Chapter 40 Chapter 11 The Battle of Yancheng in the Song and Jin Dynasties

In 1127 AD, the Jin army captured the Northern Song emperor Song Huizong and his son Song Qinzong, and the Northern Song Dynasty ended.In this year, some civil and military officials of the Song Dynasty established Qinzong's younger brother Zhao Gou as emperor in Yingtianfu (now Shangqiu, Henan), and he was Song Gaozong.The Song Dynasty was rebuilt again, and it was called the Southern Song Dynasty in history.Song Gaozong was afraid of the Jin people and did not dare to resist. He fled south all the way, and finally established the capital in Hangzhou, which was renamed Lin'an.Since then, the small imperial court of the Southern Song Dynasty has been living a peaceful life there, ignoring the people of the Central Plains.

In order to keep the throne, Song Gaozong did not hesitate to humiliate the Jin Dynasty for peace, and specially appointed Qin Hui, a prisoner released by the Jin Dynasty, as prime minister to preside over the peace talks.Zhao Gou and Qin Hui were afraid of offending the Jin Dynasty, so they often suppressed the generals who resisted the Jin Dynasty.Once, Yue Fei won a big victory in the front line, Zhao Gou urgently ordered him to stop chasing.Filled with grief and indignation, Yue Fei wrote a patriotic poem "Manjianghong" full of patriotic passion, lamenting his "thirty years of fame and dust, eight thousand miles of roads and moons", expressing his determination to "drive a long car, step through Helan Mountain Que", "Clean up the old mountains and rivers from scratch".Soon, the Jin Dynasty sent envoys to Lin'an to "negotiate peace" and asked Zhao Gou to kneel down and accept the "edict" of the Jin Emperor.The civil and military officials of the Anti-Japanese War faction all saw that Qin Hui's "peace negotiation" was to ask the Southern Song Dynasty to surrender.Someone wrote a letter requesting that Qin Hui's head be beheaded and hung in the street for public display.Yue Fei also wrote a letter to Emperor Gaozong, accusing Qin Hui of saying: "The prime minister's plan for the country is improper, and I am afraid that future generations will laugh at it." Signed a peace agreement with Jin: the Song Dynasty became a minister of Jin, and paid 250,000 taels of silver and 250,000 pieces of silk every year; Jin promised to return Henan and Shaanxi to the Song Dynasty.This happened in the first month of the ninth year of Shaoxing in the Southern Song Dynasty (AD 1139).

The so-called peace negotiation of the Jin Kingdom ruling group was originally an expedient measure.In the autumn of the ninth year of Shaoxing (1139 A.D.), a coup d'état occurred within the Kingdom of Jin. Wanyan Wushu (Zong Bi) came to power and opposed the return of Henan and Shaanxi to the Song Dynasty, overturning the peace agreement signed by the two countries in the first month of the same year.In May of the next year, the Jin soldiers attacked the Southern Song Dynasty in four directions, starting from the Huaihe River in the east and ending in Shaanxi in the west.Marshal Wu Shu Rendu personally led the main force of the Jin army with more than 100,000 people to attack Kaifeng.Chang'an and Luoyang were successively captured by the Jin army.Wushu led the main force to attack Kaifeng, Tokyo, and then captured Shangqiu, Nanjing, and took advantage of the victory to continue to attack Huaixi.

At this time, Song Gaozong was celebrating the success of the peace talks, conferring officials on a large scale, and was unaware of the Jin army's attack.Therefore, the Jin army attacked aggressively at the beginning, but soon encountered stubborn resistance from soldiers and civilians of the Southern Song Dynasty, such as Yue Fei, Liu Qi (qi Qi), Han Shizhong, etc., thus curbing the Jin army's attack.Among them, Yue Fei's counterattack in Yancheng (now Yancheng, Henan) was the most outstanding.