Southern retreat of the Song court The enthronement of Emperor Gaozong The Jin leadership had not expected or desired the fall of the Song dynasty. Their intention was to weaken the Song in order to demand more tribute, and they were unprepared for the magnitude of their victory. The Jurchens were preoccupied with strengthening their rule over the areas once controlled by Liao. Instead of continuing their invasion of the Song, an empire with a military that outnumbered their own, they adopted the strategy of "using Chinese to control the Chinese". The Jin hoped a proxy state would be capable of administering northern China and collecting the annual indemnity without requiring Jurchen interventions to quell anti-Jin uprisings. In 1127, the Jurchens installed a former Song official,
Zhang Bangchang (張邦昌; 1081–1127), as puppet emperor of the newly established "
Da Chu" (Great Chu) dynasty. The puppet government did not deter the resistance in northern China, but the insurgents were motivated by their anger towards the Jurchens' looting rather than by a sense of loyalty towards the inept Song court. A number of Song commanders, stationed in towns scattered across northern China, retained their allegiance to the Song, and armed volunteers organized
militias opposed to the Jurchen military presence. The insurgency hampered the ability of the Jin to exert control over the north. Meanwhile, one Song prince, Zhao Gou, had escaped capture. He had been held up in
Cizhou while on a diplomatic mission, and never made it back to Kaifeng. He was not present in the capital when the city fell to the Jurchens. The future
Emperor Gaozong managed to evade the Jurchen troops tailing him by moving from one province to the next, traveling across Hebei,
Henan, and
Shandong. The Jurchens tried to lure him back to Kaifeng where they could finally capture him, but did not succeed. Zhao Gou finally arrived in the Song Southern Capital at Yingtianfu (; modern
Shangqiu) in early June 1127. For Gaozong (r. 1127–1162), Yingtianfu was the first in a series of temporary capitals called
xingzai (). The court moved to Yingtianfu because of its historical importance to
Emperor Taizu of Song, the founder of the dynasty, who had previously served in that city as a military governor. The symbolism of the city was meant to secure the political legitimacy of the new emperor, who was enthroned there on June 12. After reigning for barely one month, Zhang Bangchang was persuaded by the Song to step down as emperor of the Great Chu and to recognize the legitimacy of the Song imperial line. Li Gang pressured Gaozong to execute Zhang for betraying the Song. The emperor relented and Zhang was coerced into suicide. The killing of Zhang showed that the Song was willing to provoke the Jin, and that the Jin had yet to solidify their control over the newly conquered territories. The submission and abolition of Chu meant that Kaifeng was now back under Song control. (; 1059–1128), the Song general responsible for fortifying Kaifeng, entreated Gaozong to move the court back to the city, but Gaozong refused and retreated south. The southward move marked the end of the Northern Song and the beginning of the Southern Song era of Chinese history. The descendant of
Confucius at
Qufu, the
Duke Yansheng Kong Duanyou fled south with the Song Emperor to Quzhou, while the newly established
Jin dynasty (1115–1234) in the north appointed Kong Duanyou's brother Kong Duancao who remained in Qufu as Duke Yansheng. Zhang Xuan 張選, a great-grandson of
Zhang Zai, also fled south with Gaozong.
