The History of China - #149 - N. Song 16: Empire of Black & Gold

Episode Date: September 23, 2018

To the north of Song China, sandwiched between Goryeo Korea and the invincible Liao Empire, a new force arises on the banks of the Black and Gold Rivers, that will shake the very foundations of All Under Heaven... Time Period Covered: 1099-1123 CE Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Episode 149, Empire of Black and Gold. Before I start in today, let me please take a moment to recommend that you check out the History of Vikings podcast. It is an excellent show about, well, the history of Vikings and their raids up and down the northern European coasts and the rivers. So please give that a listen. Once again, that is the History of Vikings podcast. One other thing, hopefully my sound editing can get rid of it, but in case you hear some distant hum in the background, I have an air conditioner going on right now because thanks to the typhoon that struck the southern coast of China, we are currently experiencing a not only heat wave,

but high humidity system that's pushing through this region right now in Shanghai. And so in order to just have basic livable conditions, my air conditioner is on full blast. Once again, I hope it does not feed through. But if you do hear it, just know that that is what it is. And I hope that we can all deal with it. Anyway, let's get going. Last time, we finished out the reign of Song Shenzong and his premature death after just 17 years on the throne, and the passing of titular authority to his 8-year-old heir, who would be stylized in the histories as Zhezong. And so this is where we'd usually launch right into the young emperor's reign and regency, and I'd give you the play-by-play. But here's the thing. It's dull. Really dull. Known as the Age of Faction,

it's written about by Professor Ari Daniel Levine in no uncertain terms as such. The last section of Levine's chapter on Zhezong's reign is entitled With a Wimper, and begins, quote, The last years of the Yuan Yu era were a time of extreme, protracted inaction, end quote. And to briefly sum up, the conservative faction who had long resisted the new policies of Wang Anshe were able to seize most of the authority and largely roll back the reforms of the 1070s, but then shattered into factions, infighting among themselves, and failed to actually finish the job.

So, yeah, I'm just gonna go ahead and yada yada Juzong's long, boring, unremarkable reign. It wasn't really his, after all. It was a regency dominated by conservative ministers and his overbearing mother, the Empress Dowager Xuanren, pretty much pulling back and forth on the boy's sleeves and ultimately getting nowhere. The whole situation would only change with the death of Empress Xuanren, and even by

that point, the conservative anti-reformists had devolved into their own puerile, selfish civil war. That ongoing situation would only worsen in 1093, with the death of the Empress Dowager, and the beginning of the era of personal rule of the newly of age, Emperor Zhezong, now 16. With the Empress out of the way, the conservative faction's bickering reached a violent and divisive climax

that all amounted to, well, again, basically nothing. It culminated in a series of purges over the course of 10ed to, well, again, basically nothing. It culminated in a series of purges over the course of 1093 to 1094, and then in 1096, the conservatives were themselves finally swept out of power in a bloodless palace coup by the reformist party, as backed by the emperor, who one imagines was as sick of all this as I was in reading it. The upshot of all that is that at least some of the reforms that had been put into place by Wang Anshu's new policies were saved and resuscitated from the dustbin of history by his 11th hour palace coup against the conservative factions.

Where we're really going to pick up today is the beginning of the year 1099, with Jed Zong's return to the long-standing question of border relations, and in particular, that long-standing bugaboo of Song statecraft, the Tangut peoples of Western Xia. Now willing and able to at last make decisions of state for himself, Jejong was having none of this weak-kneed policy of appeasement that had long been the go-to solution of the conservative ministers like Simak Wong and his series of self-serving successors. That embarrassment had most recently been capped off in 1089, when the regency has ceded yet more northern territories, some for border forts, to the Tangut

raiders and their ceaseless pressing for further advantage against their apparently tamed southern neighbor. Again from Levine, The Tanguts had taken advantage of the Song court's passivity and docility to advance across the frontier. Since its final status had not been conclusively settled by the end of the Xuannuan Regency, the Xisha had made every effort to redraw the northwestern borders in its favor. But the time for talks and of showing the soft belly of the song was over, at least as far as Zhezong and his reformist allies were concerned. They were frickin' China, for goodness sake, the biggest, baddest, and certainly wealthiest empire on this

