The History of China - #153 - N. Song 18: Requiem for Jingkang

Episode Date: November 6, 2018

The Song Dynasty manages to epically pull defeat from the jaws of victory when it manages to twice goad its nominal ally, the Jurchen Jin, into a border war. The first time, it’s beaten so badly that it has to give up almost half of its northern holdings. But when even that’s not enough to quench Emperor Qinzong’s delusions of grandeur, he and his regime will pay with everything they have… Time Period Covered:  1125-1127 CE Major Historical Figures: Northern Song: Emperor Huizong of Song (Zhao Ji) [r. 1100-1126, ret. Emperor 1126-1127] Emperor Qinzong of Song (Zhao Huan) [r. 1126-1127] General Tong Guan [1054–1126] General Wang Bing [d. 1126] Jurchen Jin: Emperor Taizong of Jin (Wuqimai) [r. 1123-1135]  Prince Wanyan Zonghan (Nianhan) [1080-1136] Prince Wanyan Zongwang (Wolibu) [c. 1073-1133?] Zhang Bangchang, Puppet Emperor of Chu [1081–1127] Major Works Cited: Levine, Ari Daniel. “The Reigns of Hui-Tsung and Ch-in-Tsung” in The Cambridge History of China, Vol.05: The Sung Dynasty and Its Precursors, 907–1279. Part 1. Lorge, Peter Allen. War, Politics, and Society in Early Modern China, 900-1795 Tao, Jing-shen. “The Move to the South and the Reign of Kao-Tsung (1127–1162)” in The Cambridge History of China, Vol.05: The Sung Dynasty and Its Precursors, 907–1279. Part 1. Various. the Accounts of Jingkang Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to an Airwave Media Podcast. The French Revolution set Europe ablaze. It was an age of enlightenment and progress, but also of tyranny and oppression. It was an age of glory and an age of tragedy. One man stood above it all. This was the Age of Napoleon. I'm Everett Rummage, host of the Age of Napoleon podcast. Join me as I examine the life and times of one of the most fascinating and enigmatic

characters in modern history. Look for the Age of Napoleon wherever you find your podcasts. Hello, and welcome to the History of China. Episode 153, Requiem for Jing Kong Hey there, and welcome back to our regularly scheduled narrative. When last we left off, it was circa the year 1125. Battles yet raged across the northern borders of Song China and beyond, as the once-invincible Khitan Liao dynasty was, inconceivably, being dismantled piecemeal by a minor vassal people from the Korean borderlands,

known as the Zhechun. They were led by their cunning and charismatic leader, styling himself Emperor of the Golden Jin, Aguda, until his death in 1123 and the succession by his brother Wu Qimai. It would be Wu Qimai, posthumously Emperor Taizong of Jin, who would put a final end to the Liao in 1125 after capturing the Khitan emperor-in-exile Tian Zuo and demoting him to prince. You'll also certainly recall that through all of this, the Song Chinese diplomats had been feverishly working to hammer out and then finalize a treaty of alliance with the upstart Jin powerhouse to the north,

hoping to effectively split the winnings of the war and, pivotally, recapture the 16 northern prefectures that had been a diplomatic sticking point in Song Liao relations for almost two centuries at this point. Yet for all of their efforts, they'd find themselves stymied by events on the ground at every turn. Rebellions to the south by religious zealots like Fang La, and noble anti-establishment heroes like Song Jiang and his 108 Stars of Destiny striking from their hidden base within the marshes at the foot of Mount Liang, had tied up and depleted the imperial army's strength, while command incompetence had ensured that the forces the Song could commit to the Northern War were utterly squandered and doomed campaigns. All this only served to strengthen the Jurchen position, who quickly came to find that they didn't actually need the Chinese

to utterly destroy the Liao and supplant them entirely. So no, China, you'll not be getting a cut of the war booty. In fact, all those agreements to pay the Liao annual tribute, well, we're just going to go ahead and take those up as our own now. Please leave the silver and silk right over there, you are dismissed. In the end, the Song were able to recover just six of the 16 prefectures they had lost to the Khitan, and even those, they were forced to simply buy outright from the Jin, who demanded, in addition to the annual tribute payments of 200,000 tails of silver and 300,000 bolts of silk,

