Artillery of The Nguyen Lords - Production and Usage

Production and Usage

The artillery was the centrepiece of the Nguyễn defense against the Trịnh onslaught from the very start. According to Tien Bien, the court annals of the Nguyễn, the first of the Nguyễn's two famous large defensive fortifications in modern Quang Binh Province, known as the Luy Nhat Le, was heavily lined with artillery. According to the annals, cannons were placed at four metre intervals along the 12 km wall, with a large battery at every twelve to twenty metres. The annals went on to note that "ammunition was so abundant that the depots were like mountains." This would have meant that there were 3,000 cannons along the wall.

However, the Dutch traveller Johan van Linga placed doubt on this claim by the Nguyễn annals, after he estimated in his 1642 writings that the Nguyễn possessed approximately 200 cannons. Nevertheless, despite the uncertain number of cannons in the Nguyễn arsenal, historians have long credited the Nguyễn artillery as one of the key reasons that they were able to defeat an army many times larger.

The Nguyễn were also able to able to cast their own European cannons, which is another explanation for their superiority in artillery. The time at which the Nguyễn developed their own production facilities has remained a point of academic dispute. Early 20th century French-language scholars such as Le Thanh Khoi, Charles Maybon and Leopold Cadiere presumed that a Portuguese man by the name of Joaoa da Cruz has started a foundry in 1615. However, in 1972, Pierre-Yve Manguin cast doubt on this by noting that the Nguyễn sent 3,000 kg of copper to Macau in 1651 to cast into cannons, reasoning that it would be illogical to do so if they had access to a foundry on their own territory. Manguin instead dated da Cruz' arrival in Vietnam to be in 1658. In another account, the Tien Bien recorded that in 1631, a cannon foundry existed in a quarter of Huế known as Phuong Duc, where da Cruz was later reported to have worked.

By the time da Cruz died in 1682, the Nguyễn had produced most of their artillery, followed Portuguese models.

In 1750, the French merchant Pierre Poivre reported that the Nguyễn were in possession of 1,200 cannons, long after the Trịnh had given up on conquering the Nguyễn. Despite their non-use, the artillery was well known and synonymous with the Nguyễn, with the cannons being universally noted in written accounts by European travellers of the time.

However, by this time, the Nguyễn artillery had become rather obsolete. Poivre was scathing in his assessment of the relevance of the weapons, writing that the Nguyễn "take no notice, or are unaware, of what could make this artillery useful. None of the cannons has got six shots to fire and most of the cannonballs are not of the right caliber."

In the 1770s, the rule of the Nguyễn Lords came to an end with the uprising of the Tây Sơn Dynasty. As the Nguyễn were toppled, it was reported that none of their cannons were used in an attempt to quell the uprising. This led the historian Anthony Reid to opine that the Nguyễn had begun to view their artillery only for decorative purposes, as was the case in other Southeast Asian countries, as "more a means of boosting morale and expressing the supernatural power of the state than of destroying the enemy". Ironically, their adversary, the Tây Sơn army was heavily armed with firearms of all sorts, from primitive hand cannon called "hỏa hổ" (fire tiger) to flintlock and field guns.