But if it fared badly with the Chinese, the armies of Akouta continued to
be victorious, and the Khitans fled not less precipitately before him than
the Chinese did before them. Their best generals were unable to make the
least stand against the Kin forces. Their capital was occupied by the
conqueror, and the last descendant of the great Apaoki fled westward to
seek an asylum with the Prince of Hia or Tangut. He does not appear to
have received the protection he claimed, for after a brief stay at the
court of Hia, he made his way to the desert, where, after undergoing
incredible hardships, he fell into the hands of his Kin pursuers. With his
death soon afterward the Khitan dynasty came to an end, after enjoying its
power for two hundred years, but some members of this race escaped across
the Gobi Desert, and founded the brief-lived dynasty of the Kara Khitay in
Turkestan. Akouta died shortly before the final overthrow of the Leaoutung
power, and his brother Oukimai ruled in his place.
The ill-success of Hoeitsong's army in its joint campaign against
Leaoutung cost the emperor his share in the spoil. The Kins retained the
whole of the conquered territory, and the Sung prince was the worse off,
because he had a more powerful and aggressive neighbor. The ease of their
conquest, and the evident weakness of the Chinese, raised the confidence
of the Kins to such a high point that they declared that the Sungs must
surrender to them the whole of the territory north of the Hoangho, and
they prepared to secure what they demanded by force of arms. The Chinese
would neither acquiesce in the transfer of this region to the Kins nor
take steps to defend it. They were driven out of that portion of the
empire like sheep, and they even failed to make any stand at the passage
of the Hoangho, where the Kin general declared that "there could not be a
man left in China, for if two thousand men had defended the passage of
this river we should never have succeeded in crossing it." Hoeitsong
quitted his capital Kaifong to seek shelter at Nankin, where he hoped to
enjoy greater safety, and shortly afterward he abdicated in favor of his
son Kintsong. The siege of Kaifong which followed ended in a convention
binding the Chinese to pay the Kins an enormous sum--ten millions of small
gold nuggets, twenty millions of small silver nuggets, and ten million
pieces of silk; but the Tartar soldiers soon realized that there was no
likelihood of their ever receiving this fabulous spoil, and in their
indignation they seized both Hoeitsong and Kintsong, as well as any other
members of the royal family on whom they could lay their hands, and
carried them off to Tartary, where both the unfortunate Sung princes died
as prisoners of the Kins.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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