The History of China - #154 - S. Song 1: Song of the South

Episode Date: November 19, 2018

The JURCHEN JIN reigns. Having decimated the Song Dynasty, Emperor Jin Taizong now deploys his merciless legions to seize military control of the Yellow River Valley. Only Prince Zhao Gou and his band of LOYALIST ministers stand against the rising tyranny, certain that the last scion of Zhao can yet restore a spark of hope to the fight. But the Loyalists have been exposed. As the Jin cavalry speeds toward Yintian Fu, the brave heroes mount a desperate escape.... Historical Period Covered: 1127-1130 CE Major Historical Figures: Song Dynasty: Prince Zhao Gou, Prince of Kang (Emperor Gaozong of Song) [r. 1129-1162] Chancellor Li Gang [1083-1140] Yue Fei, LEGENDARY CHINESE HERO [1103-1142] General Zong Ze, He Tried [d. 1129] General Du Cheng, Brave Sir Du Cheng Ran Away... Bravely Ran Away, Away! General Han Shizheng, He Means Business Jin Dynasty: Emperor Taizong of Jin (Wuqimai) [r. 1123-1135] Prince Wanyan Wuzhu, Commander of Jin Strikeforce [d. 1148] Zhang Bangchang, Puppet Emperor of Great Chu [r. 1129-1129] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Hello, and welcome to the History of China. Episode 154, Song of the South Last time, the Northern Song Dynasty came to its sudden, violent end at the hands of a pair of double-pronged invasions by the Jurchen Jin armies, fresh off their stunning usurpation of the Liao dynasty. In the wake of the capture and thorough sacking of Kaifeng, both Song emperors and almost the entirety of the Zhao royal family had been carted off to the north to live out the rest of their lives in bondage. The north of China had then been entrusted to a Jin toady, Zhang Bangchang, as the puppet emperor of the Jurchen vassal state known as Great Chu. Meanwhile, the last scion of the House of Zhao, the Prince of Kang,

had managed to slip the net and flee southward to, hopefully, safety. Today, then, pursued by the Jin Empire's sinister agents, Prince Zhao Gou races home to Ying Tianfu aboard his stallion, custodian of the last line of legitimacy that can save his dynasty and Mator Song rule to all under heaven. Zhao Gou was born to royalty, but never born to rule. He was, as put by historian Peter Lorge, quote, a rather ordinary man faced with an extraordinary and unexpected situation, end quote. As the ninth son of Huizong and the half-brother of Qinzong, though he was technically in line for the throne, there was virtually no way he'd ever be anything but a privileged rich boy leading a life of luxury, painting, and calligraphy.

In fact, it would prove to be his very expendability that, in a twist proving that the universe has a sense of irony all its own, would come to ensure his survival and freedom when the walls came crashing down around his family in 1125-1126. At the opening of the first Jin invasion of Song, the Prince of Kang volunteered to be sent to the Jurchen commanders as both negotiator and valuable hostage. Yet he was deemed to be a little bit too undiplomatic for the task, which was instead given to one of his older brothers, the Prince of Su, who would, in due course, be taken hostage and ultimately joined by the rest of his family in captivity. It was during the second Jin invasion the following year that Zhao Ge was at last dispatched in his turn to act as royal negotiator slash pawn, yet he would never arrive at the Jin

command tents. While en route, he was detained in the city of Cizhou in southern Hebei, which is now a part of modern Handan City. The city's residents were enraged by the chaos surrounding them, and refused to let the prince pass through. As such, when the walls of Kaifeng were breached and the city brutally taken later that year, Zhao Ge remained the only imperial prince not taken hostage and outside of the doomed capital city. Before being himself taken captive, and apparently seeing the writing on the wall, Ge's older half-brother, Emperor Qianzong, was able to dispatch a message to the Prince of Kang, appointing him as the overall commander of all Songed armed forces within Hebei.

