The History of China - #168 - S. Song 11: Twilight of the Golds

Episode Date: June 29, 2019

The Jin Dynasty is surrounded on all sides. It cannot get out. Soon enough, the Mongol stranglehold around Kaifeng will signal the Empire of Black & Gold's death-knell. Time Period Covered: 1224-1234 CE Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to an Airwave Media Podcast. 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. Hello, and welcome to the History of China. Episode 168, Twilight of the Golds The chemists are a strange class of mortals,

impelled by an incomprehensible impulse to take their pleasure amid smoke and vapor, fume and flame, poisons and poverty. Yet among all these evils, I seem to live so sweetly that I may die if I would change places with a Persian king. Johann Becher, Physica Subterranea, 1703 It was late February 1233, early two weeks into the new year of the water snake, and all across the great capital city of Kaifeng, both within and beyond its high impenetrable walls, could be heard the shouts of people and the constant hisses and

pops of fireworks. Yet these were not celebratory fireworks, nor were they shouts of merriment, but the desperate struggle of a metropolis put to siege. Huddled in the city and manning the ramparts were the cold, sick, and starving citizens and soldiers of the Jin Dynasty, determined in spite of their hopeless situation to carry on the fight to the very last. Outside sat the arrayed forces of Ogade, second Kayan of the Yeke Mongol Ulus, and direct successor to his father Temujin, Genghis Khan, the progenitor of the Mongol Empire, who had been carried to heaven less than six years earlier. Commanding this combined force of Mongols, Han Chinese, Khitan, Uyghurs, Persians, and other servants of the now pan-Asiatic Khanate was its greatest general, Subutai Bator, Subutai the

Valiant. He was himself now 57 or 58 years old, and on what would be his final and greatest campaign, to finish what his Lord Khan had begun more than two decades prior, and stamp what would be his final and greatest campaign, to finish what his Lord Khan had begun more than two decades prior, and stamp the jinn out once and for all. The Siege of Kaifeng is of particular interest to historians, as it's one of the first documented instances of a vast, protracted combat operation in which both sides had access to, and extensively utilized, the wunderweapon of the age, weaponized gunpowder. The Chinese, of course,

have long been recognized as the inventors of gunpowder, with its alchemists and tinkerers of the Tang dynasty accidentally stumbling upon the right combination of saltpeter, charcoal, and sulfur in their ceaseless attempts to find an elixir of life. The mixture that they found certainly wouldn't extend anyone's lifespan, but it did have the fascinating property of burning at a variable intensity and duration, and if mixed with certain other elements, in an entire rainbow of colored flame and smoke. Add a pinch of indigo for teal smoke, carbonate for white smoke, tetroxide for red, cinnabar and hemp oil for purple, and you could even produce a dark black smoke when combined with lignite and soap bean mixture. In the centuries to follow, the combustible black powder would be further refined and experimented on, found to be able to produce not just smoke signals, but powerful gouts of flame that could survive an arrow's flight, resulting in the development of a whole new range of weaponry effective in a city siege, the so-called huojian, or fire arrow.

Such technology had fallen into the lap of the Jurchin conquerors of Kaifeng a century earlier, upon their occupation of the great city. As they went on their first inspection of the abandoned imperial palace, they had been presented by one of the alchemists who had been unable to flee with 20,000 functional fire arrows, their instructions for use, and the full plans for how to make even more, a betrayal of the Song dynasty's scientific secrets so absolute that the later chronicler would intone bitterly, quote, Once ensconced in the south, however, the Song Dynasty was quick to show that the Jin hadn't learned all of their secrets. Quote, By 1206, mention is made of the use of huoyaojian, or gunpowder arrows,

which may have been either simply a better burning incendiary arrow, or perhaps even an early form of rocketry. Other forms of gunpowder weaponry pop up in the battles between Jin and Song. For instance, the iron-beaked firehawk and the bamboo fire kestrel, which were both essentially aerodynamically shaped grenades designed to be hurled over city walls down into the burnable structures within. There are even reports of a type of anti-siege cluster bomb, the barbed fireball, which once launched could fragment into multiple burning orbs set with hooks to latch onto and then set

