Wooden stakes from historic battles unearthed in northern Vietnam

Experts from Vietnam’s Institute of Archeology have discovered 38 wooden stakes while exploring a marshy area in Quang Ninh province in the northern region.

Similar stakes found earlier in the area dated back 1,000 years and were used as obstacles against enemy ships.

Le Toan, director of the province’s Department of Culture and Information, announced Thursday the stakes were found in Van Muoi area in Yen Hung district but did not mention their likely origin or date. 

They were found in three groups. The largest pole has a diameter of 22 cm around and the smallest 10 cm.

Dr Le Thi Lien of the Institute of Archeology thought the newly discovered stakes too might have been used to stop ships from approaching the land and preventing their occupants from disembarking.

In the 10th century, the Chinese Han fleet attacked Vietnam through the province’s Bach Dang estuary where iron-tipped stakes had been sunk into the riverbed by Ngo Quyen, a famous Vietnamese general.

At high-tide a Vietnamese flotilla attacked the enemy before pretending to flee, luring the enemy into the estuary beyond the stakes which remained covered by the tide. Soon the tide ebbed and the Vietnamese fleet turned around and threw everything into an attack. The Chinese tried to flee only to find themselves impaled on the barrage of stakes.

This victory, in 938 AD, put an end to Chinese imperial domination and the next year Ngo Quyen set up the first truly independent Vietnamese state.

Three hundred years later the ruse worked well a second time when Generalissimo Tran Hung Dao drove out the Mongol armies.