Vietnamese France
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Marshal Yue Fei was not recalled by the Southern Song court during his fourth northern expedition against the Jurchen Jin dynasty, allowing him to destroy the Jin.
After the war, the Song, devastated and overextended, was forced to make concessions with the Khitans, Tatars, and Tanguts. A series of royal marriages were made, butterflying Chinggis Khan’s conquests.
Europe, being spared of Mongol invasion and Black Death, spent more time stagnating in the high middle age.
Trade flourished, and technological advancements in gunpowder, arquebus, and bastion forts paved the way for the next stage of prolonged fragmentation. Key secrets about firearms were smuggled by monks to Constantinople, helping to preserve the empire.
It was also when the Ly Dynasty of Vietnam benefited from the flourishing Maritime Silk Road. Dai Viet and Champa competed for scholars from Baghdad.
The restituted Song survived till the mid-14th century, when it split up into a northern dynasty ruled by the House of È (Yue Fei’s descendants) and several of southern kingdoms.
The stalemate on land forced the competing kingdoms to find another way out on the sea. One of the southern kings, Zhu Di of Wu, sent Zheng He, an Muslim immigrant from the Kingdom of Dali, into an expedition to the western ocean, sparking an age of discovery for the rival East Asian states.
China’s fragmentation helped Christianity to spread among the states. As people sort salvation in a chaotic world, and bowed under the crucifix of Maitreya, or Messiah. Christianity for the upper class were more Confucianized.
The religious streak affected other East Asian states as well. The Viets, for instance, were more acceptive to Catholicism.
Vietnam under Tran dynasty enjoyed an age of relative peace as China was fragmented. A peace that was broken by the invading Min (Fujianese) navy. Vietnam was forced to strengthen its navy, setting up a naval school as per the Wu and Min.
In a world where Asia kick started the age of discovery. The Japanese have taken Mexico, the Wu Egypt, Syria and Eastern Africa, the Min Nusantara and America, the Koreans Western America, the Vietnamese were forced to try their luck in Western European shores.
Part of Vietnam’s interest for France stemmed from its religion. With the aristocratic families of Trinh and Mac trying to compete over prestige, they each sent an expedition into France and kidnapped several famous scholars from the Universities of Paris and Orléans. The colonization and occupation of France only came later.
Vietnamese colonizers played a game of divide and conquer. During the fronde, it played the King Louis the XIV and the aristocrats against each other, before finally throwing their lot with the eh king.
When the Tay Son Dynasty finally united (TTL) Vietnam, an expedition was sent to France to finally subjugate the entire country. Ngyuen Luc’s army, armed with flintlocks, defeated the French King Louis XVI, still using arquebuses. Louis was made a puppet king by the Viets, and ruled till his death in 1860. A new flag was created, with the Vietnamese dragon and the French fleur de lis, symbolizing the new relations.
In 1954, with European countries slowly breaking away from Asian dominance, the French Republicans defeated the Vietnamese paratroopers in the Battle Dieppe, ending the Vietnamese reign in France.