Flash forward to early 1127, when the Jurchen had finally finished raping, burning, and pillaging the capital, had packed up everyone and everything they'd wanted, and headed north for home. And Jin Taizong had set up Bang Zhangchang as the quote-unquote Emperor of Chu. And you may recall that from last time, Emperor Zhang was, if anything, a very reluctant ruler, even if it was in name only. And so it seems like it wasn't too terribly difficult for the remaining Song officials left in northern China to convince Zhang, ensconced within his capital at Jiankang, which is modern Nanjing, to give up his throne and return it to the scion of Zhao, who would arrive at the secondary capital and return it to the scion of Zhao,

who would arrive at the secondary capital at the end of the fourth month of 1127. From Dao Jinshan, Zhang Bangchang offered no objections, and on the first of the fifth month of 1127 at Yingtianfu, Dowager Empress Yuan Yu proclaimed Prince Kang as the new Song Emperor. The state of Daqiu had barely lasted one month. End quote. The proclamation read, in part, quote,

After nine generations, the House of Han met with misfortune. Then came Han Guangmu Di's restoration in 25 CE. Among the nine sons of Duke Xian of the state of Qin during the Spring and Autumn period, Zhong'er alone survived. This was ordained by heaven and was not the work of human beings. End quote. Okay, so let's unpack this reference-rich statement. The document is offering up why it's not only acceptable,

but divinely correct and totally within precedent to re-enthrone a family that had been kicked out of power already. The enthronement of Zhao Go was being directly compared to the restoration of the Han Dynasty under Emperor Guangwu after the Wangmeng usurpation in the first century. There's more, again from Professor Tao, quote, Moreover, the number 9 was used by the new regime to show cosmic symmetry between Prince Kang and the Song dynastic line, as there had been nine previous emperors in what would be known as the Northern Song, and Zhao Gou, Prince Kang, was the ninth son of Huizong, end quote. When Zhao Gou was enthroned, becoming what history will remember as Emperor Gao Zong,

he was only 21 years old. Now, we have certainly had younger emperors than that, but rarely one with so much pressure and danger surrounding him immediately upon enthronement. He didn't even have the relative, albeit dubious, luxury, of a regent to smooth his transition into power. They had all, after all, been carted off to the Great White North. No, with whoever might still be left around him, but otherwise pretty much all on his own, Gaozong was going to have to first save, and then, if possible, begin rebuilding his all-but-dead dynasty from virtually the ground up.

Before he could even really dig into that, though, he was going to need to survive long enough to find somewhere, anywhere, safe from the Jin armies. Because make no mistake, the Jurchen Emperor, Wu Chimai, were not about to just let the last heir of the Song imperial family go running off to rise anew. So the first order of business must be to try to find some way of slowing down or, ideally, stopping further Jin aggression from coming southward. It would prove to be no easy task. One of Gaozong's first act as the newly enthroned emperor at Yingtianfu was to reappoint the

notoriously bellicose Li Gang as his first chancellor and charge him with this duty. Chancellor Li pointed out that, well, that was going to be a pretty steep hill to climb since there, um, was no sizable imperial army anywhere nearby. Thus, Li suggested that what they must initially concentrate on was to strengthen and fortify the Song's already buckled and broken lines of defense in the north, re-establish the imperial court at Kaifeng, and all while building up to an eventual counter-offensive against the Jin. At this, Gaozong balked.

I'm sorry, were you under a rock for the past few years? Did you see what just happened to Kaifeng and, oh yeah, my entire family? And that was when the Song was much stronger and more organized than this shattered government that I've been left with. You really think that we're going to stand a chance? Instead, Gaozong favored a policy of retreat southward in search of a defensible region, first to Nanyang, and then potentially a secondary fallback point at Xiangyang. On this, he'd broker no debate.

