Emperor Le The Tong

A boy of about six or seven is dressed in the robes and cap of an emperor. According to one history website, his personal name was Lê Duy Đàm, and he was the fifth son of Emperor Lê Anh Tông. The general Trịnh Tùng placed him on the throne in 1573. The boy sits in a great hall, and around him the officials, all far older, bow and speak their business. This boy is Emperor Lê Thế Tông, the fourth emperor of the Restored Lê dynasty.

The boy grew up with a wish that had been carried through generations. It was to return one day to the old capital of his forefathers. The Lê line came from Thanh Hóa, the land where the Lê family began. That was their root. But the capital where his ancestors had once ruled lay somewhere else, far away. It was called Thăng Long, the city now called Hanoi.

For a very long time, the Lê line had been kept away from that capital. They withdrew to their old home in Thanh Hóa and began again, patiently, bit by bit. A name. A longing. Grandparents told their grandchildren about a capital that they themselves had never seen. Thăng Long became the roof of their ancestors, a home that many people heard of and never reached.

So the boy emperor grew up with that longing in his heart, year after year. Then the thing he had hoped for came. In 1592, the army under Trịnh Tùng won back the capital. After so many years, the road home had finally opened.

In February 1593, Emperor Lê Thế Tông was escorted back to the capital. The city had several names, and Thăng Long was only one. Đông Đô and Đông Kinh were others. All of them meant one place, the old capital of his forefathers. The boy of long ago was now grown, and he walked into the place he had only heard about all through his childhood. Flags fluttered along both sides of the road, and the sound of people rose from one street to the next.

More than 60 years is a long time. It was so long that when the grandparents of the children watching the procession were born, the Lê emperors no longer sat in Thăng Long. It was long enough for a whole lifetime to pass without ever seeing a day like this one. This was a day of going home. Not to a small house, but to a whole capital. It was like coming back to a familiar street after a long time away and finding the old roof still there, waiting.

What Emperor Lê Thế Tông is remembered for most, over his 26 years on the throne, is the day his family returned to the old capital. The wish he had carried since he was six or seven came true within his own lifetime. He spent the rest of his life on the land of his ancestors, and he came to rest in 1599. Some things grandparents only dared to hope for, and parents only dared to tell. Yet in the generation of the grandchildren, people saw them with their own eyes.

Somewhere here, on the ground of old Thăng Long in today's Hanoi, there may once have been a spring morning when a procession came home and a small child stood by the road, cheering. A line of emperors was home at last, in the place the child's grandparents had known only through stories.