side of the planet, and they'd spent the last generation quivering in their boots and all but kowtowing to these barbarian desert nomads? No, no, no. No longer. Now that he was of age, Zhezong figured it was high time to finish what his father had started, and his idiot ministers had failed to carry out. The goal of putting Xisha in its proper place, that is, firmly under the heel of Song might. Quote, Abandoning the conciliatory stance of their factional adversaries, the reformists contended that a renewed military offensive would stabilize the deteriorating border situation. In 1095, Minister Zhang Dun convinced the increasingly dependent emperor to continue the expansionist policies of his father,

devising a new, advanced, and fortified plan to tilt the balance of power back towards Song dominance. By seizing strategic positions along the frontier, along the Hulu River Valley and in the Tiandu and Hengshan plateaus, and rendering them impregnable to assault, the Song exploited its military superiority to effectively destroy the power position of the Xisha. The grand finale of this war, in which Song forces, so thoroughly humiliated two decades before, now instead proceeded to victory after glorious victory, and came in 1098 at last to the Battle of Pingxia. Here, the Xia Empress Dowager Liang, reaching her desperation point after a series of devastating losses against the Chinese, committed a force of more than 100,000 Tangut soldiers to retaking

the commanding ridge overlooking the region. But the Song armies had already thoroughly dug in and fortified the ridge, and learned from past mistakes by refusing to give up the high ground. It was truly over before it began, and the Xia assault turned into a futile and ultimately suicidal charge at the unassailable Song redoubts. Not only was the Tangut force utterly crushed, but its two commanders, the famed Tangut generals Wei Ming Aimai and Meila Dobu, were themselves surrounded and taken as prize captives by the jubilant Song armies. By the 9th month of 1099, the Tanguts had been thoroughly driven back,

their military leadership taken captive, and the Empress Dowager forced to sue for peace terms to the Song court, meaning that Jezong and his court had done it, completed the once quixotic adventurism of his father Shenzong to its proper conclusion, and at long last projected Song power and hegemony into the northwest. It would prove to be the high point of the now 24-year-old Emperor Zhezong's life, and as it would turn out, one of his last. Less than three months later, in the first month of the year 1100, Zhezong would suddenly take ill and die of an unspecified illness. His death was as destabilizing as it was unexpected.

Who dies at 24 at the moment of his crowning glory, after all? Moreover, the only son he'd yet had had died early in childhood, meaning that it would have to fall to one of the emperor's siblings to take up the throne. After considerable debate within the court, and with the backing of Zhezong's mother, the Empress Dowager Qin Sheng, an unlikely candidate was chosen to succeed the late Zhezong. Rather than one of his full brothers, it would be his younger half-brother, Zhao Ji, the Prince of Duan, who would be chosen to succeed to the throne of Song.

This was largely because, ritual lines of succession aside, it was successfully argued that Prince Duan was robustly helpful and full of filial benevolence, which made him an ideal candidate for the throne in a way that the Prince of Jian, perhaps the more obvious choice, and his line quite evidently were not. After all, that branch of the family had just had two emperors in a row suddenly take ill and die at an absurdly young age. Something might be wrong with that whole family branch. Better safe than sorry. The few unfortunate ministers who rather unexpectedly found themselves backing the wrong horse by supporting the Prince of Jian's claim to the throne

came to well and truly regret their big mouths. As for their trouble, they earned the permanent enmity of the newly enthroned Emperor Huizong. So yeah, whoops. Zhao Ji, the Prince of Duan, was 17 when he was enthroned as Emperor Huizong, the fine or emblematic emperor, meaning that technically he was already at the age of majority and shouldn't have required a regency. He was nevertheless provided one, by the assert shouldn't have required a regency. He was nevertheless provided one, by the assertions of the Empress Dowager herself. This wouldn't last long, however, as she would die in the first month of the following year without warning, meaning that

just a bit behind schedule, he was able to begin his personal rule. From the outset, Huizhong expressed a desire to continue on with the policies of his father and elder brother, like them having become thoroughly disillusioned with the unhealthily reversionary and factional period that had followed his father Shenzong's death. Though there were some early attempts to reconcile the policies of the conservatives and the reformists, by 1102, all such efforts had broken down, and Huizhong's government had fully embraced reformist dominance in the style of his imperial forebears. As the penultimate monarch of the Northern Song Dynasty, prior to his eventual semi-abdication

