Civil warfare in the kingdom of Champa has resulted in five different rulers in little more than two decades.

Lê Thánh Tông, the ruler of Dai Viet, or Annam, launches a bloody campaign against the Chams in 1471, seizing and pillaging the Cham capital of Vijaya (Binh Dinh), killing about forty thousand Chams, and capturing thirty thousand more, including fifty members of the royal family.

Champa’s king is slain and most of its territory incorporated into Vietnamese, or Annamese, territory, leaving only a small, weak Cham kingdom in the south as a buffer state between the Vietnamese and the Khmers.