The move south The Song disbandment of the Great Chu and execution of Zhang Bangchang antagonized the Jurchens and violated the treaty that the two parties had negotiated. The Jin renewed their attacks on the Song and quickly reconquered much of northern China. In late 1127 Gaozong moved his court further south from Yingtianfu to
Yangzhou, south of the
Huai River and north of the
Yangtze River, by sailing down the
Grand Canal. The court spent over a year in the city. When the Jurchens advanced to the Huai River, the court was partially evacuated to
Hangzhou in 1129. Days later, Gaozong narrowly escaped on horseback, just a few hours ahead of Jurchen vanguard troops. After a
coup in Hangzhou almost dethroned him, in May 1129 he moved his capital back north to Jiankang (modern
Nanjing) on the south bank of the Yangtze. One month later, however, Zong Ze's successor
Du Chong () vacated his forces from Kaifeng, exposing Jiankang to attack. The emperor moved back to Hangzhou in September, leaving Jiankang in Du Chong's hands. The Jin eventually captured Kaifeng in early 1130. From 1127 to 1129, the Song sent thirteen embassies to the Jin to discuss peace terms and to negotiate the release of Gaozong's mother and Huizong, but the Jin court ignored them. In December 1129, the Jin started a new military offensive, dispatching two armies across the Huai River in the east and west. On the western front, an army invaded
Jiangxi, the area where the Song
dowager empress resided, and captured Hongzhou (, present-day
Nanchang). They were ordered to retreat a few months later when the eastern army withdrew. Meanwhile, on the eastern front,
Wuzhu commanded the main Jin army. He crossed the Yangtze southwest of Jiankang and took that city when Du Chong surrendered. Wuzhu set out from Jiankang and advanced rapidly to try to capture Gaozong. The Jin seized Hangzhou (January 22, 1130) and then
Shaoxing further south (February 4), but general
Zhang Jun's (1086–1154) battle with Wuzhu near
Ningbo gave Gaozong time to escape. By the time Wuzhu resumed pursuit, the Song court was fleeing on ships to
islands off the coast of
Zhejiang, and then further south to
Wenzhou. The Jin sent ships to chase after Gaozong, but failed to catch him. They gave up the pursuit and the Jurchens retreated north. After they plundered the undefended cities of Hangzhou and
Suzhou, they finally started to face resistance from Song armies led by
Yue Fei and
Han Shizhong. The latter even inflicted
a major defeat on Jurchen forces and tried to prevent Wuzhu from crossing back to the north bank of the Yangtze. The small boats of the Jin army were outmatched by Han Shizhong's fleet of seagoing vessels. Wuzhu eventually managed to cross the river when he had his troops use incendiary arrows to neutralize Han's ships by burning their sails. Wuzhu's troops came back south of the Yangtze one last time to Jiankang, which they pillaged, and then headed north. Yet the Jin had been caught off guard by the strength of the Song navy, and Wuzhu never tried to cross the Yangtze River again. In early 1131, Jin armies between the Huai and the Yangtze were repelled by bandits loyal to the Song. Zhang Rong (), the leader of the bandits, was given a government position for his victory against the Jin. After the Jin incursion that almost captured Gaozong, the sovereign ordered pacification commissioner
Zhang Jun (1097–1164), who was in charge of
Shaanxi and
Sichuan in the far west, to attack the Jin there to relieve pressure on the court. Zhang put together a large army, but was defeated by Wuzhu near
Xi'an in late 1130. Wuzhu advanced further west into
Gansu, and drove as far south as Jiezhou (, modern
Wudu). The most important battles between Jin and Song in 1131 and 1132 took place in Shaanxi, Gansu, and Sichuan. The Jin lost two battles at Heshang Yuan in 1131. After failing to enter Sichuan, Wuzhu retreated to Yanjing. He returned to the western front again from 1132 to 1134. The Jin attacked
Hubei and Shaanxi in 1132. Wuzhu captured Heshang Yuan in 1133, but his advance was halted by a defeat at Xianren Pass. He gave up on taking Sichuan, and no more major battles were fought between the Jin and Song for the rest of the decade. The Song court returned to Hangzhou in 1133, and the city was renamed Lin'an. The imperial ancestral temple was built in Lin'an later that same year, a sign that the court had in practice established Lin'an as the Song capital without a formal declaration. It was treated as a temporary capital. Between 1130 and 1137, the court would sporadically move to Jiankang, and back to Lin'an. There were proposals to make Jiankang the new capital, but Lin'an won out because the court considered it a more secure city. The natural barriers that surrounded Lin'an, including lakes and rice paddies, made it more difficult for the Jurchen cavalry to breach its fortifications. Access to the sea made it easier to retreat from the city. In 1138, Gaozong officially declared Lin'an the capital of the dynasty, but the label of temporary capital would still be in place. Lin'an would remain the capital of the Southern Song for the next 150 years, growing into a major commercial and cultural center.