a one-time payment of 1 million strings of cash. These six prefectures did include Yanjing, the former Liao's southern capital, and what is modern Beijing. Yet even the return of this mighty fortress city proved a victory in name only. From Levine, quote, In the fourth month of 1123, Song troops led by Dongguan and Cai Jing's eldest son Cai Yu name only. From quote. So congratulations, you've got Yanjing back. Enjoy your empty, depopulated shell of a city. In concluding such a peace with the Jin, the Song had unknowingly entered into a Faustian pact with the Jurchen. They had put on full display their own feeble military ability to a force that had absolutely crushed the, up until then, most powerful force on the steppe in a matter of mere years. A nominal ally for whom this first taste of Chinese wealth and luxury would not sate its appetite, but only served to whet it further. This treaty of alliance,

as many are, was worded to be both inviolable and perpetual, and yet for all that high-minded wording, it wouldn't even last out the year. The treaty concluded in 1123, stipulated that the border between the Song and the newly consolidated Jin empires was impermeable, and neither side was permitted to harbor defectors from the other. This seems to have been a provision that the Song court had never seriously intended on honoring, since they went immediately about harboring defectors. It can't be said to be entirely their fault, though, as the region at the heart of this contention, again, the 16 prefectures, was by its historical and political nature still very much up in the air and unstable,

with its actual spheres of influence still yet to be settled. In the fifth month of 1123, then, when a former Liao military governor of Pingzhou murdered the Jin regional commander and declared rebellion, the Song rather naturally accepted his transferred allegiance to their cause. The Jin, under its newly enthroned emperor Wu Chimai, however, was having none of it, and dispatched a sizable force to Pingzhou to crush this little rebellion before it got out of hand. In short order, the Khitan governor's force, though sizable, was cut down by the Jurchen troops, and the punitive campaign was concluded after just six months of operations. When the rebel military governor sought asylum in Chinese territory, the Song by this point realized that they had made a huge mistake in backing this guy,

and when the Jin emperor demanded his execution, they dutifully sent his severed head to the Jin court. But it was already too late. Song had violated the treaty in both letter and spirit before the ink was even dry on the document. It was clear that they had no intention of honoring it in the future. Thus it was that this rebellion by the Jiedushi of Pingzhou would just two years later serve as the pretext for Jin's first invasion of Song territories. Before committing to such a large campaign southward, however, the Jin court understood that it needed to shore up its own position and territories first. No use starting a massive foreign campaign while rebels and unincorporated independence movements could still wait for a moment of weakness to strike from the rear. Thus, for the following two years, while they

systematically cleared out and dismantled such internal sources of dissent and concluded an equal peace with the western Xia Tangut tribes, the Jin diplomats steadfastly endured Song arrogance and placated them into believing that they were seriously considering the Chinese's ridiculous demands for further territorial concessions that they'd done nothing to earn. All the while, however, the Jin political and military commands both were planning for the day that they'd be able to devote their full energies to teaching Emperor Huizong and his soft, weak courtiers a harsh northern lesson in humility. The time to act against Chinese arrogance came with the fortuitous news of the capture of the Liao Emperor in early 1125, heralding a final end to the threat the Khitan revanchist might pose to Jin unity. With this greatest symbolic threat now in shackles and demoted, in the 10th month of 1125,

Wu Chimai at last announced that the time had come for the Jin to mobilize the totality of its strength for a massive strike against the south. It was time to teach the southerners a lesson they would not soon forget about the price of messing about in the affairs of the northmen. In a scathing declaration and explanation for the war to come, Wu Qimai drafted an edict chastising Huizong not only for harboring the rebel governor, Zhang Zui, in direct violation of the treaty, but also for falling behind on China's annual tribute payments to their rightful Jin overlords. The Song had been playing with fire, and its diplomat's haughtiness only added more fuel to the pyre. Now was the time to burn it all down.

