Trịnh lords The Trịnh lords ( ; 1545 – 1787 ) were a series of rulers of Vietnam who controlled the powers of government while leaving a figurehead as king . They have been referred to as the Vietnamese shogun s . The Trịnh Lords traced their descent from Trịnh Khả , a friend and advisor to the Medieval Vietnamese Emperor Lê Lợi , and , for nearly a decade , the real power behind the throne of the Boy - Emperor Lê Nhân Tông . During the reign of the great Vietnamese Emperor Lê Thánh Tông , one of his top generals was Trịnh Văn Sái . The Trịnh - Nguyễn Alliance . The Lê Emperors following Lê Thánh Tông were weak and the years following the death of Lê Tương Dực ( in 1516 ) saw the rise to power of the strong , cunning , and ambitious man Mạc Đăng Dung . In 1520 , fearing the ambition of Mạc Đăng Dung , the Nguyễn and the Trịnh left the capital Hanoi ( then called Đông Do ) and fled south , taking the young new Emperor Lê Chiêu Tông " under their protection " . This was the start of a civil war with Mạc Đăng Dung and his supporters on one side and the Trịnh / Nguyễn supporters on the other side . Thanh Hóa Province , the ancestral home to the Trịnh and the Nguyễn , was the battle ground between the two sides . After several years of warfare , Tông was assassinated in 1524 by Mạc Đăng Dung ' s supporters . A short time later , the resistance collapsed and both the Trịnh and the Nguyễn leaders were executed . However , this was just the end of the first phase of the civil war because in 1527 Mạc Đăng Dung usurped the throne . He killed his own puppet Emperor Lê Cung Hoàng and started a new dynasty , the Mạc Dynasty . Within months the civil war broke out anew . Both the Trịnh and Nguyễn clans again took up arms in Thanh Hóa province and revolted against the Mạc . The leader of this second revolt was Nguyễn Kim . His daughter then married the new young leader of the Trịnh clan Trịnh Kiểm . Within five years , all of the region south of the Red River was under the control of the Nguyễn - Trịnh army but the two families were unable to conquer Ha Noi ( known as " Thăng Long " at that time ) . The armies of Nguyễn Kim and Trịnh Kiểm captured the summer palace and crowned their own puppet Lê emperor , Lê Trang Tông , in 1533 ( in Vietnamese histories this date marks the beginning of the second half of the Later Lê Dynasty ) . The war raged back and forth with the Nguyễn - Trịnh army on one side and the Mạc on the other until an official Ming delegation determined that Mạc Đăng Dung ' s usurpation of power was not justified . In 1537 , a very large Ming army was sent to restore the Lê family . Although Mạc Đăng Dung managed to negotiate his way out of defeat by the Ming , he had to officially recognize the Lê emperor and the Nguyễn - Trịnh rule over the southern part of Vietnam . But the Nguyễn - Trịnh alliance did not accept the Mạc rule over the northern half of the country and so the war continued . In 1541 , Mạc Đăng Dung died . The Trịnh Take Power . In 1545 , Nguyễn Kim was assassinated by an agent of the Mạc . Trịnh Kiểm took this opportunity to assert control over the Nguyễn - Trịnh army . The Trịnh captured more and more of Vietnam from 1545 onwards ( nominally fighting on behalf of a new Lê Emperor ) . Kim had two young sons , the younger , Nguyễn Hoàng , was put in charge of new southern provinces of Vietnam in the year 1558 . He was to rule the southern lands for the next 55 years and his descendants ruled them for the next 150 years . In 1570 , Trịnh Kiểm died and was succeeded by his second son Trịnh Tùng . Tùng was a very vigorous leader and he captured Hanoi from the Mạc Emperor in 1572 . However , the Mạc Emperor ( Mạc Mau Hop ) recaptured the city the next year . The war continued at a low level for two decades , the Trịnh gradually gaining strength , the Mạc gradually weakening . In 1592 , Tùng launched a major invasion and again captured Hanoi . This time the Royal ( Trịnh ) army captured the Mạc Emperor and executed him . Over the next few years the remaining Mạc armies were defeated in battles . In this " mopping - up " campaign , the Trịnh were helped by the Nguyễn army . As the years passed , Hoàng became increasingly secure in his rule over the southern province and increasingly independent . While he cooperated with the Trịnh against the Mạc , he ruled the frontier lands as a king . With the final conquest of the north , the independence of the Nguyễn was less and less tolerable to the Trịnh . In 1600 , with the ascension of a new Emperor , Lê Kinh Tông , Hoàng broke relations with the Trịnh - dominated court , although he continued to acknowledge the Lê emperor . Matters continued like this until Hoàng ' s death in 1613 . The Trịnh - Nguyễn War . In 1620 , after the enthronement of another figurehead Lê Emperor ( Lê Than Tông ) , the new Nguyễn leader , Nguyễn Phúc Nguyên , refused to send tax money to the court in Đông Đô . In 1623 , Trịnh Tung died , he was succeed by his oldest son Trịnh Tráng . After five years of increasingly hostile talk , fighting broke out between the Trịnh and the Nguyễn in 1627 . While the Trịnh ruled over much more populous territory , the Nguyễn had several advantages . First , they initially were on the defensive and rarely launched operations into the north . Second , the Nguyễn were able to take advantage of their contacts with the Europeans , specifically the Portuguese , to produce advanced cannon s with the help of European engineers ( for more details , see Artillery of the Nguyễn Lords ) . Third , the geography was favorable to them , as the flat land suitable for large organized armies is very narrow at the border between the Nguyễn lands and the Trinh territories - the mountains nearly reach to the sea . After the first offensive was beaten off after four months of battle , the Nguyễn built two massive fortified lines which stretched a few miles from the sea to the hills . These walls were built north of Huế ( between the Nhật Lệ River and the Sông Hương River ) . The walls were about 20 feet tall and seven miles long . The Nguyễn defended these lines against numerous Trịnh offensives which lasted ( off and on ) from 1631 till 1673 , when Trịnh Tạc concluded a peace treaty with the Nguyễn Lord , Nguyễn Phúc Tần , and so Vietnam was divided between the two ruling families . This division continued for the next 100 years . The Long Peace . The Trịnh Lords ruled reasonably well , maintaining the fiction that the Lê monarch was the emperor . However , they selected and replaced the emperor as they saw fit , having the hereditary right to appoint many of the top government officials . Unlike the Nguyễn Lords , who engaged in frequent wars with the Khmer Empire and Siam , the Trịnh Lords maintained fairly peaceable relations with neighboring states . In 1694 , the Trịnh Lords got involved in a war in Laos , which turned into a multi - sided war with several different Laotian factions as well as the Siamese army . A decade later , Laos had settled into an uneasy peace with three new Lao kingdoms paying tribute to both Vietnam and Siam . Trịnh Căn and Trịnh Cương made many reforms of the government , trying to make it better , but these reforms made the government more powerful and more of a burden to the people which increased their dislike of the government . During the wasteful and inept rule of Trịnh Giang , peasant revolts became more and more frequent . The key problem was a lack of land to farm , though Giang made the situation worse by his actions . The reign of his successor Trịnh Doanh was preoccupied with putting down peasant revolts and wiping out armed gangs which terrorized the countryside . Tây Sơn Revolt . The long peace came to an end with the Tây Sơn revolt in the south against the Trương Phúc Loan , the regent of the Nguyễn Lord , Nguyễn Phúc Thuần ( 1765 – 1777 ) . The Tây Sơn rebellion was looked upon by the Trịnh Lord , Trịnh Sâm , as a chance to finally put an end to the Nguyễn rule over the south of Vietnam . As was usual , a dynastic struggle among the Nguyễn had put a weak 12 year - old boy in power . The real ruler was the corrupt regent named Trương Phúc Loan . Using the evil rule of the regent as an excuse for intervention , in 1774 , the hundred year truce was ended and the Trịnh army attacked . Trịnh Sâm ' s army did what no