an approaching enemy's siegeworks alight all at once. Over the course of the 11th and 12th centuries, further refinements in the mixture would result in a new form of warfare, and the battlegrounds had shifted from focusing on incendiaries to true high-explosive bombs. From Needham, quote, a new term, pili pao, seems to mark the appearance of a new thing, the thunderclap bomb. For the first time, truly explosive. It would have consisted of a higher nitrate gunpowder, enclosed in a weak case of bamboo, with the property of giving a loud bang when exploded, and therefore more suitable, unless combined with other things, for causing fright rather than serious injury to the enemy's horses and men. Improving on this early flashbang, in the 13th century came the zhentianlei, the thundershock bomb,

and the tiehuopao, the iron firebomb, both of which were deployed from trebuchets, not hand-thrown for what will become fairly obvious reasons. Again, Needham says, quote, here for the first time, brisant high nitrate gunpowder was used, enclosed in a strong casing of metal, and thus calculated to cause serious injury to the enemy troops upon detonation, a word we can at last make use of, end quote. Gunpowder ordinances, beyond their psychological and incendiary properties, had one other notable advantage over the more traditional siege ordinance, like stones fired from catapults and trebuchets. An advantage that is so bleedingly obvious that many people, myself included, didn't even think about it until it was pointed out to me, that they were not reusable. Once a thundershock bomb had exploded, unlike a boulder,

the enemy could not simply retrieve it and hurl it back again. Instead, it inflicted maximum damage and destruction, and was thereafter rendered pretty much useless and inert for the other side. One other invention of note before we get on with the story proper is the introduction and use of what were effectively tear gas grenades by mixing finely ground lime powder into the mixture. They were employed after the fall of Kaifeng at the Battle of Taishi in 1161 as the Song attempted to thwart the Jurchen crossing the Yangtze River into the south. A first-hand account in the Haichoufu, or Rhapsody of the Paddlewheel Warships,

quote, clap bomb was let off. It was made of paper and filled with lime and sulfur. Launched from trebuchets, these thunder clap bombs came dropping down from the air, and upon meeting the water, exploded with a noise like thunder, the sulfur bursting into flames. The carton case rebounded and broke, scattering the lime to form a smoky fog which blinded the enemy's men and horses so they could see nothing. Our ships were then on them to attack them, and their men and horses were all drowned, so that they were utterly defeated. End quote. But let's get back to 1233 and the ongoing siege of Kaifeng. Having seized the Northlands for themselves and driven the Jin southward, the Mongols had, like the Jurchen before them, come into possession of Chinese alchemists and engineers with the expertise to produce and utilize gunpowder weaponry, including the

terrifying Thunder Crash bomb. There had already been several skirmishes and naval battles on the waterways of the north that had seen both sides shelling each other, but Kaifeng would prove to be the first large-scale city siege to witness their terrifying effects on both attack and defense. From the history of Jin, quote, When hit, even iron armor was quite pierced through. Therefore, the Mongol soldiers made cowhide sheets to cover their approach trenches, and dug, as it were, niches, each large enough to contain a man, hoping that in this way the Jin troops above would not be able to do anything about it. But someone atop the walls suggested the technique of lowering the thundercrash bombs on iron chains. When these reached the trenches where the Mongols were making their dugouts,

the bombs were set off, with the result that the cowhide and the attacking soldiersifeng had to offer their Mongol besiegers. Another favorite weapon was the feihouqiang, the flying fire spear. These consisted of a typical spear, but affixed to the business end was about three feet of hardened bamboo. This was then filled with gunpowder and, once ignited, would shoot gauze of flame up to 10 feet away. So maybe you're a super tough guy who's totally unfazed by the idea of spear points being repeatedly thrust down at you as you try to climb a 40-foot ladder. But even the most ultra-hardened battle commando is going to think twice when you know that those same spear points are going to also be shooting fire straight at your face.