To say that the Song court was unprepared for what was to come would be a study in understatement. Dividing into two marches, the Jin forces struck southward from Yunzhou and Yanshanfu in the 11th month of 1125, rolling across the Song border like a tsunami of men and horses. The western army under the command of Nian Han, also known by his sinusized name Wanyan Zhonghan, swept down toward Taiyuan and Luoyang, while the eastern army under the command of Wolibu, aka Wangyan Zhongwang, targeted Yanjing, followed by Kaifeng itself. You may recall that one of the key reasons that China had been so desperate to recover

the 16 prefectures for the last century plus was that they provided the best and indeed only defensible points to stymie northern invasion. Without them, the relatively flat open lands of the Yellow River Valley provided virtually no means for the Song armies to position or dig in for any meaningful defense from such a campaign. Thus, after less than two months, at the end of 1125, the two Jing armies had managed to utterly smash the feeble border defenses of the Song and seize the garrisons all across He Dong. Taiyuan would prove to be the first difficult nut for the Jin armies to crack. When Nian Han's forces began surrounding and

preparing to besiege the city, none other than the great general Dong Guan abandoned the walled city entirely and fled back to the capital, leaving the city's defense up to General Wang Bing. Wang would manage to hold out for more than a year, offering staunch resistance to the Jin right up to the very end when he was at last forced to surrender the garrison in the 9th month of 1126, thus greatly slowing down Jin progress toward the Song western capital Luoyang. The eastern expeditionary force under Wulibu, meanwhile, faced no such hurdle in their blitz toward Kaifeng. Easily retaking Yanjing, the Jin had the extra good fortune of having a Liao-turned-Song general, Guo Yaoshi,

once more betray his old paymaster to join with the winning side. With Guo's insider knowledge of Song positions and battle strategies, the Jin made quick work of any and every fortification the Song had thrown up, capturing the plains of Hebei practically unopposed, and seizing the key garrisons of Zhongshan and Zhending by the year's end. By the first days of the new year, 1126, again less than two months into the war, Wolibu's army had reached the very banks of the Yellow River and striking distance from the Song capital, Kaifeng. As we might well imagine, the situation in Kaifeng and the imperial court was one of chaos and panic.

Disaster not only loomed, but had also gripped the northern borderlands firmly. Emperor Huizong, a day late and a dollar short, made several half-hearted attempts to manage this unfurling crisis. He was convinced by his ministers to personally assume responsibility for the military situation, which he did in a self-incriminatory edict promulgated at the end of 1125, voicing his profound regret for failing to preserve the legacy of his imperial progenitors, and summoning a theoretical loyalist citizen army to rescue the dynasty from calamity. But it was too little, too late. The Jin army was less than a week's march outside of the capital walls by this point,

and Huizhong at last did the only thing he could think to do, flee Kaifeng altogether. His destination, and that of his attendant retinue and extended family, would be the southern capital, Yingtianfu, which is modern Xiangqiu city in central Shandong, about 150 kilometers to the southeast of Kaifeng. Huizhong at this point also gave up the throne. Well, sort of. Assuming the title of Retired Emperor, or Taishang Huangdi, he abdicated the throne to his eldest son, Zhao Huan, who is now in 1125 about 25 years old and would be known to history as Emperor Qinzong. Now, though we've seen such abdications happen in the past, this was a first for the Song, an utterly unprecedented event.

Yet such was the scale of this emergency that there was virtually no objection from the court ministers to this action, who as Levine points out, quote, rationalized that an abdicated ruler was eminently preferable to a defunct dynasty, end quote. Emperor Qinzong would prove himself to be a more activist and engaged monarch than his father, but still nowhere near enough so to be capable of extricating the Song regime from this situation. Quote, ever-changing cast of ministers. Qin Zong vacillated between appeasing the Jurchen and provoking them. Levin posits, though, that by this point events had unfolded against the Song too and passed the point that even a strong ruler could have changed the ultimate outcome. The Jurchen Jin force were, quite simply, in every way the Song's superior, and no symbolic changing of the guard in 1125 was going to unring that bell.

The Jin armies crossed the Yellow River in the early days of the new year, 1126. The imperial court issued orders to the defenders of Kaifeng to prepare the city's defenses, but when the Jin encircled the city, the Song ministers flipped and suddenly began pushing for diplomacy rather than resistance. Emperor Qinzong authorized his ministers to enter into direct negotiations with Jin commanders, who were themselves fairly eager to avoid the heavy cost of an extended siege against the formidable defenses of the capital city. Thus, the Jin made the Song an offer that they couldn't refuse. The Jin would agree to withdraw, but the price would be truly devastating. Session of the three most strategically pivotal prefectures in the north, Taiyuan, Zhongshan, and Hejian. In other words, the northern Song's