He was going to move his court south, no matter what Li had to say on the matter. This cuts to the heart of one of Emperor Gaozong's earliest struggles, that would stick with him all through the coming conflict between him and the Zhecheng, that what he wanted was at odds with what he needed. From Lorge, quote, His first priority was his own survival and freedom, followed by preservation of his position as ruler of the remaining Song Empire. These interests argued for making peace with the Jurchen as soon as possible, under whatever conditions would allow him to remain as emperor. Gaozong could not openly adopt this position, however, since it would have

undermined his legitimacy in the eyes of many people, end quote. And as we'll see, Gaozong will need no help in terms of undermining his legitimacy in the eyes of his people. On other points, however, Ligong's insistence found more fertile soil in the young emperor's mind, or at least he repeated them so fervently and so often that the chancellor was eventually able to wear Gaozong down over time. The most extreme of these policies that found eventual purchase was a staunch opposition to negotiation with the Jin court as a matter of principle, and that Zhang Bangchang, the reluctant patsy of Jin Taizong and he who had just voluntarily ceded the throne back to Gaozong, must be considered as a traitor to the dynasty and put to death. Zhang seems to have been given the option of retaining his honor, such as it was,

by being induced to commit suicide rather than face a formal state execution, which was an offer that he took. In his decision to move southward, Gaozong was backed up by two of his other early adopter advisors, Huang Qianshang and Huang Boyan, both of whom reportedly treated the emperor like nursemaids protecting a baby. Gaozong was so smitten with them that after only 75 days, he dismissed Ligang from his post as chancellor entirely and installed Huang and Wang in his place. They would, in addition to backing up his retreat plan, pressure the emperor to stage the execution of two student leaders in Kaifeng who we briefly discussed last time. They were Chen Dong and Ouyang Zhe, who had organized an anti-government protest just prior to the sacking of the capital, and now were outspokenly

calling into question Gaozong's very legitimacy as emperor by saying that technically the other two emperors, Qianzong and Huizong, were still alive and therefore the rightful rulers of Song. The direct implication was, of course, that Gaozong was nothing more than an illegal usurper. Enraged, Gaozong acted on his new chancellor's suggestions and had the two publicly beheaded, an act that he came to regret later in his life as an unfortunate result of his own youthful intemperance. By this point, up in the Jin Supreme Capital, Shanzing, Wu Qimai, aka Taizong, had received word that this brash upstart from the House of Zhao had somehow slipped his net and was not only calling himself the Emperor of Song, but had put his appointed

puppet king to death and unilaterally abolished Great Chu. This was unacceptable. Thus it was that a third strike was prepared by the Jin armies to finish the Song off once and for all. When word reached the south, the defenses of Kaifeng were hastily shored up under the command of General Zongzi, centered around a frontline network of defenses along the southern banks of the Yellow River at likely points of crossing, enlisting the aid of young officers such as Wang Yan and legendary Chinese hero Yue Fei, who we'll be delving more into in depth in the next episode. Having cobbled together what defensive measures he could,

General Zong wrote to Emperor Gao Zong, informing him that it was definitely, probably, totally, mostly, maybe safe for him to come back to Kaifeng. But to this, Gao Zong was like, yeah, okay, if you say so, but I've got some stuff to do in the south, like not get captured, but have fun with your little city defense. I'm sure you won't all die horribly. In the months to follow, the Jin mobilized, and to the surprise of no one, retook piece by piece virtually all of Hebei and the central plains of the Yellow River Valley.

Not long thereafter, they were knock knockknock-knocking on Kaifeng's door. Trapped within, General Zong realized that he had made a huge mistake, and desperately wrote for the court to send him reinforcements, which was denied. Thus, after organizing the best defense that he could muster with the scant resources at his disposal, Zongzi was killed in action during heavy fighting outside of the city walls, and thereafter replaced with an even more forgettable commander whose name I won't really trouble you with. Hey Zong, at least you tried. In the 10th month of 1127, having already sent orders to the local governor to prepare the city

and its defenses for his arrival, Gaozong and his court set out southward via the Grand Canal for Yangzhou, which was along, and the namesake of, the northern mouth of the Yangzhou River. After a trip of 27 days, and having sailed by the cities of Suzhou and Chuzhou, he arrived safely. There, he would stay for the next year and change, as the Jin armies swarmed over the Northlands like a hill of exceptionally angry ants. In fact, by the new year of 1129, they had penetrated far enough south to have taken sections of the Huai River Valley, which, sitting as it was about halfway between the Yellow and Yangtze, was just a bit too close for Gaozong's comfort. Again, from Tao, quote, Another Jin force was poised to fight its way down south to the Grand Canal to Suzhou and Chuzhou.

