The Death Of Tsongtse Induced The Kins To Make A More Strenuous Effort To Humiliate The Sungs, And A Large Army Under The Joint Command Of Akouta's Son, Olito, And The General Niyamoho, Advanced On The Capital And Captured Yangchow.

Kaotsong, who saved his life by precipitate flight, then agreed to sign any treaty drawn up by his conqueror.

In his letter to Niyamoho he said, "Why fatigue your troops with long and arduous marches when I will grant you of my own will whatever you demand?" But the Kins were inexorable, and refused to grant any terms short of the unconditional surrender of Kaotsong, who fled to Canton, pursued both on land and sea. The Kin conquerors soon found that they had advanced too far, and the Chinese rallying their forces gained some advantage during their retreat. Some return of confidence followed this turn in the fortune of the war, and two Chinese generals, serving in the hard school of adversity, acquired a military knowledge and skill which made them formidable to even the best of the Kin commanders. The campaigns carried on between 1131 and 1134 differed from any that had preceded them in that the Kin forces steadily retired before Oukiai and Changtsiun, and victory, which had so long remained constant in their favor, finally deserted their arms. The death of the Kin emperor, Oukimai, who had upheld with no decline of luster the dignity of his father Akouta, completed the discomfiture of the Kins, and contributed to the revival of Chinese power under the last emperor of the Sung dynasty. The reign of Oukimai marks the pinnacle of Kin power, which under his cousin and successor Hola began steadily to decline.

The possession of Honan formed the principal bone of contention between the Kins and Sungs, but after considerable negotiation and some fighting, Kaotsong agreed to leave it in the hands of the Kins, and also to pay them a large annual subsidy in silk and money. He also agreed to hold the remainder of his states as a gift at the hands of his northern neighbor. Thus, notwithstanding the very considerable successes gained by several of the Sung generals, Kaotsong had to undergo the mortification of signing a humiliating peace and retaining his authority only on sufferance. Fortunately for the independence of the Sungs, Hola was murdered by Ticounai, a grandson of Akouta, whose ferocious character and ill-formed projects for the subjugation of the whole of China furnished the Emperor Kaotsong with the opportunity of shaking off the control asserted over his actions and recovering his dignity. The extensive preparations of the Kin government for war warned the Sungs to lose no time in placing every man they could in the field, and when Ticounai rushed into the war, which was all of his own making, he found that the Sungs were quite ready to receive him and offer a strenuous resistance to his attack. A peace of twenty years' duration had allowed of their organizing their forces and recovering from an unreasoning terror of the Kins. Moreover, there was a very general feeling among the inhabitants of both the north and the south that the war was an unjust one, and that Ticounai had embarked upon a course of lawless aggression which his tyrannical and cruel proceedings toward his own subjects served to inflame.

The war began in 1161 A. D., with an ominous defeat of the Kin navy, and when Kaotsong nerved himself for the crisis in his life and placed himself at the head of his troops, Ticounai must have felt less sanguine of the result than his confident declaration that he would end the war in a single campaign indicated. Before the two armies came into collision Ticounai learned that a rebellion had broken out in his rear, and that his cousin Oulo challenged both his legitimacy and his authority. He believed, and perhaps wisely, that the only way to deal with this new danger was to press on, and by gaining a signal victory over the Sungs annihilate all his enemies at a blow. But the victory had to be gained, and he seems to have underestimated his opponent. He reached the Yangtsekiang, and the Sungs retired behind it. Ticounai had no means of crossing it, as his fleet had been destroyed and the Sung navy stood in his path. Such river junks as he possessed were annihilated in another encounter on the river. He offered sacrifices to heaven in order to obtain a safe passage, but the powers above were deaf to his prayers. Discontent and disorder broke out in his camp. The army that was to have carried all before it was stopped by a mere river, and Ticounai's reputation as a general was ruined before he had crossed swords with the enemy. In this dilemma his cruelty increased, and after he had sentenced many of his officers and soldiers to death he was murdered by those who found that they would have to share the same fate. After this tragic ending of a bad career, the Kin army retreated. They concluded a friendly convention with the Sungs, and Kaotsong, deeming his work done by the repulse of this grave peril, abdicated the throne, which had proved to him no bed of roses, in favor of his adopted heir Hiaotsong. Kaotsong ruled during the long period of thirty-six years, and when we consider the troubled time through which he passed, and the many vicissitudes of fortune he underwent, he probably rejoiced at being able to spend the last twenty-five years of his life without the responsibility of governing the empire and free from the cares of sovereignty.

The new Kin ruler Oulo wished for peace, but a section of his turbulent subjects clamored for a renewal of the expeditions into China, and he was compelled to bend to the storm. The Kin army, however, had no cause to rejoice in its bellicoseness, for the Chinese general, Changtsiun, defeated it in a battle the like of which had not been seen for ten years. After this a peace was concluded which proved fairly durable, and the remainder of the reigns of both Oulo and Hiaotsong were peaceful and prosperous for northern and southern China.

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Words from 26472 to 27519 of 191255