This, of course, would not have been a particularly effective or impressive weapon on, say, an open battlefield. But as a defensive weapon, high atop a wall, when attempting to repel an enemy trying to climb straight up a siege ladder, it was a formidable deterrent indeed. These flamegouts only lasted for a short time, mere seconds of course, but they were easy to produce in bulk and could be refilled again and again once depleted. As a section from the history of Jin concludes, quote, those thundercrash bombs and flying fire spears were the only two weapons that the Mongol soldiers were really afraid of, end quote. So I have this vision in my head of what amounts to a First World War trench battle. Interconnected series of tunnels and trenches and sap lines, covered ditches, defensive dugouts. All around them, containers of powdered quicklime being hurled out and exploding, choking and blinding anyone unlucky enough to be caught in their radius.

Bombs being lowered down directly into the trenches rather than bursting overhead. But instead of a series of trenches and pillboxes on the other side, it's a 40-foot-high city wall. Both sides are hurling high-explosive shrapnel bombs at each other via trebuchet, blasting out craters upon craters into the scorched earth. There's no machine gun fire, of course, but there is the constant whizzing as volley after volley of rocket-propelled arrows stream through the air. On the ground all around,

and throughout every trench, are the mangled, blown-apart pieces of less fortunate soldiers in arms. Any offensive involves scaling that wall straight up and into the waiting spearpoint teeth and gunpowder flames of a dragon's mouth. And just as terrifying, when the order comes down that it's your unit's turn to face that yawning maw of fire and blood, any hesitation on your part will find you instantly executed by your squadron commander, or else he'll be executed in turn. Meanwhile, the people inside the city, soldiers and civilians, one and all, but especially the civilians, are watching their supply larders dwindle more and more every single day. Water isn't really a problem, but there's no way to get any more food into the city whatsoever. No help is coming. Soon enough, the populace is down to eating

whatever dogs and cats have made it this far, then the rats and insects, and then just anything that could be chewed soft enough to swallow. Strips of leather, tree bark, grass, leaves, clods of dirt. Coldness is constant, weakness has set in months ago, and every day makes it harder and harder to even muster the energy to continue onward. Death is absolutely everywhere, and no one has the energy to bury the dead anymore, so they're just left out to rot. The guttered remains of the houses and shops, entire city districts that have burned down are everywhere, as are the charred remains of anyone who is inside.

And uncomfortably, as the weeks drag on, the smell of cooked meat starts to become more and more unignorable as the mass continues to shed off your now near-skeletal frame. Eventually, the temptation becomes too much to bear. And it's not just any one person. Everyone who's left is only still alive because they've begun cannibalizing the dead. And this goes on, and on, and on, for more than two years.

Because the only alternative to this hell on earth is to simply open the gates, let the Mongol army waiting outside in, and get the inevitable over with. But wait, how did we get here? We left off last time with the death of Song Emperor Ningzong in early autumn of 1224, and the successional switcheroo by Chancellor Shi Mi Yuan and Empress Yang to replace the horrid crowned Prince Hong with Prince Yun. Yun would take the throne in the predawn hours of September 25th and reign as Emperor Lidlong the Reasonable, while the now former crowned prince got the consolation prize

of immediate exile from the capital and eventual inevitable assassination. Let's pick up that branch of the story then, with a look at the foreign policy situation as the Song Chinese saw it in the late 1220s. It was a bit of a curious state that the Song found themselves in. Yes, it was great and all that the hated Jin Dynasty was getting torn limb from limb by the Mongol hordes, no one could deny that. But on the other hand, it did upend nearly a century of stable political calculus. The Jurchen had been obnoxious, opportunistic bullies, yes, but at least they had been a known quantity, and the Song government had been able to, with a few notable exceptions,

plan and account for them, and then just keep on keeping on. Now, however, there were multiple unknown and, for the moment at least, unknowable factors to consider. What should or even could Song do about the remainder of Jin that crouched in the Yellow River Valley, diminished but still far from militarily spent? What could be made of this inscrutable Mongol force that had exploded out of nowhere, and even now was engaged in multiple wars across inconceivably large distances, against not just the Jin, but Western Xia as well, and who knows what else beyond. Could they be treated with, perhaps even allied with, to retake the Song homelands?