The speed of their advance surprised Gaozong. A Jurchun vanguard detachment reached the outskirts of Yangzhou and attacked the imperial entourage. In the ensuing confusion, the emperor escaped on horseback, accompanied by only a few officials. He was able to cross the river in a small boat and made his way south to Hangzhou." That's right, he escaped Jin capture at Yangzhou by the literal skin of his teeth to flee southward yet again, and it would not be for the last time. As it would turn out, though, Hangzhou wouldn't prove to be the safe haven that Emperor Gaozong must have hoped it to be. Not threatened by the Jin, or at least not yet anyway, but rather quickly he found himself at the center of an uprising within his own Imperial Guard Corps. Two disgruntled

officers, angry apparently at having recently been passed over for promotion, mutinied, killed many of the court eunuchs, including Gaozong's favorite, and issued a set of demands. First, they said, the Song court must open negotiations with the Jin to bring the war to a halt and reach a peace settlement immediately. Second, Gaozong should not be the emperor. Their argument here was very similar to that which had been made by the executed student leaders back in Kaifeng, that Gaozong couldn't be the emperor because his brother Qinzong was still alive and had not actually abdicated. Having taken the palace by surprise, they forced Gaozong to abdicate in favor of his infant son then and there, with a dowager empress to rule as a regent, which Tao points out was the

logical first step in trying to work out a peace deal of their own with the Jurchen leadership. It turned out, though, that the rest of the court and the Song military weren't so gung-ho about doing away with Gaozong and installing an infant in this time of crisis. The recently appointed chancellor, Zhu Shengfei, entered into negotiations with the pair of mutineer leaders, seemingly in an attempt to buy time while the regional military forces could be summoned to the makeshift imperial palace within Hangzhou. The mutineers quickly realized that they had vastly overestimated their support within the government and military, and also underthought just, uh, exactly what they were going to do next after having seized the palace.

When it became clear that they'd been completely surrounded by the loyalist military forces and that there was no way out, the two gave up the ghost, and without much fighting, the generals arrested the rebel leaders and summarily executed them. Napoleon Bonaparte rose from obscurity to become the most powerful and significant figure in modern history. Over 200 years after his death, people are still debating his legacy. He was a man of contradictions, a tyrant and a reformer, a liberator and an oppressor, a revolutionary and a reactionary. His biography reads like a novel, and his influence is almost beyond measure. I'm Everett Rummage, host of the Age of Napoleon podcast, and every month I delve into

the turbulent life and times of one of the greatest characters in history, and explore the world that shaped him in all its glory and tragedy. It's a story of great battles and campaigns, political intrigue, and massive social and economic change, but it's also a story about people, populated with remarkable characters. I hope you'll join me as I examine this fascinating era of history. Find The Age of Napoleon wherever you get your podcasts. Though the mutiny was over almost as soon as it had begun, lasting in all less than a month from initial uprising to the executions, the event seems to have profoundly impacted the young monarch for the rest of his reign. Though it wouldn't drive him to madness and pyromania like a certain

Westerosi king, it would solidify in Gaozong the fundamental need for him to centralize his authority, and especially that of the military, in his own hands, and led over the course of his reign to frequently changing his chancellors in the decades that would follow in an ongoing attempt to find officials with viewpoints most in line with his own. In a related little hiccup that would occur as a result of the defiance of Hangzhou, Gaozong was also deeply embarrassed that in the course of his capture he had been reduced in rank from sovereign to mere grand marshal, or Da Yuan Shui, which had put him technically at an equal station to that of his Chancellor, Zhu Shengfei. Yes, the very same Chancellor that had just bought the