in favor of his son just ahead of the whole system's near collapse and flight to the south, Huizhong has long held an, as Levine puts it, quote, tantalizingly ambiguous position, end quote, in imperial historiography. The classical understanding paints his rule in the obvious archetypical style of those Chinese rulers who oversaw a period of decline and collapse. The standard last bad emperor that we've discussed ad nauseum at the end of pretty much every dynasty. He was a born palace emperor who had never so much as seen the world outside of the confines of the palace walls, an effete and ineffectual ruler who sat ensconced and blissfully unaware of the state of his realm, painting beautiful pictures

of birds and flowers while the world around him went all to hell, and as his empire rotted and corrupted from within while succumbing to foreign invasion from without. His very name is, in Chinese historiography, a metonymy of that very style of rule and its inevitable fate, by which I mean that the name Song Huizong holds about the same meaning in Chinese as Nero does in Western Roman histories, embodying by its very utterance the whole concept of ineffectual and corrupt rule leading ultimately to doom. Levine says, quote, Yet, as almost always, such glib characterizations take a multifaceted and complicated person and boil

it all down into a bumper sticker. In effect, Monday morning quarterbacking an actual person, for all their richness, complexity, and ambiguity, into a simplified, generalized, and moralized cautionary tale. This was so pervasive across Chinese historiography that in fact it has become difficult to piece together what actually might have been. The unfailing moralism of Chinese historians not only colored their own works about this time, but also largely determined which other non-official accounts and records of the period were allowed to survive and propagate. Quote, hence nine centuries later, almost no counter-histories of the Huizong reign have been preserved. Only a very limited number of texts veer into the opposite interpretational direction from the standard histories to try to glorify the emperor.

As such, when reading about Huizong's reign, it becomes rather more like trying to read a Grimm's fairy tale than an actual history, a difference made more than evident when compared to even his two immediate predecessors, Zhezong and Shenzong, respectively. This is, of course, not surprising. Just how objective might any of us feel when attempting to recount and catalog what too many of the initial writers would have very likely been viewed as the beginning of the end of their very civilization by the forces of chaos and barbarism. More than that, what was written, or what at least has survived, was done so in the aftermath of the Northern Song's destruction, and was done so with the hindsight bias of the sheer inevitability of it all. Like I said, moralistic to and beyond a fault.

Yet for all that, modern historians have taken a fine-tooth comb over the documents left to us, both those of the Song and of the Jin Dynasty that would supplant it in the North, and have been able to parse out that rather than some simple tale of internal corruption and happenstance and the convergence of several otherwise unrelated trends into what would become a rather perfect storm for the government in Kaifeng. Luck and randomness don't often make for great copy, but they seem to have been the real culprits here, or at least much more than the finger-wagging Neo-Confucian historians tut-tutting the foibles of Huizong would ever have cared to admit. So today, what we're going to do is take a look at the biggest and most important of those

historical trends and forces that would ultimately unseat the Song. Like most tidal waves that sweep away cities, it would begin far away from the eventual ground zero of destruction, outside of Song China entirely, actually. Amid one of the vassal peoples of the empire to the zero of destruction, outside of Song China entirely, actually, amid one of the vassal peoples of the empire to the north of China, the Liao Dynasty. The history of the Jurchen people is singularly complex. Even from their very ethnic name, Jurchen, sourcing is difficult and varied. Now I will be calling them the 哲成 zhè chén, but you'll also find translations, especially in earlier works which largely pull from Mongol sources, as the 哲切 zhè qìd in which the "-id suffix comes from the Mongol form of pluralization.

Other forms are the 女人 njürén, a corruption of the Khitan pronunciation of their vassal people as lüren. Though they officially had outlawed that particular name as the word Ren in fine naming taboo tradition had been forbidden when their emperor Xingzong's personal name incorporated the word, and so it was changed to Nü Zhi. The Jurchen themselves contributed to the alphabet soup of their naming conventions by the 16th century referring to themselves as the Jusan. But like I said before, we're going to go with Jurchen, and so Jurchen it shall remain. The sociolinguistic family of the Jurchen is clear, as the Manchu language of the

much later Qing dynasty is itself a successor to and relative of the Jurchen language family, collectively known as Tungusic, and potentially also related to both Turkic and Mongolian. Their initial homeland was a region of eastern Manchuria, a densely forested and mountainous area surrounding the easternmost lower reaches of the Black Dragon River of the northeasternmost modern Chinese province of the same name, Heilongjiang. Other names for this body include the Russian Amoreka, Manchu Sahalyanula, and Mongol Karmurun, all of which mean either Big River or Black River. This specific region in which Jurchen society developed meant that it turned out markedly different from many of its neighbors. Unlike the Han Chinese of the south, they were not fully agrarian or

