da Fonceca e Sylva, 1781.

Soon afterward, panic struck capital Thăng Long, and the northern ruler Trịnh Khải fled to Sơn Tây, where he was captured and committed suicide, ending more than two centuries reign of Trinh lords.

Nguyễn Huệ, situated at Huế, was anointed as the Bắc Bình Vương (Northern Pacification King) and was assigned to rule the recently captured area of Thuận Hoá, along with the region of Nghệ An, which he had pried away from the Lê family.

[119] The conflict culminated in Huệ's besieging his older brother at Chà Bàn and winning a decisive victory after which he forced Nhạc to surrender additional territory south of the Hải Vân pass.

[6] A contemporary missionary letter described the situation: ”The Emperor of China appears to fear this new Attila, as he has sent to crown him the king of Tonkin by the hand of an Ambassador, it being only a few months later, and forgetting the honor and loss of more than 40 or 50,000 men whom the tyrant killed the previous year in a single battle, in which the Chinese were armed to the teeth with sabers and guns, and outnumbered them ten to one.

The tyrant himself has not designed to leave Cochinchina to have himself crowned at our capital, and he has contented himself with sending in his place a simple officer, who took the dress and name of his master and imposed himself on the Ambassador.”[123]Meanwhile, when the Tây Sơn were campaigning the Qing in the north, Nguyễn Ánh and his Siamese allies under Rama I retook Saigon and the Mekong Delta in late 1788.

The young monarch reigned under the supervision of a maternal uncle, Bùi Đắc Tuyên who served as regent but harbored plans for his own son and faced opposition from other Tây Sơn commanders.

[124] Pigneau returned to south Vietnam with 14 French officers, 360 soldiers and 125 sailors, and began training Nguyễn Ánh's Cochinchinese troops with the modern use of artillery, and implemented European infantry methods.

But the local Cham population held on to their historical identity, increasingly referring to their principality not as Thuận Thành but as Prădară, a term devolved from its ancient name Pāṇḍuraṅga, in contrast to the Vietnamese derivation Phan Rang.

[149] At this time, discussions were initiated to coordinate Siamese and Lao troops with Nguyễn Ánh's future campaigns by having them march over the mountains and down the Cả River valley into Nghệ An to threaten the Tây Sơn from behind.

At the beginning of summer, Nguyễn Ánh arrived at Nha Trang and met with his land forces at Diên Khánh before sending them forward into Phú Yên, which for months had been disturbed by Tây Sơn forays and one of his generals who had turned traitor.

When he received word that the King of Cambodia Ang Chan II had sent an army of 5,000 men and ten elephants, Nguyễn Ánh instructed Prince Cảnh at Saigon to send the Khmers north.

However, the Nguyen land forces were still blocked in Qui Nhơn by a spirited defense of the remaining Tây Sơn positions was being carried out by the wife-husband team of Bùi Thị Xuân and Trần Quang Diệu.

One missionary wrote: "in the province of Cham [Quảng Nam] the rebels made an agreement with the Chinese, promising that if they gave their support in this enterprise, to liberate their populations from the tyranny that they suffered to that time and to name one of their mandarins as the King of Cochinchina.

Although the new Nguyen ruler had incurred debts to French missionaries in the course of his campaigns, his ascension to the imperial throne did not mark the triumph of religious freedom, but rather another chapter in the tensions between a quasi-Confucianized state and a heterodox faith.

The tumultuous military history of the three-decade conflict known as the Tây Sơn rebellion reflected this extraordinary cultural variety and the chaotically rapid changes that convulsed early modern Vietnamese society in a period of ecological crisis.

Quang Trung's 1789 Edict Seeking Worthy Men, a rather successful appeal to the same northern scholars who had earlier scorned him as “Chế Bồng Nga”, and his prudent diplomatic reconciliation with China after his victory over it both suggest a nonideological approach to governance.

With the decline of the dynasty, and the onset of French colonialism, reinterpretations of the Tây Sơn era continued, with greater credit being given to Quang Trung at least for his efforts to create an integrated state and for having repelled the Chinese invasion of 1789.

They characterized the Tây Sơn uprising as a focused effort to overthrow corrupt political forces, to reunify the country, to defend the nation against external threats, and to promote indigenous cultural elements.