Song military time enough through his negotiations to position their forces around the palace and thus save Gaozong's bacon. In spite of his service to the throne, Gaozong apparently could not countenance the idea that he had been, however briefly, the peer of his close advisor. Thus, Zhu was given leave to retire, and given a prestigious regional appointment instead. I mean, it's not a bad door prize, mind you, but this is still a rather ridiculous situation. Gaozong's restoration required several actions taken in order to be rehabilitated, at least in his own mind. First, his reign-era title was restored to Jianyan, the Era of Growing Flame, since it had briefly been changed to Mingxiu during the quote-unquote reign of his son

during the mutiny. Along with the reign restoration, a general amnesty was declared, as was customary. Edicts were promulgated, forcefully reiterating that eunuchs were not to interfere with court affairs, and finally, in an act of defiance against the ever-encroaching Jin, Gaozong ordered that the Song capital be moved once again from Hangzhou upriver to Jiangning, which would be officially renamed to its ancient name, Jiankang. But for simplicity's sake, I'm just going to continue doing as I've done most of the time and call it by its modern name, Nanjing, except where it may be necessary. The move to Nanjing was an act of defiance against the Jin, by the way, not only

because that had been the seat of the short-lived Great Chu state of Zhang Bangchang, but also because, since it sat further upriver and away from the coast, it would not be quite as easy for the emperor to escape to sea. Still, the move wasn't all chest-puffing and come-at-me-bro posturing. Nanjing was, on the whole, a better city to establish an administrative nexus from than Hangzhou. It was more centralized in terms of both civilian and military affairs, was an excellent communication hub, was overall a larger city and more expandable, and was still quite defensible, sitting as it did on the southern bank of the mighty Yangtze. For a time, all seemed well from

his temporary residence in Nanjing. In early 1129, the central government was fundamentally reorganized to streamline its decision-making abilities in order to better cope with emergencies like, I don't know, say, barbarian invasion. Quote, The traditional three departments, the Secretariat, the Chancellery, and the Department of State Affairs, were merged into a single organization, still called the Department of State Affairs. It was headed by two chief counselors, serving the emperor directly. End quote. Yet in the seventh month of that year, tragedy struck the royal household when Gaozong's first, and as it would turn out, only, son suddenly died at age three. The emperor was very understandably devastated by the loss and grieved.

The court officials were likewise distraught by the loss of their heir apparent, but for a rather different reason. It had been shown time and again that there were deep veins of resentment at Gaozong for having taken the throne while his father and elder brother still drew breath, and he was, it should be noted, on fairly unsteady legal ground for having done so in spite of the extenuating circumstance. The loss of his direct successor therefore threw yet another monkey wrench into the ongoing question of legitimacy and to the stability and future survival of the dynasty at large. If a rupture were allowed to emerge, and not just a couple of officers here or a few student leaders there, but some distant relative claiming the

throne in his own right with a sizable backing, the whole realm, such as it was, could well erupt into full-scale civil war at this, the worst possible moment. But Gaozong was in no mood in 1129 to discuss any such issue, and he promptly demoted and exiled the first official who dared bring up the question of succession. It was only about a year later in 1130 that he allowed the topic at last to be brought up again, and he initially agreed to have a number of children from the households of the extended Zhao clan to be brought into the palace and raised as potential heirs. At this, however, a county magistrate offered a slightly different suggestion, that it be specifically the descendants of the founding Song emperor,

Taizu, who should be brought up in the palace and trained in the art of statescraft. You may recall that from episode 34, at the founding of the Song, that upon the death of Taizu in 976, it had been his brother, Zhao Guangyi, who had assumed the throne as Emperor Taizong, rather than either of Taizu's own sons, both of whom were offed pretty quickly thereafter. Their family lines, however, had lived on, and some ten young boys of Taizu's progeny were selected to be raised in the palace, among whom was the boys of Taizu's progeny were selected to be raised in the palace, among whom was the second of Taizu's great-great-great-great-great-grandsons, who was, coincidentally, approximately the same age as Gaozong's own dead son. He was the son of Prince