Was it even necessary or advisable? Still, the foremost question on the minds of most in the imperial court was a question a bit closer to home, namely, what to do about those rebel Red Jacket forces now occupying Shandong. With the lid now firmly put on any significant threat from the Jin Rump state, it was no longer necessary to maintain plausible deniability about the loyalties of the guerrilla forces across that peninsula, and many in the court felt it was now time to bring the Shandong rebels formally into the fold of the Song bureaucracy and reclaim the region once and for all. This would hopefully serve to, quote, exclude the Mongols from the northeast and perhaps even reclaim the territory for itself, end quote. To achieve this, however, Song would have to act fast and secure an early foothold in the region to provide their loyalists with the support and

supplies that they would need to carry it through. Initially, the majority of the Shandong warlords were only too happy to exchange their nominal loyalty for rank, title, and critical material assistance that they were in desperate need of. Thus rolled into the Song command structure, however loosely, Hangzhou found significant benefit in this arrangement, since it allowed them to direct the Red Jackets to redeploy southward and take up critical defensive positions along the Songjin border. As with the war overall, Chancellor Shim Yuen showed little interest in the affair, allowing the military commanders to take the reins, which they did with gusto.

By the late 1220s, in fact, the regular conferral of the official titles and cash bonuses to the Red Jacket commanders had become so normal as to be considered established court policy, barely even warranting mention. Chief among these warlords was Li Quan, who we talked about briefly before, but I won't blame you if you didn't bother writing him down. As one of, and perhaps the, most powerful warlord of the region, the Song court had been very content to employ him in their objective of destabilizing the Jin and keeping them on the defensive. Even so, in spite of General Li's proffered loyalty to the emperor, it was clear very early on that more than anything else, his primary aim was to rule the whole of Shandong

for himself. As early as 1222, he began bumping off his neighboring loyalist cells rather than cooperating with them. Even the Song border guard was not immune to Li Chun's harassment when it suited him, and they were among the first within the regular imperial command structure to start warning that, hey, you know this guy's not actually on our side, right? He's just an up-jumped gang boss who's using us. You know this, right? 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. From Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman. To Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson.

The Civil War and Reconstruction was a pivotal era in American history. I'm Rich. And I'm Tracy. And we're the hosts of a podcast that takes a deep dive into that era, when a war was fought to save the Union and to free the slaves. And when the work to rebuild the nation after that war was over turned into a struggle to guarantee liberty and justice for all Americans. Look for The Civil War and Reconstruction wherever you find your podcasts. This particular boil would burst in the early spring of 1225,

shortly after the official conclusion of the peace between Song and Jin, with the appointment of a new regional supervisor to the Shandong border, an official named Xu Guo. Minister Xu was a hardliner against further concessions to the Red Jackets, and managed to so irritate Li Quan that the bandit lord touched off an insurrection in the border town of Chuzhou, resulting in Minister Xu being killed as he attempted to flee the commotion. Though there was an initial attempt by the Song court to overthrow the now obvious danger of Li Chuan's power base via a conspiracy from within, it was called off when the inside man unexpectedly

died later that year, though from apparently unrelated natural circumstances, but who can really tell? Thereafter, Chancellor Xie reverted to his comfortable resting state of just not doing much of anything about anything. Li Quan's position was far from stable, however, despite the Song's apparently resigning themselves to his continued existence. This was because, of course, he had more than one foe to worry about. In the spring of 1226, the far less reticent Mongol army was able to trap Li within his home-based city of Yidu. For over a year, the northern horsemen encircled the city in a siege, reducing the population of several hundred thousand to only a tiny fraction of that