sedentary. And yet also like their Khitan overlords to their west or their eventual Mongol conquerors, neither were they fully rooted in pastoral nomadism. From Herbert Frank, quote, It seems that the Jurchen peoples had adapted their way of life and economy to their respective habitat. Hunting and fishing were predominant among forest peoples, whereas among those living in the plains, cattle raising and agriculture prevailed. The Jurchen raised and even exported horses, but their chief domestic animals were oxen. Important products of their country were hunting birds such as falcons and hawks, eagerly sought out by the Catons and even the Chinese.

End quote. Other products that they traded were their horses, gold and pearls, beeswax, pine seeds, and ginseng, which many of you may know is a particularly prized ingredient in many Chinese medicines. As a people, the Zhicheng are scattered across the earlier Chinese texts, typically as a constituent element of larger border confederations, the most enduring of which was the Mohu, also known as the Korean Malgal peoples, who lived primarily along the modern Korean-Manchurian border. References to the Mohu pop up as early as the 5th century,

specifically the Heishui, or Black Water, Mohu tribes, yet another reference to the Black Dragon River. The first time a potential direct ancestor of what would become the Jurchen comes up in Chinese records seems to be in the year 748, in which a group calling itself the Jiu Che presented gold and silver to the Tang imperial court. It's not until the 10th century, though, that the name pops up again, coming as tribute bearers to the court of the Khitan Liao dynasty, as well as the courts of first later Tang and then its successor Song states, beginning in 961.

These envoys, and their small but welcome tribute gifts, were conveyed not overland, but primarily via sea through port settlements along the Liaodong Peninsula that juts out into the Yellow Sea from the north near the Sino-Korean border. As an already subject people of the Balhae Kingdom that was itself absorbed by the loose structure of the Liao, the Jurchen were brought into the fold as well. Those who lived under Khitan rule were known in the chronicles of Liao as the civilized Jurchen, while those who still hunted, fished, and lived outside of the reach of Liao domination were referred to as the uncivilized Jurchen. Well, that's at least

one way of translating it. The more literal, and in my estimation, rather more fun way though, is that those within the Liao, and thus at least partially Sinicized, because remember, the Khitan were themselves emulating the Chinese as much as possible, were known by the Liao as the Xu Nü Zhen, or Cooked Jurchen, whereas their wilder brethren were the Sheng Nü Zhen, or Raw Jurchen. Over the course of the 10th century, it's well documented that the Khitan tried their level best to ensure that Jurchen emissaries could not reach the Song court to pay tribute directly. In 991, for instance, the Liao constructed a series of checkpoints and barriers through which any land-based caravan would have to have permission to travel from Manchuria southward, effectively cutting such routes off for Jurchen travelers.

Nonetheless, until 1010, relations between the court at Kaifeng and the Jurchen remain intact thanks to their uninterrupted and intrepid seafaring outmaneuvering of the landlocked Khitan. As of 1010, the Jurchen sided with the Korean Goryeo Kingdom against the Liao, the result of which, to everyone's surprise, was a heavily lopsided Korean victory and a stunning retreat of Liao authority from the region. Over the course of the remaining 11th century, then, Jurchin emissaries solely arrived in Kaifeng through Goryeo intermediaries. Both politically and ethnically, the Jurchin identity began to coalesce from the swirling

tribal and clan-based confluences of pre-state peoples in or about the year 900, with the formation of the Wanyan clan, under a mysterious and likely at least semi-apocryphal figure called Hanpu, or Hanbo in Korean. And when I say partially apocryphal, I mean like he apparently married a 60-year-old woman who then went on to sire him three children. Yeah, right, my left ear he did. From Fort Sumter to the Battle of Gettysburg. From the Emancipation Proclamation to Appomattox Courthouse. From the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Compromise of 1877.

