Chapter 2190: Peninsula Chronicle: On Champa

While Annam was engulfed in the flames of war due to the "Van-Man Rebellion," the surrounding states were watching closely, none more so than the neighboring kingdom of Champa. Its king, Liu Jirong, had even conscripted and assembled an army of thirty thousand, deployed at Ping Province in the north.

And north of Ping Province lay Hoa Province of Annam—a major stronghold in southern Annam, home to Da Nang, a place of long history and highly developed politics and economy, a city that ranked among the foremost on the entire Indochinese Peninsula.

Liu Jirong's move was nominally to guard against the rebels fleeing south, and when the fighting at Nghe An grew intense, Liu Jirong even dispatched envoys by sea route north to Jiaozhi, presenting his personal letter.

In the letter, Liu Jirong "sincerely" expressed his deep concern over the "Van-Man Rebellion," and stated that he had troops ready—should matters take a turn for the worse, he could dispatch forces north at any time to assist in suppressing the rebellion, and so forth.

Liu Jirong's letter naturally drew the attention of the Jiaozhi court—more precisely, it should be said, it aroused dread and wariness. Not to mention the reactions of the nobles and ministers, even Liu Jidan himself was highly vigilant.

Toward this elder cousin from the south (Liu Jirong was the eldest son of the late Champa king Liu Wenyen, born in the eighth year of Yongxi, six years older than Liu Jidan), Liu Jidan harbored strong dislike. There was no helping it—Liu Jirong was fierce by nature, fond of conquest, and brimming with ambition.

Back when Empress Dowager Liu was still regent, Liu Jidan, newly in power, accepted Liu Jirong's invitation to travel south for a meeting. The two convened a three-day banquet at Da Nang, coordinating and discussing matters of bilateral relations between the two states.

At that gathering, Liu Jidan was suppressed throughout, cutting a poor figure. Although some border and trade conflicts and disputes between the two countries were patched up, Liu Jidan left thoroughly displeased. From then on, Liu Jidan never again accepted Liu Jirong's invitations, handling state-to-state matters only by dispatching special envoys for negotiations.

Therefore, when such a letter arrived from Liu Jirong amid the nation's internal turmoil, without needing anyone to remind him, Liu Jidan for once showed rare sagacity, pointing out that this elder cousin harbored ulterior motives and ill intent.

Liu Jidan had initially wanted to simply ignore Liu Jirong's overtures, but after persuasion from Princess Anping, Liu Ying, he ultimately sent envoys with a reply, preserving a measure of decorum.

Liu Jidan likewise had an Annam academician compose a reply letter. It first affirmed and thanked Liu Jirong for his concern and goodwill, then reminisced about the blood-bound relations between the two states, and finally, while emphasizing the suzerain-vassal system, stated that Annam still had the strength to quell the Van-Man Rebellion on its own—but should matters fail, he would not begrudge his dignity in requesting military aid from a brother state, and so forth.

Alongside the reply, the Jiaozhi court also issued urgent orders to the southern provinces of Thuan and Hoa, requiring local officials and troops to heighten vigilance and defend with utmost rigor—except this time, besides guarding against the rebel forces causing trouble in the north, the focus was to be on the brother state to the south.

Thus, before the decisive Battle of Nghe An, Champa's actions had in fact alleviated pressure on the Van and Man rebel forces. As for the reply from Jiaozhi, Liu Jirong did nothing more than sneer that that softie Liu Jidan could actually produce such a proper and measured response—no further moves followed.

Liu Jirong was indeed ambitious, but that didn't mean he was brainless or recklessly headstrong. Marching out of Ping Province and crossing the two nations' border was not difficult; what was difficult was the pressure he and Champa would bear once that step was taken.

To a certain degree, the nature of such an act would be even more serious than the rebellion within Annam itself!

And so, Liu Jirong chose to continue watching, awaiting further developments in Annam's chaos—only, his expectations came to nothing. With the conclusion of the Battle of Nghe An and the two marquises' ignominious flight westward, Liu Jirong knew clearly: there was no opportunity now.

With nothing but a sigh of regret, he ordered the army to withdraw south, leaving the two nations' border. However, the assembled troops were not disbanded; after a large-scale transfer by sea and river transport, they were redeployed to the Tonlé Sap region.

There, Liu Jirong assembled forty thousand infantry and cavalry (the cavalry comprising both horse-riders and war elephants) and marched west, his target aimed squarely at the remnants of Chenla, which had already abandoned its old capital and migrated westward.

By the second year of Zhengtong, Chenla, worn down by three generations of Champa kings' sustained attacks over decades, had utterly collapsed. The key marker was in the eighteenth year of Jianlong (1035), when Liu Jirong led troops north to campaign against Chenla, annihilating its last "central army," breaching its capital, extinguishing its state, and wiping out its rulers and ministers—completely achieving the conquest and occupation of the Tonlé Sap region...

Since Champa was enfeoffed by Shizu, the kingdom had stood for fifty-four years, passing to Liu Jirong as the third generation. Liu Shu, the ninth son of Shizu—a wanton noble who had spent his youth in constant folly—was nonetheless the founder of Champa, having initiated and consolidated the kingdom's fortunes.

From the founding of the fief with merely a few provinces of former Champa territory, by the time of his death he had fully occupied the central-southern regions of Vietnam from the original timeline as well as the vast areas south of Tonlé Sap. Although many knew that Champa's great development was chiefly due to the military conquests of Crown Prince Liu Wenyen and General Liu Gong, without Liu Shu's good judgment and full support, how could those two have achieved such greatness?

Liu Shu sat on the Champa throne for a full thirty-five years, until the fifth year of Jianlong (1022), when he passed away—and he died within the Great Han, at the age of sixty-seven, having succumbed to no illness.

Since the Eastern Capital suzerain assembly in the third year of Jianlong, Liu Shu had never returned south, remaining instead in the Eastern Capital to enjoy his blessings—the place where he had grown up. In the twilight of his life, the roguish Duke of Chu and King of Champa also experienced a surge of homesickness, and Emperor Shizong granted Liu Shu permission to stay.

When Liu Shu passed away, Crown Prince Liu Wenyen, who already effectively controlled Champa's military and civil affairs, ascended the throne without any turbulence, ushering in a new era for the kingdom. At that time, Liu Wenyen was already forty-five years old.

The foundation Liu Shu left to Liu Wenyen was quite substantial—a population of over 1.5 million Han and barbarian peoples, and besides the prosperous coastal plains and ports, there was also an initially developed Mekong River delta plain, extending deep into the maturely developed Tonlé Sap region.

In fact, under Liu Gong's early strategic counsel, and through the alternating campaigns of Liu Wenyen and Liu Gong, Chenla was already on its last legs by then—after all, even its capital was no longer safe, repeatedly raided by Champa cavalry, and its rule over Tonlé Sap was hanging by a thread.

At the start of Liu Wenyen's reign, the conditions already existed for a large-scale push north to destroy Chenla's central court in one stroke and achieve complete occupation of the fertile plains of the peninsula's southeast.

However, discord between ruler and minister triggered internal turmoil within Champa, and that opportunity was lost. Specifically, it was Liu Wenyen and Liu Gong—both godlike military figures of Champa—and Liu Gong's prestige within the army had at one point even surpassed Liu Wenyen's.

The contrast between the two had persisted for over twenty years. In the past, Liu Shu had mediated, but once Liu Wenyen became king, the contradiction inevitably erupted...