entire reconstituted defensive perimeter south of the 16 prefectures. Moreover, the annual tribute payment would be substantially increased, from 200,000 to 300,000 tails of silver, 300,000 bolts of silk, and 1 million strings of cash per year. This was a pill that for many within the Song court proved too bitter to swallow. It would be nothing less than a violation of the territorial and moral integrity of the empire. One minister on the 27th day of the first month expressed to Qin Zong in a direct audience that he should be allowed to deploy the crack military forces that had been recalled to the capital against the Jin forces that yet lay outside the city walls, awaiting the Chinese response. This minister, Li Gang, argued that the imperial troops outnumbered the Jin barbarians by

at least three to one, and should therefore be able to achieve an easy victory in driving the Jurchen back. Qin Zong was convinced, and a nighttime ambush was organized to slaughter the besiegers. It would prove to be an utter fiasco, in its aftermath forcing Qin Zong to issue a direct apology to the Jin commanders and fire Li Gong and two of the generals who had concurred with his strategy. Song Chinese's reaction to its conduct in both the war and even more so, the forced peace, was by no means limited to the upper echelons of government. A popular outcry is recorded as having swept through the Kaifeng citizenry, led by a university student named Chen Dong, who has in subsequent historiography been lionized as a hero and, as we will see, martyr. Chen made initial waves by repeatedly

memorializing the throne and demanding that the so-called Liu Zhe, or six felons, of the imperial court, whom we've discussed in previous episodes, be put to death at once for their alleged crimes against the people in the dynasty. From Levine, quote, He alleged that the corrupt and sinister regime of the treacherous ministers had enervated the empire from within while recklessly opening rifts with neighboring states. In later memorials, Chen implored the emperor to replace the current pro-appeasement minister with Li Gang, whom he deemed a suitably intransigent candidate for the councillorship. In the second month of 1126, Chen Dong personally led a mass

demonstration in the capital against the perceived injustices, which wound up turning into a near revolt when incensed protesters stormed the palace gates themselves and slaughtered every court eunuch they could get their hands on, with a final death poll numbering it in the dozens. With little else it could do, the court announced that it would accede to their and Chen Dong's demands, at last placating the crowd enough so that they dispersed. And accede, Chen Dong did, reluctantly ordering the execution of the six felons who had, the populace was convinced at least, led their empire to the brink of ruin, often alongside several of their family members. The luckier ones were merely banished to the far corners of the empire, never again to sniff power.

Quote, After monopolizing power for 25 years, Huizong's treacherous ministers did not live to see the dynasty fall, but would be subject to the everlasting condemnation of history. End quote. None of this, of course, did anything to lift the Jin siege of Kaifeng, and with his own populace now at least partially satisfied with the blood of their perceived inward enemies, Qinzong at last moved to meet the demands of his exterior foe. The ministers of the court who urged appeasement at last seized the emperor's ear and successfully convinced him that the only possible solution would be for him

to agree to sign the treaty as dictated by the Jurchen invaders. Thus it was that Qin Zong officially apologized for his government's actions against the Jin and authorized the cessation of the three stipulated garrisons to Jurchen forces. In all human history, there are few stories like that of ancient Egypt. On the banks of the Nile, these people created one of the most enduring and significant cultures. Their tale comes to life in the History of Egypt podcast. Every week, we explore the tales of this amazing culture, from the legendary days of creation and the gods, all the way to Cleopatra, and everything in between. The History of Egypt podcast is written and produced by a trained Egyptologist. We go much deeper than your average documentary or magazine article, to uncover tales of life, great endeavors, and the amazing arc of a mighty kingdom.

The History of Egypt podcast is available on all podcasting platforms, apps, and websites. Come, visit ancient Egypt, and experience a legendary culture. In response, the Jin armies duly withdrew from their encirclement of the capital city on the 10th day of the second month of 1126, returned two of the captured princes they'd been holding as hostages back to Chinese control. It was over. The Song had lost, but had managed to buy its survival. Or at least it might have, if not for the emperor himself. For no more than a month after the treaty between Song and Jin had been concluded in the second

month, Qianzong began taking active measures to rehabilitate the pro-war faction of his court, and shift from a policy of appeasement to one of further provocation. This would in short order, utterly unmake the shaky peace that had already cost the Chinese so much, and precipitate a second and even more catastrophic campaign by the Jurchen against the Southerners, who still just didn't seem to know when they'd been subjugated. Chalk it up, perhaps, to a cultural and ideological worldview that fundamentally could not conceive, much less accept, the idea that they were anything other than the top dog amongst all under heaven. But Qin Zong and a sizable number of his ministers