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In any case, this process reached its formative point about a century later on the rule of Han Pu's sixth-generation descendant, the chieftain Wu Gunai, who was born in 1021 and became the clan leader by Khitan appointment early in his adulthood. It's notable, though, that such titles held little if any actual meaning or power under the Liao system, which were pretty much only ceremonial acceptances of formal vassalized status under the Khitan emperor. To this point, the Jurchens were still little more than a loosely knit and highly independent set of distantly related bands, which even the Jin dynasty's own sources admit had not yet developed a written language of its own, nor a calendar system, and not even a formalized office or title system of

its own. Permanent settlements remained few and far between, and were often not even known by a single or permanent name, but rather as the town of such and such a person. Wuganai of the Wanyan clan, therefore, rose to prominence based on his charismatic personality and fearsome reputation in battle. He was known far and wide as, quote, a brave warrior, a great eater and drinker, and a lover of women, end quote. It would be these traits that would allow him to unite the whole of the region, from Changbai Shan, or the Everwhite Mountain on the Manchu Korean border, all the way north to the Five Nation Territories.

This feat earned him special recognition by the Liao bureaucracy, which appointed Bu Genai as the military governor, the jiedushi, of the raw Jurchen, and he was once even received by the Liao emperor himself for a personal audience. Though his battlefield prowess in his clever plan to increase Jurchen armaments through the acquisition of iron from among its neighboring clans, as the Jurchen were well known for their blacksmithing skill. In fact, it was Wuganai's unwavering devotion to a principle that struck the heartstrings of all of his kinsmen that allowed Wuganai to unite the Jurchen in a way that none had before. That principle was the desire to

remain as free and independent of their Khitan masters, or any masters for that matter, as they possibly could. Thus it was that under the guidance and leadership of Wuganai that the Jurchen were able to effectively carve out their own stabilized border with both Goryeo-Korea and within the Liao dynasty. This homeland, such as it was, was centered not around the Black Dragon River, but instead the Anchuhu River, known today as the Asha River in eastern Manchuria. The name Anchuhu is not Chinese, but rather from Jurchen language itself, stemming from the word Anchun or Anchun, meaning golden. It would, in fact, be the Chinese translation of this river,

this homeland, that would give the ascendant Jurchen people their eventual dynastic name, the Great Golden Dynasty, the Great Jin. Following the death of Wuganai in 1074, rulership of the Jurchen passed to his son and then his grandson in rather less than notable succession order. It would be the death of Wuganai's eldest grandson in the year of 1113, where we not only catch up with our Song dynasty timeline, but we get the next heavy hitter of the Jurchen, Aguda. Born along the Anshuhu river within what is today the city of Harbin, Aguda came to inherit his brother's chieftainship and jiedushi title at around the age of 45. Despite his Liao-approved title of office, though, make no mistake, governor or not,

Aguda had no love in his heart for his Khitan overlords. He'd gained plaudits from among his kinsmen and infamy from the Liao imperial court the year prior when, during a visit from the Liao emperor Tianzuo, the monarch had demanded that all of the assembled Jurchen noblemen dance for him. Alone among his fellow assembled nobles, Aguda had refused the order. Aguda's disdain for his Liao monarch and the system that supported his decadent lifestyle ran deep. He'd seen firsthand both the extravagance of the Khitan elite that he had fought for, as well as the suffering of those he'd been commanded to put down at their behest, not least of which were many of his own Durchin kinsmen who either were forced to pay outrageous

levels of taxation for the honor of living within the Liao's borders and being deemed cooked, or elsewise forced to scrape out a bare existence along the margins in order to retain their god-given freedom and remain uncooked. It was unacceptable. It was unfair. It wasn't right that so few should live so well on the backs of the great many who toiled to serve their decadent and corrupt overlords, especially when it wasn't his own people on the top of that pyramid. And so it was that shortly after his confirmation as the Jiedushi of the Jurchen, Governor Aguda declared war against the Liao dynasty in early 1114. Hostilities were justified, rather flimsily,

on the Khitan refusal to remand a Jurchen leader who had defected into Liao custody years prior back to his kinsmen for trial and punishment. Well, that and the rather irksome forced forfeiture of Huanglong Prefecture, formerly under Jurchen direct control. But flimsier note, that was really all the pretext Aguda and his army needed to wage full-scale war. Oh wait, did I say army? That might have been slightly overstating things. Aguda had like some 2,500 to 3,700 guys all told at first, and only some of them could be counted on to show up at any given encounter, so he had, hmm, a brigade.

In any case, take all the upcoming numbers with an appropriately large dose of salt that they almost definitely deserved. The first major clash between the Liao and the Jurchen rebel force occurred that November at a site known as Chuhedian, in which after seizing the city of Ningjiang from its 800 defenders, Aguda's cavalry was able to break and defeat a Liao army three times its own number sent to stop them. Now, neither of these sites were strategically important to the Liao, who as of yet paid very little attention to the rebellious thrashings of this insignificant vassal group.

