Jingkang incident

The Jingkang incident was the capture and sack of Bianjing, today's Kaifeng, capital of the Song dynasty, by the Jurchen-led Jin dynasty in 1127. The Jin carried off the reigning emperor Qinzong, his father the retired emperor Huizong, much of the imperial clan and many officials. The disaster, remembered in China as the Humiliation of Jingkang after the era name of Qinzong's short reign, ended the Northern Song; a surviving prince refounded the dynasty in the south.

In 1120 the Song and the Jin agreed, in the so-called Alliance Conducted at Sea, to destroy the Liao dynasty together and share its lands, with the Song to receive the Sixteen Prefectures. The Jin overran the Liao capital and ended the dynasty, but the Song army failed even to break through the remaining Liao defences, exposing its weakness. The Jin then sold the Sixteen Prefectures to the Song for 300,000 bolts of silk and 200,000 ounces of silver, the same annual sum the Song had paid the Liao since 1005.

Relations soon broke down. In 1123 a Jin governor, Zhang Jue, defected to the Song, who welcomed him. When the Jin demanded him back, a Song general tried to deceive them by sending the head of a lookalike. The ruse was discovered, and in the autumn of 1125 Emperor Taizong of Jin ordered a full-scale invasion.

The Jin northern army under Wanyan Zongwang advanced quickly as many Song commanders surrendered their cities, while the western army under Wanyan Zonghan was held up at Datong and Taiyuan. By February 1126 the northern army was across the Yellow River and laying siege to Bianjing. Huizong had already abdicated in favour of his eldest son, Qinzong, and fled. Siege warfare suited the Jin cavalry badly, and the two sides came to terms: the Song paid a ransom and handed over Taiyuan, and the Jin withdrew, releasing the prince Zhao Gou, who had been held hostage during the talks.

With the danger apparently past, the court relaxed, experienced generals were posted away from the capital and many units were disbanded. Qinzong then tried to win over two former Liao nobles serving as Jin envoys with a secret letter, which they passed straight to the Jin emperor. In September 1126 the Jin invaded again. This time Datong fell within a month, Luoyang and Zhengzhou surrendered, and by mid-December both Jin armies had joined before Bianjing. The defence was poorly organised, relief armies could not get through, and the emperor reportedly put his faith in a man who said he could call down divine soldiers. Bianjing fell on 9 January 1127.

The city's ordinary people were largely spared in return for enormous payments in goods and precious metals, and the Jin also demanded books, printing blocks, maps, musical instruments and skilled workers of every kind. On 20 March 1127 the two captive emperors were stripped of their rank. The imperial library and palace were looted, and members of the imperial family were seized; many palace women killed themselves or were killed for resisting rape. More than 14,000 captives were marched north, and many died on the way. Women of the court were enslaved, sold or given to Jin princes as concubines. Qinzong never regained his freedom.

Zhao Gou escaped to the south and became Emperor Gaozong of what historians call the Southern Song, with its capital at Lin'an, today's Hangzhou. Weakened by the loss of men, wealth and talent, the Southern Song never recovered the north, and the lands lost in these wars were regained only under the Ming dynasty. The destruction of imperial collections and archives was on a scale China had not known before. The episode left a long mark on Chinese memory; the patriotic poem Man Jiang Hong, traditionally attributed to the general Yue Fei, refers to the lingering shame of Jingkang.

Our 1100 map shows the Northern Song and the Liao in northern China shortly before the Jurchen rise, and our 1200 map shows the result: the Jin ruling the north down to the Huai River, with the Southern Song beyond it.