Who they were
Nguyen Trai (1380–1442) was a scholar, strategist and poet, remembered as the political mind of the Lam Son uprising. A doctoral graduate under the Ho dynasty, he joined Le Loi in the hills.
What they did
He shaped a strategy of winning hearts as well as battles, drafting the letters that induced Ming garrisons to yield. After victory he wrote the “Binh Ngo Dai Cao” (Great Proclamation upon the Pacification of the Wu, 1428), remembered as a declaration of independence and a monument of Vietnamese prose.
He served the new dynasty, withdrew amid court intrigue, and in 1442 was executed with three generations of his family after a king died while visiting him — the Le Chi Vien case. King Le Thanh Tong exonerated him posthumously in 1464.
Legacy
A pioneer of poetry in the vernacular Nom script, Nguyen Trai stands as Vietnam’s archetype of the humane scholar-patriot — and of injustice undone too late. UNESCO joined the commemoration of his 600th birth anniversary in 1980.