by the end. Yet, Li Qian was able to finagle his way out of imminent death for himself by striking an 11th-hour deal with the Mongol commander. In exchange for voluntarily and formally relinquishing command of the city to the Mongols, he would be appointed as the regional administrator over all of Shandong by the Great Khan's mandate. Rather amazingly, walking away not only alive, but in a position of even greater authority, he emerged to find that in fact, during the past year while he'd been under siege, his wife, named Yang Miaozhen, had taken command of his armies in southern Shandong and managed to capture Chuzhou city outright. In 1227, when he rode for the city to assist his wife in putting down a mutiny, Li conspicuously had donned Mongol-style clothing

and armor, indicating that he was fully committed to his new cause. This was borne out over the two years to follow, when time and again Song chancellor Shi Mi Yuan offered up lofty titles and large monetary stipends if he'd stop making war against them and come on back over to the Song side. But Li Quan was apparently smart enough to know that he'd already skated through the valley of the shadow of death at Yidu once, and his life would be well and truly forfeit if he went back on his pledge of loyalty to the Khanate. The final dramatic act of Li Quan's career would begin in late 1230, when he and his army

besieged the Song city of Taizhou in modern Jiangsu province on the northern banks of the Yangtze, a significant population center more than 60 miles deep into Song territory and less than 12 miles from the capital itself. The numbers are rather murky about how many soldiers marched with him to invest Taijiu in siege. Some reports claim they numbered in the hundreds of thousands, but Davis points out that as nowhere else in the accounts of Li Quan does his force strength ever go above 30,000, that's almost certainly an unbelievable assessment. Still, 30,000 soldiers is nothing to turn one's nose up at. At long last, even Shim Yuen wasn't able to pretend that the siege of Tai Zhou wasn't happening,

and dispatched a pair of loyal generals to deal with this insurgent commander and his forces. The showdown occurred at Yangzhou, just upriver from Tai Zhou, and it would prove disastrous for the Red Jackets and their commander Li. From Davis, quote, Defeat for Li Quan was resounding. He died on 18 February 1231. Song armies moved north, recapturing border towns such as Chuzhou and Huayan, and purging them of Li Quan partisans. The remnants of the Shandong army returned north and were never again a serious threat. End quote. Given the swiftness and ease with which the Song army had swept aside

Li Trin and his red jackets, it's worth asking, why didn't they do it before getting themselves invaded, back when Li had first started acting up? And it's easy to say, oh, well, clearly Shim Yuen was just his usual indecisive self and shrug and move on with your life. But that risks brushing off the far more touchy situation of what would the Mongols think about the Song acting against Li now that he was, you know, wearing their colors and flying their banners. More than any other consideration they had to take into account, the southern Song knew that they definitely could not afford to make the Mongols their enemies, and certainly not over some upjumped two-bit Shandong warlord with delusions of grandeur. Thus, it really only was

when Li Quan committed the unquestionably aggressive act of unilaterally launching incursions into Song itself that the Song court felt comfortable that it could respond with little fear of Mongol retaliation. For all this caution in Shandong, however, there were already serious barriers to any significant Song-Mongol alliance from taking place. The root of much of this was the fact that the Song officials at virtually every level of government seemed to only half-heartedly at best think that any such alliance was an idea worthwhile enough to even pursue. Since as early as 1214, the Mongol Khan had sent envoys to Song to attempt to initiate normal diplomatic relations. And although this first envoy was received at Hangzhou, it wasn't until seven years later, in 1221,

that the Song could be bothered to send an embassy of their own to the main Mongol camp in the shadows of Berkhan Khaldun at Avaga. Even this seemed to be more directed as a theatrical display designed to scare the Jin Dynasty about the idea of a two-front war against the Mongols and the Song than any serious attempt by the Chinese to secure a substantive agreement with the steppe empire. In the years to come, though the Mongol armies would generally respect Song territorial rights, they'd routinely come uncomfortably close in their force movements against Western Xia and the Jin, sometimes moving whole armies within mere miles of the border, and sometimes skirting within it,