Giovanni Stari writes in his Chumen Jialafun Jechunaku or Manchu Studies in Honor that quote, "...at this time, none of the five capitals of Liao were under any military threat, and even Liao's military prefecture, Huanglongfu, set up for the control of the Jurchen population, showed no signs of unrest. End quote. And that's why, in spite of what most histories tell us about the declaration early the very next year of the Great Jin, Starry says no, that was far too early for that. The Jurchen were in no position to be declaring much of anything just yet,

and Aguda knew that. One battle, after all, does not win a war. Even Alexander the Great needed three of them. Again from Stari, quote, In fact, sources show that in the few years after Aguda rose against the Liao, he had attempted to negotiate with his overlord to reach a settlement. This began as early as the first moon of 1115, at the time of Aguda's alleged enthronement, when Aguda proposed to the Liao emperor the terms for suspension of hostilities, end quote. The terms were this time the same as before, give us back our turncoat and give us back control over Huanglong Prefecture. Thus, it wasn't yet independence or imperial ambition that drove

the Zhezhen rebels, at least not overtly, just a simple list of demands and the maintenance of the autonomy that Aguda and his kinsmen held so dear. In the history of Jin, Aguda is recorded as addressing his troops in the 9th month of 1115, stating, quote, We arose in defiance because of Liao's barbarity, and we wanted to establish our own state, end quote. And I should point out that this seems to be indicating that the Jurchen wished to have their own state within the existing political system of the Liao. They wanted regional autonomy, and not to have some Khitan Mandarin peering over their shoulder at all times. Of course, we could also go by the more traditional

interpretation, which is that even from this early position, Aguda and the Jurchen were aiming for total independence. Between the second and ninth months of 1115, several diplomatic exchanges were sent back and forth between the Liao and the Jurchen, but all to naught. The Catan emperor demanded immediate and complete surrender, while the Jurchen insisted, no, no, wait, we still need to hash these issues out. The fork was well and truly stuck into the fruitless negotiations, though, when Emperor Tianzou assembled a massive army that he intended to lead himself against his wayward vassals, and even went so far as to commit the ultimate diplomatic faux pas. That's right, he killed the messenger. It seems clear that this total breakdown in negotiations

was the point at which Aguda decided to make a formal and permanent break with the Liao regime. In a ceremony in either 1115 or early 1116, he invested himself with the title of Huangdi, as the sovereign of the state of Great Jin, giving himself the reign title of Shouguo, meaning having received statehood, and taking on a Chinese-style personal name, Wanyanmin, meaning, rather ironically, the compassionate. And all that was well and good, but it seems to have been in or around the year of 1116 that the now self-styled Shoguo emperor of Great Jin was convinced by one of his Liao-trained officials that all these fancy-sounding titles wouldn't mean much of anything unless he could get international recognition for them. Again from Buddhist title, Great, Holy, and Great Enlightened, or Da Sheng Da Ming, and the state name of Da Jin, concession to his use of a jade-inlaid state carriage, of imperial robes and caps, and of a jade seal, rulers to communicate with each other

like elder and younger brothers, and send envoys for each other's birthdays and for the new year, and annual payments of 250,000 units of silver and silk, 50% of what the Song paid, cessation of the two roots of Liao Dong and Chang Chuan, and repatriation of the detained Jurchen chieftains, end quote. And yeah, I agree, that is quite the set of demands for some regional chieftain with a few thousand guys at his back, although that number had certainly swelled considerably by this time. But in any case, to be making such a list of demands to the great and mighty Liao Emperor, he's definitely got some chutzpah.

And yeah, yeah, hindsight is 20-20 and all that, but man, oh man, the Liao Emperor really should have considered taking Aguda up on it. The recognition of the titles and use of imperial clothes and carriages and formalized greetings and envoys might have been able to fly, which might have resulted in that kind of weird, uncomfortable, but strangely stable cohabitation of semi-equalized states, much in the way that the Liao had been forced to accept the independence of Song, or Song had been forced to sigh and accept the de facto statehood of Western Xia. All of this was to be expected as a fairly routine concession to an enemy who was proving far more difficult to put down than you'd first thought. It was those other, more material writers that

really sank the whole diplomatic enterprise. Surrender to military circuits? Pay you, like, almost all the tribute that we get from the song? Um, how about no? Frank points out that such ridiculously huge demands seem to have been designed to be unacceptable from the outset, and thus, This is furthered by the fact that with every subsequent Jin victory against the Liao, Jurchen demands increased accordingly to even more unacceptable levels.

