In A.D. 310 Linsong, The Han Chief, Invaded China In Force And With The Full Intention Of Ending The War At A Blow.

He succeeded in capturing Loyang, and carrying off Hwaiti as his prisoner.

The capital was pillaged and the Prince Royal executed. Hwaiti is considered the first Chinese emperor to have fallen into the hands of a foreign conqueror. Two years after his capture, Hwaiti was compelled to wait on his conqueror at a public banquet, and when it was over he was led out to execution. This foul murder illustrates the character of the new race and men who aspired to rule over China. The Tartar successes did not end here, for a few years later they made a fresh raid into China, capturing Hwaiti's brother and successor, Mingti, who was executed, twelve months after his capture, at Pingyang, the capital of the Tartar Hans.

After these reverses the enfeebled Tsin rulers removed their capital to Nankin, but this step alone would not have sufficed to prolong their existence had not the Lin princes themselves suffered from the evils of disunion and been compelled to remove their capital from Pingyang to Singan. Here they changed their name from Han to Chow, but the work of disintegration once begun proceeded rapidly, and in the course of a few years the Lin power crumbled completely away. Released from their most pressing danger by the fall of this family, the Tsin dynasty took a new lease of life, but it was unable to derive any permanent advantage from this fact. The last emperors of this family were weak and incompetent princes, whose names need not be given outside a chronological table. There would be nothing to say about them but that a humble individual named Linyu, who owed everything to himself, found in the weakness of the government and the confusion in the country the opportunity of distinction. He proved himself a good soldier and able leader against the successors of the Lin family on one side, and a formidable pirate named Sunghen on the other. Dissatisfied with his position, Linyu murdered one emperor and placed another on the throne, and in two years he compelled his puppet, the last of the Later Tsins, to make a formal abdication in his favor. For a considerable portion of their rule they governed the whole of China, and it is absolutely true to say that they were the least worthy family ever intrusted with so great a charge. Of the fifteen emperors who ruled for one hundred and fifty-five years there is not more than the founder whose name calls for preservation on his own merits.

Although Linyu's success was complete as far as it went, his dynasty, to which he gave the name of Song, never possessed exclusive power among the Chinese. It was only one administration among many others, and during his brief reign of three years he could do nothing toward extending his power over his neighbors, although he may have established his own the more firmly by poisoning the miserable Tsin emperor whom he deposed.

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Words from 13009 to 13527 of 191255