Tran Hung Dao

There was a general who, before the hour of battle, did not sharpen his sword first. He sat in silence and picked up a brush. He wrote a long letter to the whole army. It was not an order. It spoke to each soldier about something true in his own heart. That letter would later be known as the Hịch Tướng Sĩ. The man who wrote those warm lines was Trần Quốc Tuấn.

He lived under the Trần dynasty and was born around 1228. Later generations came to call him by the grand title Hưng Đạo Đại Vương, the Great Prince Hưng Đạo. He was an outstanding Vietnamese commander, the man behind victories that are still remembered over the Mongols. The Mongols had one of the mightiest armies of the age.

Wherever the Mongol armies went, others gave way, and their horses had crossed a vast part of the world. Yet Đại Việt, a small strip of land beside the sea, pushed that army back not once but three times, within about 30 years. Đại Việt is an old name for Vietnam. Among the remarkable victories of the Trần, the name of Trần Quốc Tuấn cannot be left out.

What people admired most in him was not his skill in war but his heart. When the country was in danger, he put the nation, and the peace of its people, above every private worry of his own.

The Mongols first came in 1258. Then they returned, in greater numbers and stronger than before. In 1285 came the great battle of the second war. Before it, the words he wrote from his heart brought about something remarkable.

The letter gave no commands. It spoke of the homeland, of family, of the land the ancestors had left behind. It reminded every soldier that the fate of the country lay in his own hands. Hearing it, people felt a fire lit within them. The whole army was of one mind, from top to bottom. That fire became real strength, and the soldiers and people of Đại Việt pushed the Mongol army back once again.

When the third war came, in 1288, Trần Quốc Tuấn had thought of a clever plan on the Bạch Đằng River. He had large wooden stakes driven into the riverbed, where the water rose and fell with the tide. When the water ran high, the rows of stakes sank out of sight, and the surface lay smooth as ever.

The enemy's big ships followed the tide deep into the stretch of river where the stakes stood. Then the water fell, and the sharp stakes slowly came into view. The heavy fleet was caught in midstream and could not go on. The army of Đại Việt took the victory, and the fleet of the enemy commander Ô Mã Nhi was defeated.

This idea of stakes under the river was not entirely new. Long before, in 939, a general named Ngô Quyền had used a similar method on the same Bạch Đằng River to defend the country. Trần Quốc Tuấn learned the lesson of the man who came before him and made it fit his own time.

But the greatest thing he left was not stakes or battle lines. It was unity. The whole country drew together as one, from the king down to his officials, all caring for one another, with people and army sharing a single will. That was what made even the strongest army back away.

Trần Quốc Tuấn died in 1300. Out of love and gratitude, people everywhere honored him with a name that feels close and familiar, Đức Thánh Trần. A general who had led armies to guard the country became, in Vietnamese hearts, a kindly grandfather.

Even today his name is still warm. It is spoken in every family and passes down through every generation. And the first image stays with it: a general, before the hour of battle, laying down his sword and sitting in silence with a brush. He writes words from the heart so that a whole people will draw close. It stays, warm as a small fire in the house, through all the seasons.