By 1117, the once seemingly invincible Liao teetered on the brink, with many of its armies having outright deserted rather than face further humiliation and defeat by their Jurchen foes. Once again, Aguda sent out a revised peace proposal, with even steeper demands. This time, he demanded that he be recognized by the Liao Emperor as the elder brother in their fictive relationship, as well as that he be seated a further three regions in Manchuria, and be sent members of the Khitan royal court to act as hostages for Liao compliance with such conditions. The first and foremost condition, though, was that all documents and future communication between Liao and Song, Western Xia, and Goryeo be submitted to the Jin court instead, in effect establishing the Jurchen as the legitimate recipients of all tribute payments from its

neighboring states thereafter. It was about as hard as a soft coup could possibly get. He felt comfortable in making such outrageous demands since he'd come into the possession in the interim of the Liao eastern capital city, Liaoyang, which was the cultural center of the entire Baolhei civilization, from which both Jin and Liao claimed at least partial ancestry. Seeing which way the wind was blowing, many of the Liao military leaders began to defect to the Jin, not only Khitan people, but other peoples within the rapidly crumbling empire, such as the Turkic Shi of the southwestern highlands, and subsequently becoming incorporated into the swelling Jin military force.

And that's certainly something that we must always be keeping in mind when we're discussing these forces, especially those to the north of China. That when I talk about the Qitan Liao, or the Zhecheng Jin, or eventually even the Mongol hordes, that they're actually very multi-ethnic and multicultural in their compositions. We typically call them by the ethnicity of the clan, tribe, or coalition that cobbled them together into cohesive empires, but that is always just the tip of the confederated iceberg of the myriad peoples, cultures, and traditions that coexisted within these steppe empires. These confederate relationships, often predicated on little more than personal loyalty to an individual, could very easily, like the Liao right now, rapidly go from a position of seeming invulnerability to coming apart at the seams in the span of sometimes only years.

Any crack in the armor of that leadership cabal held the fatal potential for lower chieftains and tribes to make a rush for the exit and try to get a better deal with another confederation they perceived as likely to emerge as the victor of the conflict. So if all this seems bizarrely rushed, as in, wait a second, we were just talking about a tiny force of Jurchchen facing down a Liao army three times their number, how'd we get to this completely opposite situation so quickly? It's this reason. Early Jurchen miracle victories, combined with widespread dissatisfaction with the behavior and rulership of the latest spade of Khitan emperors, was damaging enough that the confederation of tribes, that many peoples and commanders,

were ready to jump ship at the first sign that someone might not immediately get crushed underfoot if they did so. Himself sensing that things were not going exactly as planned, the Liao emperor tried once again for peace, offering Aguda the title of Donghai Guo Wang, or King of the State of the Eastern Sea. This was a major mistake, because offering a title of kingship to someone who had already claimed the title of Huangdi years prior was like saying that someone was being promoted from CEO to janitor. In any case, the more protracted these negotiations became, the more it became

clear to Aguda that they weren't actually necessary anymore. From Frank, The total overthrow of the Liao Empire, although it might perhaps not have been Aguda's major political objective in the early stages of his rise to power, was now definitely in sight, certainly after 1119, end quote. More than just proving himself as an adept field commander against a clearly inferior enemy force, hobbled by inept leadership and internal dissent and disorganization, in the period following 1117, Aguda would also show himself to possess a brilliant diplomatic mind as well. This was most clearly shown when he was able to successfully renegotiate the terms of diplomacy between Jin and its neighbors, from the formerly strictly bilateral talks between it and Liao, to managing to loop in the Song into these talks. It was a singularly inspired move,

since the Song had begun looking at the Jin as a natural ally against the Liao. You'll recall that the Song had held something of a grudge for the prior century against the Khitan, since as of 1005 they'd been forced to formally cede via treaty the 16 prefectures of the north and agree to build no new border defenses. The Song had bit its tongue and signed the agreement, but had never given up nor forgiven the notion that it had been outright robbed by the Khitan, and that those northern territories belonged by right to China. In 1117 then, a Song envoy was sent to Jin under the pretext of buying some horses, but was in reality there to draw up details of a formal Song-Jin alliance against the hated and now teetering Liao. This proposal of alliance, intriguing as it was to