Anshi of Xiao, and named Zhao Shen. And yeah, let's just get the suspense over with here. He will eventually be the heir and next emperor of Song. Let's at this point take a moment to remember the good old days, specifically the period of the three kingdoms in the mid-third century. You'll surely remember that there were in fact three kingdoms, Wei, Shu, and Wu, and they all hated each other pretty much equally. But no matter how much they disliked each other, the leaders of the two southern states, Sun Wu and Liu Bei, had been able to agree at at least one thing, and that was it was a really bad idea to let Cao Cao and his invincible Wei army to cross the Yangtze River and penetrate the southlands. That it was, in fact, such a bad

idea to allow an enemy army to successfully cross the Yangtze that they had been able to put their mutual hatred on hold long enough to team up and drive Cao Cao back across to the northern bank of the river. You with me so far? Good. The southern bank of the Yangtze still stood, eight centuries later, as the same sort of Maginot line of defense for the Song. The Jin must be stopped there. They absolutely, positively, could not be allowed to cross the river, or all may well be lost. Well, guess what's about to happen. Yeah, my choice of comparison with the Maginot Line was

not accidental. In spite of everything else, by the summer of 1129, the heroic Song defenders still tenaciously clung to their barricades within the besieged city of Kaifeng, far to the north. Within the city's battered walls, the likes of Yue Fei battled on, convinced even after a siege of more than a year, with reason, that they could hold this position and from it begin retaking the northern central plains from the Jurchen invaders. It would be neither the walls, nor the gates, nor the soldiers of Kaifeng who would break. Instead, it would prove to be the tenuous competency of the commander of the city, General Du Cheng. In spite of the vehement protests of

his lieutenant commanders, including Yue Fei, Du ordered a withdrawal from the ancient capital southwards toward the Yangtze. It was a complete doofus maneuver, and the Song as a whole would pay the price for it. Upon receiving word that the last bastion of strong Song resistance in the north had been, what now, abandoned? Suddenly, Nanjing didn't seem quite so safe to Emperor Gaozong anymore. Thus, after just three months in the city, he packed up and moved back to Hangzhou, arriving on the eighth day of the tenth month, 1129. Even there, though, he still had a bad feeling about this, and stayed in Hangzhou for only a week before once again moving even further southward.

From Tao, quote, On the seventeenth of the tenth month, he crossed the Zhe River and proceeded south to Yuezhou, renamed Shaoxing three days later, and then to Mingzhou, modern Ningbo, where he arrived on the 2nd of the 12th month. He had left in the nick of time. With Kaifeng left undefended, although not yet taken, there was nothing left to stop the main column of the Jin army from sweeping southward, and they did so in a startlingly quick fashion.

Beginning in the 11th month of 1129, the once-again two-column force struck southward toward the Yangtze River, quote, rapidly advancing through Hezhou and Huangzhou, and forced a crossing of the Yangtze at Majiadu, upriver west of Nanjing, inflicting a smashing blow on the defending forces. Within Nanjing, the reconstituted Song defenders from Kaifeng, UFA included,

mounted yet another tremendous defense of the city, intent that none should pass while the Yanzhubre... Oh, wait, what's this? General Ducheng is ordering us to withdraw and abandon the city again? Meanwhile, the second Jin column crossed at Jiangzhou, yet further upriver, and struck into Jiangxi's circuit, where it just so happened that the Song Dowager Empress had been sent for her ostensible safety. Well, so much for that. Historian James Leo notes, quote, the Jurchen were the first steppe or pastoral nomadic nationality in Chinese history to cross the Yangtze, end quote. And so, the race was on, Gaozong fleeing for his and his dynasty's very survival and the Jin armies in hot pursuit.