Da Qi invades the Song Qin Hui, an official of the Song court, recommended a peaceful solution to the conflict in 1130, saying that, "If it is desirable that there will be no more conflicts
under Heaven, it is necessary for the southerners to stay in the south and the northerners in the north." Gaozong, who considered himself a northerner, initially rejected the proposal. There were gestures toward peace in 1132, when the Jin freed an imprisoned Song diplomat, and in 1133, when the Song offered to become a Jin vassal, but a treaty never materialized. The Jin requirement that the border between the two states be moved south from the Huai River to the Yangtze was too large of a hurdle for the two sides to reach an agreement. The continuing insurgency of anti-Jin forces in northern China hampered the Jurchen campaigns south of the Yangtze. Reluctant to let the war drag on, the Jin decided to create
Da Qi (the "Great Qi"), their second attempt at a puppet state in northern China. The Jurchens believed that this state, nominally ruled by someone of Han Chinese descent, would be able to attract the allegiance of disaffected members of the insurgency. The Jurchens also suffered from a shortage of skilled manpower, and controlling the entirety of northern China was not administratively feasible. In the final months of 1129,
Liu Yu (; 1073–1143) won the favor of the Jin emperor Taizong. Liu was a Song official from Hebei who had been a prefect of
Jinan in Shandong before his defection to the Jin in 1128. Da Qi was formed late in 1130, and the Jin enthroned Liu as its emperor.
Daming in Hebei was the first capital of Qi, before its move to Kaifeng, former capital of the Northern Song. The Qi government instituted military
conscription, made an attempt at reforming the bureaucracy, and enacted laws that enforced the collection of high taxes. It was also responsible for supplying a large portion of the troops that fought the Song in the seven years following its creation. (1103–1142) is second from left, the general Zhang Jun (1086–1154) fourth, and
Han Shizhong (1089–1151) fifth. The Jin granted Qi more autonomy than the first puppet government of Chu, but Liu Yu was obligated to obey the orders of the Jurchen generals. With Jin support, Da Qi invaded the Song in November 1133. Li Cheng, a Song turncoat who had joined the Qi, led the campaign.
Xiangyang and nearby prefectures fell to his army. The capture of Xiangyang on the
Han River gave the Jurchens a passage into the central valley of the Yangtze River. Their southward push was halted by the general Yue Fei. In 1134, Yue Fei defeated Li and retook Xiangyang and its surrounding prefectures. Later that year, however, Qi and Jin initiated a new offensive further east along the Huai River. For the first time, Gaozong issued an edict officially condemning Da Qi. The armies of Qi and Jin won a series of victories in the Huai valley, but were repelled by Han Shizhong near Yangzhou and by Yue Fei at Luzhou (, modern
Hefei). Their sudden withdrawal in 1135 in response to the death of Jin Emperor Taizong gave the Song time to regroup. The war recommenced in late 1136 when Da Qi attacked the
Huainan circuits of the Song. Qi lost a battle at Outang (), in modern
Anhui, against a Song army led by
Yang Qizhong (; 1102–1166). The victory boosted Song morale, and the military commissioner
Zhang Jun (1097–1164) convinced Gaozong to begin plans for a counterattack. Gaozong first agreed, but he abandoned the counteroffensive when an officer named Li Qiong () killed his superior official and defected to the Jin with 30,000 soldiers. This rebellion was provoked by Zhang Jun's attempt to reassert government control over the regional military commanders, as the court had previously been forced to tolerate growing military autonomy during the chaos of the Jin invasion. Meanwhile,
Emperor Xizong (r. 1135–1150) inherited the Jin throne from Taizong, and pushed for peace. He and his generals were disappointed with Liu Yu's military failures and believed that Liu was secretly conspiring with Yue Fei. In late 1137, the Jin reduced Liu Yu's title to that of a prince and abolished the state of Qi. The Jin and Song renewed the negotiations towards peace.
