Overview
Lê Lợi founded the dynasty in 1428 after the Lam Sơn uprising drove out the Ming. Its zenith came under Lê Thánh Tông (1460–1497): the Hong Duc legal code, a full Confucian examination state, and southward expansion — the 1471 campaign broke Champa’s power.
Key developments
From the sixteenth century the dynasty ruled in name only. The Mac usurped the throne in 1527; the country then divided between the Trinh lords in the north and the Nguyễn lords in the south through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, with Lê kings as figureheads.
End and transition
The Tay Son brothers’ rebellion, from the 1770s, swept away both sets of lords. The Tay Son emperor Quang Trung crushed a Qing intervention at Ngoc Hoi–Dong Da at Tet 1789, and that year the last Lê king fled to China.