both sides in 1117, would take some six years to reach a final conclusion. The major points of negotiation laid out by the Song diplomats were that 1. The Jian and Song would launch joint attacks against the Liao to end them as a threat against both parties. 2. That Song wanted its old territories, the 16 prefectures, back. And 3. It expected its annual payments to the Liao to be either entirely absolved or at least drastically reduced by this arrangement. But six years is a long time in any war, and especially one with circumstances shifting

as quickly as the Jin-Liao conflict. As such, the Song negotiators were forced to watch their position of strength in negotiation rapidly deteriorate, as Aguda quickly discovered that he didn't actually need the Song armies nearly as much as he had initially thought that he would, and in fact his own Jurchen forces were proving themselves more than capable of capturing and holding the southern reaches of Liao, including the Yan'Yun prefectures centered around modern Beijing, without southern assistance. In fact, the Jin diplomats came around to the idea that, you know, we're actually technically going to be the legitimate successor to the Liao, and as such, inherit all of its rights and payment obligations owed to them by other states,

including you, Song. By the time the final treaty was signed in 1123, the situation had shifted so dramatically that whereas Song military offenses to capture a Yan Yun region had failed, they'd been quickly overrun and seized by the Jin armies. Quote, whereas the Jin armies had not only forced the western and central capitals of Liao to surrender, but by the end of 1122 had also been able to conquer Yan City, modern Beijing, its southern capital. The Liao emperor had already become a fugitive in the far west. The end of the empire was in sight. With Yan City in possession of the Jin, Aguda's position had become unassailable, and the Song were forced on the defensive. End quote. With such an unassailable position,

it's worth asking why Aguda felt it worth bothering with to even conclude a peace treaty with Song at all. Well, there are a few likely possibilities that are put forth. For one, formalizing the transfer of the Song debts from Liao to Jin would require that level of paperwork, as it was no trifling sum, in all amounting to 200,000 ingots of silver and 300,000 bolts of silk annually. This payment had long been an annoyance to the Song, certainly, but an affordable one. To the fledgling Jin, on the other hand, this potential influx of such levels of riches was a true game-changer. Another reason is almost certainly the fact that with a formal treaty came formal recognition. Aguda would be recognized in the treaty text and all subsequent addresses between Song and Jin as the august emperor of the great Jin, and his replies would do likewise for

the Song monarch. Thus, a mere ten years after its nominal creation on the banks of the Great Jin, and his replies would do likewise for the Song monarch. Thus, a mere ten years after its nominal creation on the banks of the Anshuhu River, the Jin dynasty was able to achieve a state of legal equality with even the Song Empire. By the time the final seals were being affixed to the treaty documents in 1123, the Liao was mortally defeated. It had the year prior lost its central capital, Shangjing, prompting its emperor, Tianzuo, to flee into ignominious exile westward, from which he'd never return, at least not as monarch. Another Khitan relative would be proclaimed in the southern capital shortly thereafter, but he soon died as well, and the southern capital was thereafter claimed by Song and Jin forces. The final death knell to the once great Liao dynasty was sounded in 1125 with the capture

of Tianzuo, his shipment to the Jin court, and subsequent demotion to Mir Prince, formally ending the Liao once and for all. For everything he'd done to secure this stunning and wholly unlikely victory for his people, Aguda himself would not live long enough to see that final moment of conquest. Several months following the formal acceptance of the Jin-Song Treaty, Aguda died at the age of 56. He would be succeeded by his younger brother, the then 48-year-old Wu Chimai. Several decades later, Aguda would be posthumously honored by his grandson and third emperor of the Jin, Shizong,

as the founding emperor of the dynasty and formerly entitled Jin Taizu. Things are not over between Song and Jin, not by a long shot. But next time, we're going to rewind the clock a bit and look at this sudden sea change from the perspective of the slack-jawed final emperors of the northern Song, picking back up with Huizong and rounding out with his son, Qinzong, as it all falls apart literally around them. Thanks for listening. Hi everyone, this is Scott. If you want to learn about the world's oldest civilizations, find out how they were rediscovered, follow the story of Mark Antony and Cleopatra's descendants

over ten generations, or take a deep dive into the Iron Age or the Hellenistic era, then check out the Ancient World Podcast. Available on all podcasting platforms or go to ancientworldpodcast.com. That's the Ancient World Podcast.