Song counteroffensive and the peace process Gaozong promoted Qin Hui in 1138 and put him in charge of deliberations with the Jin. Yue Fei, Han Shizhong, and a large number of officials at court criticized the peace overtures. Aided by his control of the
Censorate, Qin purged his enemies and continued negotiations. In 1138 the Jin and Song agreed to a treaty that designated the Yellow River as border between the two states and recognized Gaozong as a "subject" of the Jin. But because there remained opposition to the treaty in both the courts of the Jin and Song, the treaty never came into effect. A Jurchen army led by
Wuzhu invaded in early 1140. The Song counteroffensive that followed achieved large territorial gains. Song general
Liu Qi () won a battle against Wuzhu at Shunchang (modern
Fuyang in Anhui). Yue Fei was assigned to head the Song forces defending the Huainan region. Instead of advancing to Huainan, however, Wuzhu retreated to Kaifeng and Yue's army followed him into Jin territory, disobeying an order by Gaozong that forbade Yue from going on the offensive. Yue captured
Zhengzhou and sent soldiers across the
Yellow River to stir up a peasant rebellion against the Jin. On July 8, 1140, at the
Battle of Yancheng, Wuzhu launched a surprise attack on Song forces with an army of 100,000 infantry and 15,000 horsemen. Yue Fei directed his cavalry to attack the Jurchen soldiers and won a decisive victory. He continued on to Henan, where he recaptured Zhengzhou and Luoyang. Later in 1140, Yue was forced to withdraw after the emperor ordered him to return to the Song court. of Yue Fei, a general who led his forces against the Jin dynasty|alt=Mural of Yue Fei fighting in a battle between the Song and Jin armies Emperor Gaozong supported settling a peace treaty with the Jurchens and sought to rein in the assertiveness of the military. The military expeditions of Yue Fei and other generals were an obstacle to peace negotiations. The government weakened the military by rewarding Yue Fei, Han Shizhong, and Zhang Jun (1086–1154) with titles that relieved them of their command over the Song armies. Han Shizhong, a critic of the treaty, retired. Yue Fei also announced his resignation as an act of protest. In 1141 Qin Hui had him imprisoned for insubordination. Charged with treason, Yue Fei was poisoned in jail on Qin's orders in early 1142. Jurchen diplomatic pressure during the peace talks may have played a role, but Qin Hui's alleged collusion with the Jin has never been proven. After his execution, Yue Fei's reputation for defending the Southern Song grew to that of a national folk hero. Qin Hui was denigrated by later historians, who accused him of betraying the Song. The real Yue Fei differed from the later myths based on his exploits. Contrary to traditional legends, Yue was only one of many generals who fought against the Jin in northern China. Traditional accounts have also blamed Gaozong for Yue Fei's execution and submitting to the Jin. Qin Hui, in a reply to Gaozong's gratitude for the success of the peace negotiations, told the emperor that "the decision to make peace was entirely Your Majesty's. Your servant only carried it out; what achievement was there in this for me?"
Treaty of Shaoxing , ratified on October 11, 1142|alt=Emperor Gaozong's portrait On October 11, 1142, after about a year of negotiations, the
Treaty of Shaoxing was ratified, ending the conflict between the Jin and the Song. By the terms of the treaty, the
Huai River, north of the Yangtze, was designated as the boundary between the two states. The Song agreed to pay a yearly tribute of 250,000 taels of silver and 250,000 packs of silk to the Jin. The treaty reduced the Southern Song dynasty status to that of a Jin vassal. The document designated the Song as the "insignificant state", while the Jin was recognized as the "superior state". The text of the treaty has not survived in Chinese records, a clear sign of its humiliating reputation. The contents of the agreement were recovered from a Jurchen biography. Once the treaty had been settled, the Jurchens retreated north and trade resumed between the two empires. The peace ensured by the
Treaty of Shaoxing lasted for the next 70 years, but was interrupted twice. One military campaign was initiated by the Song and the other by the Jin.