immediately began preparations for the decisive conflict that would restore their hegemony over the world. And it would indeed prove to be a decisive conflict, just not in the way that they had been predicting. In spite of this tentative agreement on paper, on the battlefield, absent any means of quick communication with the capital governments, the war yet raged on. Through the mountains and valleys of Shanxi, the Jin forces plunged onward, devastating the ranks of Song defenders foolish enough to have not yet fled outright. Taiyuan was left under siege by a smaller contingent of Nian Han's army, while the Jurchen commander withdrew northward towards Datong city as of the third month of 1126. Yet even this remnant force proved more than capable of stymieing repeated Song efforts to dislodge them and lift the siege of the great city,

as the Chinese officers continually allowed their forces to be isolated and picked off one by one by the Jin harassers well before they were even in sight of the city they'd been charged to retake. Levine notes that it was not entirely one-sided, and that there were sporadic Song victories, particularly the battles of Shouyang and Yuzhe. Yet they seem to have been, in the final analysis, little more than false sparks of hope for Qin Zong and his bellicose war ministers, providing the illusion of a silver lining where none really existed.

In the end, it may have been better for the Song as a political entity to have been crushingly defeated in every battle during this period, which might have at least convinced the Chinese emperor that this was a war no longer worth pursuing to its inevitable conclusion. This is further shown at the time by the fact that in an apparent show of confidence and bravado, both Emperor Qinzong and his father Huizong at this point returned to Kaifeng from their secondary capital at Yingtianfu. It would prove to be a fateful decision. This was doubly true considering that in the wake of this stern Chinese resistance to Jin occupation of the prefectures that the newly signed treaty had legally ceded to the Jurchen,

the northerners viewed such resoluteness as a violation of the armistice outright. Well, alright, you're not going to honor your treaty commitments? Well, then neither will we. Thus, in the 8th month of 1126, Jin generals Yan Han and Wu Libu committed their armies to a renewed punitive expedition against the clearly untrustworthy Song regime, once more dividing their armies into a two-pronged east-west assault plan. Just as before, dividing their armies into a two-pronged east-west assault plan. Just as before, dividing their armies into a two-pronged east-west assault plan. From Levine, quote, Nian Han's forces proceeded south to mount a ferocious attack upon Taiyuan.

Stubbornly holding out for more than 250 days, its defenders exhausted all their provisions, and approximately 90% of the city's residents died of starvation or disease. On the third day of the ninth month of 1126, the last pockets of Song resistance were eliminated, when the intransigent general, Wang Bing, died in battle, and the defeated city's prefect surrendered to the Jurchen. It was worse than simply losing Taiyuan, however bad that was in itself. Because in so committing the imperial elite units to the city's doomed defense,

General Wang's stubbornness had likewise doomed Kaifeng in the process. The cream of the Song crop had been annihilated at Taiyuan, rendering Kaifeng essentially indefensible in the face of the Jin follow-up strike against it. By the final quarter of 1126, the whole of northern China lay open and for the taking by the Jurchenjin armies, and everyone knew it. The fall of Taiyuan was the watershed event in the Songjin Wars, rendering moot any further resistance by the Song court to do anything other than capitulate utterly. In the 10th month of that year, the Song court renewed the peace overtures to the Jin commanders, overlaid with unmistakable notes of panic and despair.

Still, the Zhechen commanders pressed onward, defeating the garrison guarding the crossing of the Yellow River with apparent ease and proceeding to capture Luoyang, before proceeding against Kaifeng directly. By the end of the 11th month, they had defeated the final outlying garrisons at Zhending and Daming, and both Jurchen armies converged on the capital for the second time that year, encircling it completely and setting up their siege works once again. Song peace envoys, now including one of the emperor's own brothers, who will become very important indeed by this episode's end, Prince Zhao Gou, once again offered territorial concessions in exchange for peace, promising to return the previously ceded prefectures of Taiyuan, Zhongshan, and Hejian to Jin authority. But they were, understandably, almost laughed out of audience for such a suggestion. You mean you're offering us what

we already have right to by previous treaty and what we've already captured outright by military force? Are you kidding me? There was in fact very little the Song court could have offered that would have even given the Jin command pause in its march of conquest at this point, as they by now justifiably viewed Song negotiations as having been conducted in bad faith. Fool me once and all. Moreover, why bother? The Chinese armies had shown themselves to be no match for Jurchen military might. Does one negotiate with a bothersome gnat? Even so, the Jin were still willing to come to the table, but only to demand a price so staggering that it could scarcely be believed by the Song negotiators in attendance. Oh yes, they said, you will be seating those three prefectures. That's not up for negotiation. That's old news.