or even plundering towns that were, whoops, accidentally on the Song side of the border. In fact, 1231 would prove to be one of the most challenging years yet for Sino-Mongol relations, when a Mongol envoy arrived at the Song borders. He'd been tasked with securing the rights for their armies to pass through the Huainan region as they made for the Jin capital, Kaifeng. This had been deemed as strategically vital to the Mongol armies, by none other than Genghis Khan as he lay on his deathbed, to make the approach on Kaifeng from the south, as the Yellow River protected its northern walls and rendered the Mongol cavalry useless. Moreover, there's a strong likelihood that, as the northern regions had, by the 1230s, been largely depopulated and stripped bare of their resources, the Mongol

raiding parties naturally were in search of more tempting targets, and the plush Song border towns made irresistible prey. Regardless, as the envoy, his mission having failed, made his way back north towards the border, a Song patrol either mistook the envoy for an enemy and killed him on the spot, or assassinated him knowing exactly who he was. Accounts differ. When the situation was made clear to the imperial court at Hangzhou, rather than issuing any kind of an explanation or apology for this regrettable incident, they did nothing. Said nothing. Apparently, they just couldn't be bothered.

It's probably because of the tit-for-tat nature of the two empires, a raid here, a dead Mongol ally there, that the new great Khan Ogedei chose not to follow up on or enact an immediate military response for the killing of Li Quan, who had, after all, invaded Song territory. But the killing of a Khanate envoy, who was on his way back under diplomatic flags, well, you'll surely recall that that was, as ever, one of the big no-nos when dealing with Mongols. This demanded a strong military response to communicate just how very seriously the Khan took the safety of his servants dispatched on official missions. Quote,

In response, Mongol armies overran Sichuan and penetrated as far south as 180 miles into the interior of Song territory. The rapid strike, which cost the Song countless civilian lives, lasted no more than a month and appears to have been largely a show of force, perhaps even a forage for booty, but certainly not a serious effort at conquest. In other words, hey, don't do that again. Amid all this border pressure and stress, the aging Ximiyuan is reported to have slipped into a deep depression and even attempted suicide, after which the emperor reduced his court attendances

to once every ten days rather than daily. Nevertheless, he would retain his post as chancellor right up until his death in autumn of 1233. The Mongols wanted, needed, Song cooperation in their strategy to permanently destroy the Jin Dynasty, and as the 1231 Southern Raid had demonstrated, whatever Mongol wants, Mongol gets. They were willing and able to use punitive force to compel that cooperation if it were not voluntarily forthcoming. By early 1232, the Mongol army had captured one of the Jin's last redoubts south of the capital, the city of Tangzhou, and now advanced north against the Jurchen emperor's final holdfast, pinioned helplessly against the Yellow River.

In addition to the horrors discussed at the beginning of today's episode, death, famine, and war, the siege of Kaifeng was soon visited by that fourth and final horseman of doom, Pestilence. Disease, of course, distinguishes neither friend nor foe, but affected both sides of the city walls in the early months of the siege, devastating both to the tune of more than a million dead from the sickness by year's end. Nevertheless, the Jin border defenders refused to capitulate and struggled onward. Thus it was that at the close of 1232, the Mongols would once more approach the Song government with a proposal of collaboration. These two would fall through and result in nothing concrete being agreed to.

Davis writes that it's likely because of, once again, the by now typical Song delay tactics and mealy-mouthed evasions of getting too tied down to anything in specific. As this ultimately fruitless round of negotiations was ongoing, in the early winter months of 1233, the Jin Emperor, Ai Zong, concluding that staying within Kaifeng was suicidal, decided to sneak out of the city while it was still possible and make a break southward. Extending a hearty so long and thanks for all the fish to all the rest of the capital city's tormented population, Aizong left the remaining defense of the city to his generals and departed for Gui De in Henan, and later that summer found refuge in the city of Caizhou. Back within Kaifeng, enough, it would turn out, was enough. One of the generals to whom the defense of the city had been entrusted, a man named Cui Lu, decided that eating tree bark and boiled shoe leather just wasn't doing it for him anymore, and that the best shot anyone still