previous Trịnh army had done and conquered the Nguyễn capital , Phú Xuân ( modern - day Huế ) , early in 1775 . The Trịnh army advanced south but after some fighting with the Tây Sơn , a truce was reached . This truce allowed the Tây Sơn army to conquere the rest of the Nguyễn lands . The Nguyễn Lords retreated to Saigon but even this city was captured in 1776 and the Nguyễn clan was nearly wiped out . However , the Tây Sơn were not willing to be servants of the Trịnh Lords and after a decade consolidating their power base in the south , the chief Tây Sơn brother Nguyễn Huệ marched into north Vietnam in 1786 at the head of a large army . The Trịnh themselves were fatally divided at this time by a struggle for power following the death of Trịnh Sâm in 1782 . The Trịnh army refused to even fight the powerful army of Nguyễn Huệ . The new Trịnh Lord , Trịnh Khải , fled from his rebellious army and then committed suicide after being captured by a small band of rebellious peasants . The last Lê Emperor , Lê Chiêu Tông , fled to China and formally petitioned the Chinese Emperor , Qianlong , for aid against the peasant usurpers . The Chinese responded by sending a large army into Vietnam to restore the Lê Emperor . The Chinese army captured Thăng Long in 1788 . The last Trịnh Lord , Trịnh Bong , took the position as defacto ruler but this was short - lived . Nguyễn Huế was able to rally his forces and , like Lê Lợi before him , he inflicted a crushing defeat on the Chinese army . The Chinese retreated , leaving Nguyễn Huệ ( now calling himself Quang Trung ) in control of a united Vietnam . The Lê family fled north to China along with the Trịnh family . About 100 years later ( after the French took Vietnam as a colony ) , the last of the Trịnh returned to Vietnam as ordinary citizens . Relations with the outside world . In 1620 , the French Jesuit scholar Alexandre de Rhodes arrived in Trịnh - controlled Vietnam . He arrived at a mission which had been established at the court in Hanoi around 1615 ( " Tigers in the Rice " by W . Sheldon ( 1969 ) , p . 26 ) . The priest was a significant person regarding relations between Europe and Vietnam . He gained thousands of converts , created a script for writing Vietnamese using a modified version of the European alphabet , and built several churches . However , by 1630 the new Trịnh Lord , Trịnh Trang , decided that Father de Rhodes represented a threat to Vietnamese society and forced him to leave the country . From this point on , the Trịnh Lords periodically tried to suppress Christianity in Vietnam , with moderate success . When the Nguyễn successfully used Portuguese cannon to defend their walls , the Trịnh made contact with the Dutch . The Dutch were willing to sell advanced cannons to the Trịnh . The Dutch , and later the Germans , set up trading posts in Hanoi . For a time , Dutch trade was profitable but after the war with the Nguyễn ended in 1673 , the demand for European weapons rapidly declined . By 1700 , the Dutch and English trading posts closed forever . The Trịnh were careful in their dealings with Ming China and Manchu Qing . Unlike the Nguyễn Lords who were happy to accept large numbers of Ming refugees into their lands , the Trịnh did not . When the Manchus conquered China and therefore extended Qing Empire ' s borders to Northern Vietnam , the Trịnh treated them just like they had treated the Ming Emperors , sending tribute and formal acknowledgements of Qing authority . The Manchus intervened twice during the rule of the Trịnh Lords , once in 1537 , and again in 1788 . Both times , the Manchus sent an army south because of a formal request for help from the Lê emperors - and both times the intervention was unsuccessful . Assessment . It does seem the case that the Trịnh had lost nearly all popularity in the last half of the 18th century . While the Nguyễn lords , or at least Nguyễn Anh , enjoyed a great deal of support - as his repeated attempts to regain power in the south show - there was no equivalent support for the Trịnh in the north after the Tây Sơn took power ( " Vietnam , Trials and Tribulations of a Nation " D . R . SarDesai , pg . 39 , 1988 ) .