Quote, the Zhechun cavalry advanced at great speed, meeting no opposition to speak of. They forced Han Shizheng to retreat from his base at Zhenjiang to Jiangyin in the Yangtze Delta, and took Changzhou on the 7th of the 12th month. Only four days later, the garrison in Hangzhou abandoned the city to the enemy. On the 24th, the Jin took Shaoxing. End quote. So, just to recap, here's how close the Jin were to trapping and capturing Emperor Gaozong. Gaozong left Nanjing in the late 10th month, and the Jin captured it by the middle of the 11th month. Gaozong departed Hangzhou on the 17th, and within a day or two it had fallen to the Jin.

Gaozong had stopped ever so briefly in Shaoxing sometime between the 19th and the 22nd before proceeding on to Ningbo, and the Jin took Shaoxing by the 24th. They're only about 48 hours behind him, practically breathing down the neck of his yellow robe. The Jurchen cavalry riders at last caught up with the Song Emperor at Ningbo. There, a desperate rearguard defense was mustered by General Zhang Jun at the Battle of Mingzhou, which managed to stave the Jin forces off long enough to allow Gao Zong to board a ship and escape to sea. The day after he departed, Ningbo II fell to the Jurchen warriors. Taking the port city largely intact, the Jin commander, Prince Wu Zhu, commandeered the remaining ships in dock and set out once again in hot pursuit of the Chinese

monarch in flight. Gao Zong and his retinue sailed as fast as the winds would carry them in the only direction they could possibly go. South, ever south. First to Taizhou, then to the port of Wenzhou, the isolated and inscrutable mountain bastion on the rugged southern coastal tip of Zhejiang. And, as a brief aside, my own home away from home here in China, Nihe Wuzhou. Sometime later, he'd set sail even further south to the distant

provincial capital Fuzhou in Fujian. Prince Wuzhu clearly wanted Gaozong, and he wanted him bad, but his soldiers were horsemen and not sailors, and thus after a dogged pursuit of more than a hundred miles at sea, the Jurchen commander was forced to give up the chase and turn back for Ningbo when their route was successfully blocked by elements of the Song navy. Once back in Hangzhou, after a period of about a month, in early February of 1130, Wuzhu declared his search for the Song emperor had come to an end and it was time for he and his victorious forces to return north. But not before they'd take extra special care of their current host city. Hangzhou would receive a very similar treatment to Kaifeng. After being thoroughly looted, the majority of

its inhabitants slaughtered, the rest of the city was then put to the torch. Twelve days later, Suzhou met with the same fate. Yet, now weighted down with the sheer amount of loot they'd plundered from the unfortunate southern cities, the Jin cavalry had been slowed to a relative crawl, and all the while, the Song forces had reformed and begun converging on their treating Jurchen, harrying and harassing them constantly, and to significant effect. This was fairly typical of steppe armies on extended campaigns. What happens when loot is your primary objective,

and you have to carry everything you take along with you wherever you go? Moreover, from Lorge, Even in economically developed areas like southern China, an army that lived off the land could not return to the same place it had just looted. As Jurchen's soldiers became more encumbered with loot, they became less mobile and less interested in further campaigning, though they might be willing to return in the future. Southern China was also much less favorable for cavalry than northern China, and the Jurchen had to cross not only numerous small rivers and canals, but also the Huai and Yangtze rivers. The long retreat of the Jin armies northward would receive its harshest rebuke yet as they crossed back into Chanzhou, which had been reoccupied by the Song armies, and in particular, one very ticked off General Han Shizhong. As the