alive had was to surrender and not force the Mongols outside to take the city by storm, which would definitely result in the wholesale slaughter and pillage of the city, as had been the fate of Zhengdu. Instead, after quietly eliminating anyone who still thought holding out was a good idea, General Cui opened the city gates of Kaifeng to Subutai. And though it was thoroughly plundered, Frank describes it as being conducted in quote-unquote the normal way, without indiscriminate slaughter, and even of reports of barter and trade being conducted between the remaining residents of the city and the conquering soldiers. Quote,

The townspeople gave their last possessions, valuables, and silk in exchange for rice and grain transported from the north. Some slaughter occurred, nevertheless. End quote. Well, I mean, what can you really expect? You can take the Mongol out of Mongolia, but you can't take Mongolia out of the Mongol, end quote. Well, I mean, what can you really expect? You can take the Mongol out of Mongolia, but you can't take Mongolia out of the Mongol, after all. Kaifeng had fallen, and with it the last gasp of any real hope for the once-supreme Jurchen state. But the Jin Dynasty could not

really be said to be truly dead and buried unless its emperor was accounted for, one way or another. Jin Aizong had found a temporary refuge in the nearby southern town of Caizhou, but that was hardly a long-term solution. For one, compared to Kaifeng, Cai was tiny, far too tiny. Only half the Great Capital's size, it had neither the physical nor human nor material resources required to mount any kind of protracted defense against the follow-up strike that was inevitably on its way. The Jin Emperor desperately sent envoys to the Song, seeking their aid in providing them grain and pointing out, not inaccurately, that, you know the Mongols aren't your friends, right? Once they're finished with us, you're definitely next up on their docket, so help us, help yourselves, help us all.

These envoys, however, were not even granted an audience to present their case, but were instead turned back at the border. The Suncourt, all of a sudden full of self-confidence in its newfound relative strength, and seeming to enjoy the view of its old enemy being strangled to death far too much to be bothered with something like an appeal to what was inevitably to follow. Suddenly, very firmly of a mindset that the enemy of my enemy is my friend, the Song ministers were now quite open to the idea of a formal alliance with the Mongols, especially one that, as they'd already begun discussing amongst themselves, might lead to the reclamation of some of their northern territories. Some even considered such an alliance, as was proposed,

to be merely the first step in the general reconquest of all the lost territories in the north, though others were quick to bat such pie-in-the-sky ideas down as squandering what our empire has stored away to acquire land of no use. Nevertheless, the final chapter of the Jin Dynasty would proceed apace. With precious-h precious food stores in Caizhou and no aid forthcoming from Song, within three months of the Jin emperor Aizong's arrival in the town, they had fully depleted their resources and were reduced once again to cannibalism. Meanwhile, the Mongols assembled outside, made preparations for their final assault. A small lake abutting the city was filled with bundles of sticks and reeds,

and then that December, the Mongols committed themselves to a full-scale storming of the city. As the walls were overrun and fighting swept through the streets and homes, Emperor Aizong ceremonially abdicated his throne in favor of a distant relative, who was likewise within the city, a very dubious honor that he had first rejected, only to be convinced that he might yet prove able to escape the enveloping doom surrounding them. And then he hanged himself. His successor would only have enough time to ritually ensconce his predecessor with the temple name Aizong before he too was found, captured, and killed by the conquering Mongols. It was February 9th, 1234. The Jin Dynasty had been put to an end. Quote, That is as good a place to leave off today as any. Ogedei Kayan reigns supreme over the whole of northern China, and virtually every meter of territory between the Caspian Sea and the Pacific Ocean beside.

And it's only here, now, amid the ashes of the Jurcheng, and staring down the horses and catapults of their brand new neighbor, that the Southern Song will finally realize that maybe they should have thought this course of action through a little bit more. Thanks for listening. 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 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.