Đỗ Thích

Đỗ Thích († 979 ) was a Vietnamese courtier of the Đinh dynasty at their court in Hoa Lư . He murdered Emperor Đinh Bộ Lĩnh and his eldest son Đinh Liễn in 979 , which led to the end of the dynasty.

Little is known about Đỗ Thích's life. According to the later chroniclers, he was an imperial servant with the rank of marquis ( hầu ) . He had previously been the administrator of a bridge toll house. In any case, he played only an insignificant, subordinate role at court.

One night he had a dream in which a shooting star fell into his mouth. He interpreted this dream to mean that one day he would rise to become ruler himself. Fulfilled by this calling, he decided to wipe out the inh dynasty in order to gain power.

The Đinh imperial court had previously been shaken by a crisis: Emperor Đinh Bộ Lĩnh had excluded his eldest son and previous co-regent Đinh Liễn from the line of succession in 978 and instead declared his third son Hạng Lang - still a toddler - his designated successor. As a result, Đinh Liễn had his younger brother murdered in early 979. Despite this act, there was soon a reconciliation between the father and his fratricidal son.

In October 979 a festival was held in Hoa Lư. Many revelers, including the emperor and his son, slept in the open air afterward. Đỗ Thích took this opportunity to cut Đinh Bộ Lĩnh and Đinh Liễn's throats in their sleep. Then he hid in the roof beams of the palace. After three days he became very thirsty, and when it rained, he reached out to collect some rainwater. However, he was discovered by a woman and captured a little later.

Chancellor Nguyễn Bặc , who had taken command of the palace after the murders, had Đỗ Thích interrogated and then beheaded. The assassin's body was then chopped into innumerable small pieces, the meat peeled from the bones and distributed to the angry population, who - in a rare case of cannibalism - ate it in full. According to popular belief, the emperor's strength had passed to his murderer; by consuming his body, people hoped to gain a share of the power of their emperor. At the same time, the complete destruction of Đỗ Thích - also in the hereafter - should be ensured symbolically.

As a less influential courtier without ties to the military or the powerful family clans, Đỗ Thích had no realistic chance of ever coming to the throne through his deed. The very first Vietnamese chroniclers therefore raised the question of whether the murder of the emperor was the act of a deluded individual perpetrator, or whether he was possibly being guided by a mastermind in the background. The Dương family around the imperial widow Dương Vân Nga is particularly suspicious , as their son, the approximately five-year-old Đinh Toàn , was declared the new emperor as the last surviving descendant of Đinh B Lĩnh. Other beneficiaries of the murders were Lê Hoàn , who ascended the imperial throne a year later, and the Chinese Song dynasty , who used the incidents as an excuse to invade Vietnam.

literature

• KW Taylor : The Birth of Vietnam , University of California Press, Berkeley 1991 (first edition 1983), pp. 288/289