Further campaigns Wanyan Liang's war Wanyan Liang led a coup against Emperor Xizong and became fourth emperor of the Jin dynasty in 1150. Wanyan Liang presented himself as a Chinese emperor, and planned to unite China by conquering the Song. In 1158, Wanyan Liang provided a
casus belli by announcing that the Song had broken the 1142 peace treaty by acquiring horses. He instituted an unpopular draft that was the source of widespread unrest in the empire. Anti-Jin revolts erupted among the Khitans and in Jin provinces bordering the Song. Wanyan Liang did not allow dissent, and opposition to the war was severely punished. The Song had been notified beforehand of Wanyan Liang's plan. They prepared by securing their defenses along the border, mainly near the Yangtze River, but were hampered by Emperor Gaozong's indecisiveness. Gaozong's desire for peace made him averse to provoking the Jin. Wanyan Liang began the invasion in 1161 without formally declaring war. Jurchen armies personally led by Wanyan Liang left Kaifeng on October 15, reached the Huai River border on October 28, and marched in the direction of the Yangtze. The Song lost the Huai to the Jurchens but captured a few Jin prefectures in the west, slowing the Jurchen advance. A group of Jurchen generals were sent to cross the Yangtze near the city of Caishi (south of
Ma'anshan in modern Anhui) while Wanyan Liang established a base near Yangzhou. catapult on its top deck, from the
Wujing Zongyao The Song official
Yu Yunwen was in command of the army defending the river. The Jurchen army was defeated while attacking Caishi between November 26 and 27 during the
Battle of Caishi. The
paddle-wheel ships of the
Song navy, armed with
trebuchets that fired
gunpowder bombs, overwhelmed the light ships of the Jin fleet. Jin ships were unable to compete because they were smaller and hastily constructed. The bombs launched by the Song contained mixtures of gunpowder, lime, scraps of iron, and a poison that was likely
arsenic. Traditional Chinese accounts consider this the turning point of the war, characterizing it as a military upset that secured southern China from the northern invaders. The significance of the battle is said to have rivaled a similarly revered victory at the
Battle of Fei River in the 4th century. Contemporaneous Song accounts claimed that the 18,000 Song soldiers commanded by Yu Yunwen and tasked with defending Caishi were able to defeat the invading Jurchen army of 400,000 soldiers. Modern historians are more skeptical and consider the Jurchen numbers an exaggeration. Song historians may have confused the number of Jurchen soldiers at the Battle of Caishi with the total number of soldiers under the command of Wanyan Liang. The conflict was not the one-sided battle that traditional accounts imply, and the Song had numerous advantages over the Jin. The Song fleet was larger than the Jin's, and the Jin were unable to use their greatest asset, cavalry, in a naval battle. A modern analysis of the battlefield has shown that it was a minor battle, although the victory did boost Song morale. The Jin lost, but only suffered about 4,000 casualties and the battle was not fatal to the Jurchen war effort. It was Wanyan Liang's poor relationships with the Jurchen generals, who despised him, that doomed the chances of a Jin victory. On December 15, Wanyan Liang was assassinated in his military camp by disaffected officers. He was succeeded by
Emperor Shizong (r. 1161–1189), who had long resented Digunai for driving his
wife, Lady Wulinda, to suicide. Shizong was pressured into ending the unpopular war with the Song, and ordered the withdrawal of Jin forces in 1162. Emperor Gaozong retired from the throne that same year. His mishandling of the war with Wanyan Liang was one of many reasons for his abdication. Skirmishes between the Song and Jin continued along the border, but subsided in 1165 after the negotiation of a peace treaty. There were no major territorial changes. The treaty dictated that the Song still had to pay the annual indemnity, but the indemnity was renamed from "tribute", which had implied a subordinate relationship, to "payment".
