A wide moat surrounds the ramparts and walls forming what would've been an impregnable 10k barrier to anyone who fancied having a pop at Emperor Gin Long 200 years ago.
Sadly, the battlements were no match for the French who muscled their way in and ransacked the original palace in 1885. According to one account they removed anything that wasn't bolted down, from gold and silver ornaments right down to mosquito nets and tooth picks. Then, just for good measure, burnt the imperial library to the ground. Zoot alors!
Worse was to come 83 years later during the Tet offensive when the VC stormed South Vietnam's third largest City and did no end of damage. They rounded up monks, priests, intellectuals and any other poor sod they didn't like the look of and summarily clubbed them to death. Charmers that they were.
There then followed some of the bloodiest fighting seen in the entire Vietnam war as the Yanks rolled out their biggest guns. Most of the buildings inside the Citadel were levelled and it's thought more than 10,000 people perished.
Anyway, the upshot of all this is that there isn't a great deal left to see inside the old quarter. A few rebuilt Pagodas here and there and some nice old urns, but by far the most memorable site (to a pair of plebs like me and Wend) was the pond filled with giant Carp.
Toss in a handful of biscuit crumbs and you get to see fighting so frenzied you'd think the French had invaded again.
Hue, by the way, means 'peace' in England.
1 comment:
au contraire Dave, as a fluent speaker of English I can guarentee you that our word for peace is in fact peace. I've never heard of this Hue, could it mean peace in another language perhaps?
Matty
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