Jin army pressed toward the city of Zhenjiang, seeking to utilize its river crossing back to the north, they encountered the main body of General Han's force, and where Han Shizhong would become renowned for his greatest wartime stratagem. Ahead of the Jin army's arrival, Han loaded up the entirety of the city's military material into his sea-going ships, and had them sail out of sight of the approaching Jurchen force, then set fire to all military buildings in and around the city. He likewise sent a contingent of 8,000 of his crack cavalry to hide in the mountains and wait for his word. The rest of his soldiers then appeared to make camp near Jiao Shan Temple up in the same mountainous area, and making sure to leave just enough informational breadcrumbs that Prince Wuzhu would realize where they were,

and that they appeared to have committed the folly of backing themselves into a corner. Wuzhu duly gleaned this information and determined that, laden down with treasure or not, the opportunity to kill or capture one of the great Song commanders in the field was an opportunity he just could not pass up. When his force of as many as 100,000 soldiers arrived at Jianshan Temple to capture Han, the general's trap sprang shut, and his force of 8,000 were enough to seal up the narrow mountain road and cut off their route of escape, leading to the popular saying at the time, 十万敌兵来驾到,八千小骑皆中流, which means, even when 100,000 are entrapped,

I'm here 8,000 are enough to seal them up. At the same time, on the water, the Jin and Song navies were engaged in a pitched battle of their own over control of the river. Some reports indicate that while initially the Jin flotilla took the advantage, the Song ships unveiled a heretofore unknown weapon which were known as tiger ships, apparently adaptations of a remarkable invention imported from the far western world via Arab merchants. These tiger ships, the accounts go, could direct flame from their prows of a sort that was particularly dangerous to ships and far more effective when used in water battles than normal flame. It seems possible that this may have been a derivation of the infamous Greek fire that had been employed by the Byzantines against the Arabs during the 7th century siege of Constantinople.

Given that the technology is said to have come from the Arabs themselves, and that there was plenty of time for the particulars of the formula and mechanisms involved to have been transmitted eastward, this does seem plausible. In any event, the deployment of the fire-breathing tiger ships turned the tide of the naval battle of Huangtian Dang, and in short order the remaining Jin ships were forced to retreat into a narrow cove, which the Song navy then deployed around its mouth to blockade them in. This very well may have been it for Prince Wu Zhu, who by this point had twice sent out messages begging for terms of surrender, and had twice been ignored by General Han, who apparently wasn't in a very forgiving mood after the devastation the Jurchen had wrought

against the Southlands. Yet a traitor to the Song forces apparently gave Wu Zhu the out he needed to slip away. He was informed of a small gap that, if widened, could lead his forces to freedom. Working with utmost speed and secrecy, the 100,000 strong Jin soldiers dutifully excavated what amounted to a narrow canal through which they were able to sail the smallest of their ships through. In order to prevent the Song navy from simply catching them once again, once the ruse had been discovered, Wuzhu deployed a contingent of his soldiers to fire volleys of fire arrows at the sails of the anchored Song vessels,

thereby immobilizing them. Prince Wu Zhu of Jin and his army was able to slip from the noose around their collective necks and straggle across the Yangtze, at last regrouping at the Ohhe, which lay directly across the mighty river from Nanjing, though he'd have to leave the majority of his war booty behind. His army would conduct one further lightning raid south of the Yangtze to collect the majority of their left-behind loot while the Song's backs were turned the following month, but it's evident that Wu Zhu understood just how very close he'd come to death at the hands of the superior Song river navy, and how lucky his escape had been. This is evidence because he would never again tempt fate by venturing south of the Yangtze. So here we are in the fifth month of 1130. The north is utterly lost to the Song, and its emperor, Gao Zong,

has escaped the fate of the rest of his family only by the razor-thinnest of margins, and now huddles in Fuzhou, seemingly having put every mountain, forest, and river in China between him and the Jurchen. But the Jurchen have likewise learned that they're now playing by a very different set of rules in southern China, and they're not nearly as invincible there as they had seemed to be on the steps of the north-central plains of the Yellow River. And so that's where we'll pick up the narrative next. But next time, we'll be running a parallel story about, yes, yes, the great general, Yue Fei, the man, the myth, the legend, and of course, the tattoo. Thanks for listening. History isn't black and white, yet too often it's presented as such. Grey History, The French Revolution is a long-form history podcast

dedicated to exploring the ambiguities and nuances of the past. From a revolution of hope and liberty to the infamous reign of terror, you can't understand the modern world without understanding the French Revolution. So search for the French Revolution today.