Song revanchism The Jin were weakened by the pressure of the rising Mongols to the north, a series of floods culminating in a
Yellow River flood in 1194 that devastated Hebei and Shandong in northern China, and the droughts and swarming locusts that plagued the south near the Huai. The Song were informed of the Jurchen predicament by their ambassadors, who traveled twice a year to the Jin capital, and started provoking their northern neighbor. The hostilities were instigated by chancellor
Han Tuozhou. The Song
Emperor Ningzong (r. 1194–1224) took little interest in the war effort. Under Han Tuozhou's supervision, preparations for the war proceeded gradually and cautiously. The court venerated the
irredentist hero Yue Fei and Han orchestrated the publishing of historical records that justified war with the Jin. From 1204 onwards, Chinese armed groups raided Jurchen settlements. Han Tuozhou was designated the head of national security in 1205. The Song funded insurgents in the north that professed loyalist sympathies. These early clashes continued to escalate, partly abetted by
revanchist Song officials, and war against the Jin was officially declared on June 14, 1206. The document that announced the war claimed the Jin lost the
Mandate of Heaven, a sign that they were unfit to rule, and called for an insurrection of Han Chinese against the Jin state. Song armies led by general
Bi Zaiyu (; d. 1217) captured the barely defended border city of Sizhou (on the north bank of the Huai River across from modern
Xuyi County) but suffered large losses against the Jurchens in Hebei. The Jin repelled the Song and moved south to besiege the Song town of Chuzhou on the Grand Canal just south of the Huai River. Bi defended the town, and the Jurchens withdrew from the siege after three months. By the fall of 1206, however, the Jurchens had captured multiple towns and military bases. The Jin initiated an offensive against Song prefectures in the central front of the war, capturing
Zaoyang and Guanghua (; on the
Han River near modern
Laohekou). By the fall of 1206, the Song offensive had already failed disastrously. Soldier morale sank as weather conditions worsened, supplies ran out, and hunger spread, forcing many to desert. The massive defections of Han Chinese in northern China that the Song had expected never materialized. A notable betrayal did occur on the Song side, however:
Wu Xi (; d. 1207), the governor-general of Sichuan, defected to the Jin in December 1206. The Song had depended on Wu's success in the west to divert Jin soldiers away from the eastern front. He had attacked Jin positions earlier in 1206, but his army of about 50,000 men had been repelled. Wu's defection could have meant the loss of the entire western front of the war, but Song loyalists assassinated Wu on March 29, 1207, before Jin troops could take control of the surrendered territories.
An Bing (; d. 1221) was given Wu Xi's position, but the cohesion of Song forces in the west fell apart after Wu's demise and commanders turned on each other in the ensuing infighting. Fighting continued in 1207, but by the end of that year the war was at a stalemate. The Song was now on the defensive, while the Jin failed to make gains in Song territory. The war therefore cost both parties much more than it gained them. The failure of Han Tuozhou's aggressive policies against the Jurchens by this time round had depopularised him amongst the common people which situation was exploited by the Empress Yang and Shi Miyuan, his most powerful political rivals to garner support amongst other courtiers which led to his demise. On November 24, 1207, Han Touzhou on his way to Court he was intercepted, dragged outside Imperial precincts and bludgeoned to death by the Imperial Palace Guards. His accomplice Su Shidan () was executed, and other officials connected to Han were dismissed or exiled. Since neither combatant was eager to continue the war, they returned to negotiations. A peace treaty was signed on November 2, 1208, and the Song tribute to the Jin was reinstated. The Song annual indemnity increased by 50,000 taels of silver and 50,000 packs of fabric. The treaty also stipulated that the Song had to present to the Jin the head of Han Tuozhou, who the Jin held responsible for starting the war. The heads of Han and Su were severed from their exhumed corpses, exhibited to the public, then delivered to the Jin.
