You guys keep mention the Battle of Bach Dang River (938) and the biggest selling point is “killed over 100,000 Chinese”. The number actually puzzled me a lot: which country could support such a large NAVY (over 100k) in the 10th century? I spent (waste) some time reading different online articles and here is your reality check:
1. I know many of you regard it as Vietnam’s independence war and I have to admit that it is a clear victory for the Vietnamese.
2. You called it a war between China and Vietnam. But the more accurate version is that it is a conflict between Southern Han (a regional kingdom) and a rebellion force led by Ngo Quyen (Vietnamese). So what is Southern Han? In order to answer this question, we need to learn the history of China in the 10th century.
The 10th century in China is called the “Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period”. During this period, five dynasties quickly succeeded one another in the north, and more than 12 independent states were established, mainly in the south. However, only ten are traditionally listed, hence the era's name. It is considered by many historians as the most chaotic era in Chinese history. Southern Han is one of the 10 Kingdoms located along China’s southern coast (the blue region in the map below).
File:Five Dynasties Ten Kingdoms 923 CE.png - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
3. Since Southern Han is just a small country, how could it support a large fleet? I tried to find the size of Southern Han’s army and did not get any results. A relative number is Southern Han’s total population, less than one million (source:
»ÄÌÆ¿ÉЦµÄÄϺºÕþȨ£¨15£©_ÂÒÊÀ·éÑÌ_½ªÀDzò¾¡_ÎÄ»¯¶ÁÊéƵµÀ_ÐÂÀËÍø. I am sorry I cannot find an English version. The story is about eunuchs in Southern Han and the total number of eunuchs in Southern Han is around 20k, more than 2% of the total population). If Vietnamese’s claim of casualty (over 100k) is accurate, Southern Han’s king must send more than 10% of his citizens to this battle. It is odd.
4. So what is the actual casualty of the 938 battle? It is difficult to find out since the battle happened more than 1000 years ago and it is a NAVY battle (how did you count the bodies in water). I looked at the wiki link you provided previously (
Battle of Bach Dang River (938) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia). The English version says that the Viet man’s force is 150K plus (citation needed) and the Chinese’s force is 100K plus (citation needed). The article did not mention the casualties. You Vietnamese must assume that none of the Chinese warriors survived that battle in order to get the “over 100k” number. Then I checked the Japanese version and the Chinese version: the Chinese force was around 10k and lost about 5k in the battle. I am not saying that 5k is a better estimate. But it is clear that the Vietnamese exaggerate the outcome of this battle. I am not sure if you noticed: the cartoon says Chinese sent 20k troops to invade Vietnam. Again, how did Chinese loss more than what they sent to the battle?
Even your version of the most famous battle in your history is not totally accurate, how could you convince us to believe the other “historical evidences” you provide?
A Side Note: wiki is not your history book. If you insist on learning your history from wiki, you will become the Laughing-stock of others.