Excerpted from :"Blood and Soil": A World History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to Darfur", by Ben Kiernan, Yale University. Press, 2007, pages 109-111.

"...in 1460, the year Le Thanh-tong assumed the throne, Chams envoys visiting China protested that "Annam [Dai Viet] has aggressed against them," and four years later "again complained that Annam had attacked them and extorted a white elephant." The envoys asked China to send officials "to pacify" the Vietnamese" and to erect border stelac, in order to end their aggression."

However Dai Viet was building up to a major campaign. In 1465 Le Thanh-tong held maneuvers of his land and sea forces, which totaled 100,000 troops.

He set down detailed operational rules for the navy, elephant corps, calvary, and infantry. The next year he organized the armed forces along Ming lines. each of the five divisions was assigned 10 warships, one major "fire tube," 10 large and 80 small "fire tubes". Dai Viet was now importing large quantities of copper to make guns and canons.

In 1467 Le Thanh-tong ordered the manufacture of new types of weapons and prohibited the use of salpeter for fireworks. He personally oversaw six navals maneurvers along the Red River and had maps made of the 12 Vietnamese provinces with military needs in mind.

In 1469 Champa protested to China once more that "Annam was extorting from Champa rhinocerose elephants."  Dai Viet had demanded that Champa accept tributary status and "serve Annam" as it did China."

Rejecting such status, a Cham army marched North in 1470. Le Thanh-tong declared war on the Champa king, Ban-la Tra-toan (r. 1460-71), stating confidently that Dai Viet possessed more troops and superior weapons. "Your last hour has come," he announced; he was ready to "annihilate" his Cham ennemies.

Thanh-tong edicts declared that Champa and its threat were to be destroyed "for good".

Whitmore comments: "For the first time, the Vietnamese armed fores were activated for a moral purpose--the destruction of evil and the establishment of civilization in a foreign land."

The war was short and brutal. Le Thanh-tong mobilized a large force of reserves, taking personal command of an army now mustering 200,000-300,000 troops, at a reputed daily cost to the Dai Viet treasury of 1,000 gold liang (taels). They swept south and defeated the Cham forces of fewer than 100,000, including a large elephant corps that had marched to meet them. King Tra-toan "immediately sought terms, but Thanh-tong refused negotiations and pressed on with the offensive. "The Vietnamese army employed cannons, fire-arms and scaling to besiege Vijaya. Deployment of firepower against its east gate enabled the attacking troops to break into the Cham capital. Dai Viet chronicles record that they put 40,000-60,000 Chams to the sword.

China's Ming shi annals add that the Vietnamese forces "smashed" Champa: Annam sacked their country [with] massive burning and looting, and subsequently occupied their territory." Cham officials later told the Chinese court: "Annam destroyed our country."

The Vietnamese captured 50 members of the Cham royal family. Troops brought King Tra-toan kneeling before his conqueror. Dai Viet chronicles record his interrogation by Le Thanh-tong: "Are you the lord of Champa? I am. Who do you think I am? Just from your face I know you are the Emperor. How many children do you have? More than ten." Thanh-tong spared Tra-toan and

let him keep two wives. As Dai Viety soldiers bundled him away, Thanh-tong ordered them to observe the decorum befitting a former "lord of the country". But the Vietnamese deported the royal family and 200,000-300,000 prisoners to the north. Tra-toan died of illness aboard a Vietnamese junk; his head was severed and fastened to the prow. The royal family were assigned quarters beside the palace in Hanoi, where they lived for 30 years. Some of the Cham prisoners were enslaved on the estates of Vietnamese dignitaries and others ordered to adopt Vietnamese names, marry Vietnamese, and start "correcting themselves". But local opposition to their assimilation grew.

The annexed northern and central regions of Champa now become Dai Viet's thirteenth province. Resistance continued in the "mountain valleys" of the south. Chinese annals recorded in 1485 that Champa is a distant and dangerous place, and Annam is still employing troops there. Cham envoys told the imperial court four years later that "Annam remains unbriddled in its encroachment and violence.

Le Thanh-tong's expansionism also looked west. In 1448 Dai Viet had annexed land from Muong Phuan, in what is today the Plain of jars in northeastern Laos. Thanh-tong made this territory a prefecture of Dai Viet in 1471 and after conquering Champa, he lauched a new western campaign against both the Phuan realm and the Lao Kingdom of Lan Xang in 1479....

King Tra-toan's son escaped back to Champa, taking his father's remain. Then the Vietnamese "devil king", Le Uy Muc, seized the throne of Dai Viet in 1505, murdering his grandmother and two minsiters and ushering in an era of instability. According to his successor, "court members interfered in the government, the maternal side seized power, laws and restrictions annoyed and embittered the people, rules led to trouble and revolts, agriculture went into decline. Cham slaves on Vietnamese estates staged a mass escape to the south, and those who remained were distrusted. Finally, the annals Dai Viet record in 1509, appatrently after uncovering a plot, "the king gave the order to massacre all the Cham who remained in the neighborhood of the capital.

That autumn, in the eight month of 1509, "on the king order, all the Cham prisoners in custody were executed. While intermittently pursuing genocidal policies against Cham from 1471 to 1509, Dai Viet had vastly expanded its territory. It annexed 22 of Champa's 27 regions and partitioned the remaining five, its southern rump, into three small principalities."...

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See Related Article "genocidal policies" of Vietnam against Cham.

The Furtive War by Wilfred Burchett

Minority Rights and Wrongs

"Taming" the Highland Peoples

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The Chams were suffering in fact from a four-fold oppression. First, they suffer because they are Chams and Diem is a feudal Annamite mandarin. In the past there were bitter wars between Chams and Annamites. About the time the French invaded Vietnam, the Annamites had launched a genocidal war against the Chams, apparently with the idea of exterminating them altogether. In any case, the Cham leaders I spoke with considered one of the few positive aspects of French occupation that the Chams were saved. But mandarin Diem had taken up the extermination campaign where the Annamite emperor had left off. Secondly, they were Muslims and Diem a bigoted Catholic. Thirdly, they were a minority people and Diem's brand of fascism despises all minority peoples. Fourthly, they live mainly in the frontier areas—in the lower reaches of the Mekong—which Diem was trying to transform into a gigantic no-man's land. In general, the Chams are a passive people who live almost exclusively in their riverside villages and if left to themselves would never have given Diem a moment of trouble. In Cambodia they have complete racial equality with rights to use their own language and to send their children to Koran schools, as long as they also attend the general schools of the government............/

Click on this link below to read the article:

The Furtive War by Wilfred G. Burchett