Jin–Song war during the rise of the Mongols ''|alt=Jin cavalry fighting a battle against Mongol cavalry The
Mongols, a nomadic confederation, had unified in the middle of the twelfth century. They and other steppe nomads occasionally raided the Jin empire from the northwest. The Jin shied away from punitive expeditions and was content with appeasement, similar to the practices of the Song. The Mongols, formerly a Jin tributary, ended their Jurchen vassalage in 1210 and attacked the Jin in 1211. In light of this event, the Song court debated ending tributary payments to the weakened Jin, but they again chose to avoid antagonizing the Jin. They refused Western Xia's offers of allying against the Jin in 1214 and willingly complied when in 1215 the Jin rejected a request to lower the annual indemnity. Meanwhile, in 1214, the Jin retreated from the
besieged capital of Zhongdu to Kaifeng, which became the new capital of the dynasty. As the Mongols expanded, the Jin suffered territorial losses and attacked the Song in 1217 to compensate for their shrinking territory. Periodic Song raids against the Jin were the official justification for the war. Another likely motive was that the conquest of the Song would have given the Jin a place to escape should the Mongols succeed in taking control of the north.
Shi Miyuan (; 1164–1233), the chancellor of Song
Emperor Lizong (r. 1224–1264), was hesitant to fight the Jin and delayed the declaration of war for two months. Song generals were largely autonomous, allowing Shi to evade blame for their military blunders. The Jin advanced across the border from the center and western fronts. Jurchen military successes were limited, and the Jin faced repeated raids from the neighboring state of Western Xia. In 1217, the Song generals Meng Zongzheng () and Hu Zaixing () defeated the Jin and prevented them from capturing Zaoyang and
Suizhou. A second Jin campaign in late 1217 did marginally better than the first. In the east, the Jin made little headway in the Huai River valley, but in the west they captured
Xihezhou and Dasan Pass (; modern Shaanxi) in late 1217. The Jin tried to captured Suizhou in Jingxi South circuit again in 1218 and 1219, but failed. A Song counteroffensive in early 1218 captured Sizhou and in 1219 the Jin cities of
Dengzhou and
Tangzhou were pillaged twice by a Song army commanded by
Zhao Fang (; d. 1221). In the west, command of the Song forces in Sichuan was given to An Bing, who had previously been dismissed from this position. He successfully defended the western front, but was unable to advance further because of local uprisings in the area. The Jin tried to extort an indemnity from the Song but never received it. In the last of the three campaigns, in early 1221, the Jin captured the city of Qizhou (; in Huainan West) deep in Song territory. Song armies led by Hu Zaixing and
Li Quan (; d. 1231) defeated the Jin, who then withdrew. In 1224 both sides agreed on a peace treaty that ended the annual tributes to the Jin. Diplomatic missions between the Jin and Song were also cut off.
Mongol–Song alliance In February 1233, the Mongols
took Kaifeng after a siege of more than 10 months and the Jin court retreated to the town of
Caizhou. In 1233
Emperor Aizong (r. 1224–1234) of the Jin dispatched diplomats to implore the Song for supplies. Jin envoys reported to the Song that the Mongols would invade the Song after they were done with the Jin—a forecast that would later be proven true—but the Song ignored the warning and rebuffed the request. They instead formed an alliance with the Mongols against the Jin. The Song provided supplies to the Mongols in return for parts of Henan. The Jin dynasty collapsed when Mongol and Song troops
defeated the Jurchens at the
siege of Caizhou in 1234. General
Meng Gong () led the Song army against Caizhou. The penultimate emperor of the Jin, Emperor Aizong, took his own life. His short-lived successor,
Emperor Mo, was killed in the town a few days later. The Mongols later turned their sights towards the Song. After decades of war, the Song dynasty also
fell in 1279, when the remaining Song loyalists were defeated by the Mongols in the
Battle of Yamen near
Guangdong. ==Historical significance==