Truong Dinh Memorial Site

At the tomb of Trương Định, the story begins with a stone. The stele there once carried a line of writing, and the French had it chiseled away.

The line read "Bình Tây Đại Tướng quân". It was not a title from the court. The people had given it to him themselves. The French had taken the Định Tường citadel, and the court at Hue had signed a peace treaty. Trương Định did not withdraw. He stayed and kept fighting. People of the Mekong Delta called him Bình Tây Đại nguyên soái. Because the stele carried that honor, the French ordered it removed. The Department of Cultural Heritage confirms this detail.

The Trương Định uprising monuments lie in the Gò Công area. After the administrative merger, the area now belongs to Đồng Tháp Province. The Department describes five sites. The first is the tomb and temple of Trương Định, and the second is the Lũy Pháo Đài rampart. The third is a temple at Gia Thuận. The last two are Đám Lá Tối Trời and Ao Dinh. On July 18, 2024, the Prime Minister signed a decision ranking the whole system a Special National Monument.

Trương Định was born in 1820. His birthplace was Bình Sơn, in Quảng Ngãi. According to a local tourism source, his father, Trương Cầm, held a post in Gia Định Province. The post was called Lãnh binh. The son followed his father south and settled there, and the court gave him the post of Quản cơ. When French forces began their attack, he joined the resistance. After the Định Tường citadel fell, he went to Tân Hòa in April 1861 and built a base.

The place to begin is the tomb and temple of Trương Định, in Gò Công Ward. Trương Định gave his life on August 20, 1864. His secondary wife, Trần Thị Sanh, arranged the funeral and built the tomb from laterite stone with ô dước lime mortar. The French chiseled off the stele in front of the tomb. Around 1930 or 1931, the family of Đốc Phủ Hải and Huỳnh Thị Điệu restored the tomb and set up a new stele. The stele at the foot of the tomb carries two words, Trung Nghĩa. For the people of Gò Công, those two words are the shortest way of remembering Trương Định.

In 1973, local people built a temple beside the tomb. It measures 16.5 meters by 13.2 meters and stands 10 meters tall. Inside, a picture of Trương Định sits on the main altar. On the left side the civil officers are remembered, and on the right side the military officers, all of them people who took part with him in the uprising.

At Gia Thuận, the people set up a temple for him after he died. The place lay in an area under French control. So at first the temple was only a building of bamboo and leaves, about 12 square meters, called the Gia Thuận communal house. It was destroyed and rebuilt several times. In 1956, the people of Gia Thuận built it again on the old foundation. That persistence shows that the remembrance of Trương Định was never cut off from local life.

Đám Lá Tối Trời is where Trương Định made his base and wrote a proclamation. It called on the people of the six provinces of Nam Kỳ to rise up against the French. Nam Kỳ was the name then used for southern Vietnam. The place lies near Gia Thuận. In the 1860s, the area is described as so thick with nipa palms that it stayed dark even in daytime. That is where the name comes from. It is not a name made up for tourists. It is a real place name, born from one very particular condition of nature.

Ao Dinh is a place of remembrance, tied to the last hours of Trương Định. On the night between August 19 and 20, 1864, Huỳnh Văn Tấn led French troops to surround the place where Trương Định and his men were staying. Trương Định was wounded while breaking out of the siege, and he gave his life at a place called Vuông Dinh. Afterward, local people dug a pond there to hold fresh water. They called it Ao Dinh, or Ao Vinh.

The Lũy Pháo Đài rampart began as Từ Linh Fort. It was built in 1834, the 15th year of the reign of Emperor Minh Mạng, by the Nguyễn dynasty, Vietnam's last royal dynasty. Its purpose was to guard Cửa Tiểu. Later, the forces of Trương Định used it as a fortification. The rampart is described as hexagonal, covering about 3,000 square meters. It had a raised earthen wall and a moat of water. A mound called Thổ Sơn served as the lookout post.

The memorial day for Trương Định falls every year on August 20 by the solar calendar. It is observed in Gò Công and in Gia Thuận. There is a procession honoring his spirit and an offering of flowers at the monument. The festival has been placed on the national list of intangible cultural heritage.

The court had signed a treaty, and nothing required Trương Định to go on. He went on because the people wanted him to. That is why the two words Trung Nghĩa on the stele are not self-praise. They are the way a community says thank you to the man who did not leave.