No, you want to save your political regime? That's going to cost you everything. Absolutely everything north of the Yellow River. That's all ours now, and you will recognize it as such with a formal interstate boundary. One can only imagine the flabbergasted silence that must have followed this demand. This was utterly unprecedented, abjectly humiliating, completely intolerable, and yet there was nothing for it. Even as the Song imperial court furiously argued back and forth

amongst themselves between advocates of surrender and advocates of resistance from the court, the emperor himself ordered that the gates of all cities across Hebei and Hedong be flung open and that their millions of inhabitants surrender to the Jin invaders without further resistance. Even as the Song court continued to dither and squabble over the acceptability of such actions, the battle for Kaifeng had already begun. The siege of Kaifeng was fearsome indeed, with the two armies both sustaining heavy casualties for more than three straight weeks. Yet the Song strategy that had sought to engage the Jin across the north rather than concentrate in defense of the capital now proved ruinous in this final conflict, for the defenders of Kaifeng were limited in number,

perhaps only 70,000 total, while the Jurchen surrounding them at least doubled that number, maybe as many as 150,000 soldiers, having learned from their frustrated and abortive last attempt at besieging the city that quantity has a quality all its own. Even so, in the initial phases of the battle, the numbers dead clearly favored the Chinese defenders. Peter Allen Lorge noted in his War, Politics, and Society in Early Modern China, 900-1795, that the initial assault saw more than 3,000 Jurchen slain while fewer than 300 Chinese soldiers fell. Still, the Song defenders proved themselves far more inept at psychological warfare than their besiegers. For, quote, far more inept at psychological warfare than their besiegers, for Thus, the Chinese defenders of Kaifeng fought valiantly. They fought nobly.

They fought bravely. And they died. Winter had by this point set in, and it was under the cover of a fearsome snowstorm that the first wave of Jin troops at last breached the capital's walls and stormed into the city's districts. Again from Levine, quote, Qianzong emerged from the defeated city to discuss terms with the princes Wanyan Zhonghan, Nianhan, and Wanyan Zhongwang, Wolibu, at their encampment, and his official declaration of unconditional surrender was issued on the second day of the last month of 1126. Four days later,

representatives of the imperial court officially ceded Hedong and Hebei circuits in their entirety to the Jin, and an imperial edict ordered Song subjects in the territories to surrender to their new masters. In the wake of this momentous victory, by way of celebration, what could be more appropriate than to let the victorious troops celebrate a bit by thoroughly looting and pillaging the captured capital? An act that yielded massive quantities of gold, silver, silk, and slaves for the Jurchen soldiers. Among the items looted were the very symbols of the Song monarchy's potency and authority. In the course of ransacking the palace, the Jurchen were sure to strip away the imperial seals, jewels, antiques, art objects, and ritual implements, as well as

taking captive many hundreds of members of the imperial retinue and household, musicians and female servants primarily, for their own use. From the 13th century Southern Song Compendium, accounts of Jing Kang, quote, On the 24th, Kaibao Temple was set ablaze. On the 25th, the books of the Imperial College were confiscated. On January 25th of the following year, jade books, chariots, imperial headwear, ceremonial instruments, and 600 young girls and several hundred musicians were seized.

On the 27th, some 50 servants were abducted." Such prisoners, specifically the women, were ordered to serve at the pleasure of their new lords, regardless of what rank or station they may have previously held, with truly brutal consequences as the price of resistance. Again, from accounts of Jing Khan, "...because the maiden martyrs, Mistress Zhang and Mistress Cao, Not even the emperor's own family or harem were safe from sexual slavery at the hands of the Jurchen conquerors. Once again, from the accounts of Jing Khan, quote, An angry Wang Yan Zhong Han said, Yesterday, I was ordered to separate the prisoners. How can you, Emperor Qin Zong, refuse to obey? Our men will each take two women.

Emperor Qin Zong replied, Above there is heaven, and below emperors and the people have their daughters and daughter-in-laws. His protest proved ineffective. Jin Prince Shiyama married Qianzong's daughter, Princess Zhao Fujian, during his journey back north. After Shiyama arrived back at the supreme capital, the Jin Emperor Taizong delivered the following edict. The Imperial Princess Zhao Fujian, along with the concubines Xu Hanying, Yang Diaowar, and Cheng Wanwan, are hereby bestowed upon Prince Shiyama. End quote. And yeah, just to drive the point home, though such records speak of marriage, don't get anything consensual or willing into your head about this. As in all of these instances,

when the records tell that Shiyama took Princess F Fujian as his bride, place a heavy, heavy emphasis on the word took. In fact, that same section tells us that many of the women of Kaifeng, rather than submit to sexual slavery by the Jurchen, instead made the only other choice they could, drowning themselves in the wells and rivers across the city rather than submit. Emperor Qinzong was already in Jurchen custody, to be sure, but any thought of further Song resistance from the south of the Yellow River was stymied when Qinzong's father, the retired Emperor Huizong, was himself intercepted and taken captive by Jin forces while he fled southward, returning him as prisoner to the captured city as well.

With both living monarchs of the Song in captivity, Jin Emperor Taizong issued a decree on the sixth day of the seventh month of 1127, symbolically decapitating the Song dynasty altogether by stripping both father and son of their imperial titles and demoting them to lesser and thoroughly humiliating titles. To the former retired emperor, Taizong issued the title of hende gong, meaning the besotted duke, while his son, Qianzong, received the even more humiliating title of chonghun hou, or the doubly besotted marquis.

From Levine, With these brushstrokes, embodied by its monarchs, the northern Song government effectively ceased to exist. Its demise was hastened by negligent and vacillating monarchs whose irredentist ministers and generals had dragged the empire into two wars with the Jurchen. With duplicitous diplomacy and strategic negligence, the courts of Huizhong and Qiansong had squandered their resources in border entanglements." And with that, the Jurchen forces packed up and left for home, trailing along behind them the sum total of the once-glorious capital's wealth, as well as more than 4,000 prisoners-slash-slaves for their own

use, including the two deposed former emperors. Almost the entire surviving imperial clan had been taken in the sack of Kaifeng, and they would one and all spend the rest of their inglorious days enslaved among the alien forests along the Black Dragon River and servants to the alien people of the Golden Dynasty. Up at the Jin Supreme Capital, Emperor Taizong astutely realized that trying to keep an iron grip on the whole of northern China, while tempting, would likely prove to be a bigger bite than his armies, powerful though they were, could effectively chew. Already, widespread resistance was cropping up across Hebei and Hedong, in spite of the Song emperor's decree to do no such thing. Armed Song loyalists were taking to the hills and actively resisting occupation,

and while they certainly would prove no threat in and of themselves, the cost of suppression could easily eat up much, if not all, of the gains their conquest of the Yellow River Valley had given to the Jurchen. Thus, Jin Taizong relinquished the territories north of the Yellow River to a former Song chancellor turned Jin collaborator Zhang Bangchang as the puppet emperor of the newly created state of Qu to act as a buffer state against potential Song reprisals as well as an attempt to stem the rising tide of popular discontent at foreign occupation. Professor Tao Jing Shen writes of Zhang, quote, emperor's yellow robes. To give some legitimacy and stability to his new regime, he enlisted the support of Dowager Empress Yuan Yu, whom he declared the Dowager Empress of Song, end quote. And so, here we stand with the defenses of Song utterly destroyed, the realm divided,

and the entire imperial family now Zhecheng's slaves. A puppet emperor sits the throne in Kaifeng as little more than a sniveling toady of mighty Jin Taizong as he rules from Shangjing. It seems to be the end of Song, and of an independent China altogether. But not quite all of the House of Zhao has been taken captive. A spark of hope yet flickers in the darkness, for even now, young Prince Zhao Gou, the Prince of Kang, is making his way south to the southern capital at Yingtianfu. And while he lives, so too does a hope for the future of the Song. And he's not alone.

Because in this darkest of hours, heroes have arisen to fight for every square li of sacred Chinese soil that they've lost. But none so famous as the warrior poet who has graced the cover of this very podcast for five years now, General Yue Fei, the Flying Fury of the Southern Song. But we'll get to all that next time. Until then, 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.