The Niuche or Chorcha Tartars, who more than a century before had come to settle in China, had steadily multiplied and gathered to themselves a considerable power. Their seven hordes represented a military force of considerable proportions, which had become subservient to the Leaoutung administration in the time of the great Apaoki. But a large number of them, sooner than surrender their privileges, had withdrawn beyond the reach of the Khitan power into the country which is now Manchuria. Early in the twelfth

century, however, this people had come together again, and the remembrance of their common origin caused them to form a fresh alliance, and one having moreover its foundation in a mutual antipathy to the Khitans of Leaoutung. Among these there appeared a great warrior, Akouta, who first distinguished himself in battle in the year A.D. 1114 against his Khitan neighbours and the oppressors of his race. Inspired by his first success, he led his army from victory to victory, taking many towns and subjecting a large extent of territory. The rapidity of his conquest induced him to proclaim himself Emperor, when he assembled his army in order that it should witness the proclamation of the new government, and the announcement of the name by which he intended it to be known.

Akouta began his address by informing his soldiers that the Khitans had in the earlier days of their success taken the name of Pintiei, meaning the iron of Pinchow, but he went on to say, "Although the iron of Pinchow may be excellent, it is liable to rust, and can be eaten away. There is nothing save gold which is unchangeable, and which does not destroy itself. Moreover, the family of Wangyen, with which I am connected through the chief Hanpou, had always a great fancy for glittering colours such as that of gold, and I am now resolved to take this name as that of my Imperial family. I therefore give it the name of Kin, which signifies gold." In this proclamation (A.D. 1115) is to be found the origin of the Kin dynasty, the rival of the Sungs.

After this ceremony, the Tartar king of Leaoutung realized that he would have to fight for the preservation of his kingdom, if not of his independence. The danger which had so

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suddenly arisen on his frontier had imperceptibly assumed serious proportions, and threatened his very existence almost before he was aware of the approach of the struggle that was at hand. He then placed a larger army than before in the field-its numbers were computed at nearly three hundred thousand men, of whom the greater portion were cavalry. The Kin army was greatly inferior both in numbers and in the pomp of war, but Akouta knew that this show of strength was far from being real, and felt confident of victory. The result justified his anticipations. The immense army raised out of all the provinces from Shensi to Corea was scattered to the winds, and the baggage of the camp became the spoil of the victor. The results of a second victory in the same year were still more striking, and the defeated Khitans fled before the invaders, just as a century later the Kins themselves were to flee before the Mongols of Genghis.

It was not until two years after these events that Hoeitsong received tidings of the disasters which had been inflicted. on the Khitan ruler. His first thought was to turn them to his own advantage, and in the ambitious schemes which he formed he never entertained the possibility of the Kins proving worse neighbours than the Khitans. He thought the former would be well disposed to play his game, and return to their own solitudes on payment of so many bundles of silk and pounds of silver, leaving him the undisputed possessor of long-lost provinces. On this point he was to be speedily undeceived. The King of Corea sent an envoy to warn him against the Kins, who were represented to be "worse than wolves and tigers ;" but Hocitsong was not to be turned from the path which he had chosen even by the representations of his best friends.

Akouta received the Chinese Embassy, sent to propose a joint alliance against the Khitans, with all the ceremony due to the Emperor and to the mission with which his representative came charged. Some turn in the war with the Khitans, of which no details have been preserved, induced Akouta to conclude a truce with his enemy, when the advantage of an alliance with the Chinese ruler became less obvious to him. He pretended to take offence at the style

of Hoeitsong's letter, and the negotiations were abruptly broken off. The truce between the Kins and the Khitans proved short-lived, and the abortive alliance between the Chinese and Kins on a perfect level of equality was again broached and concluded. Hoeitsong consented to call Akouta the Great Emperor of the Kins, and Akouta agreed for his part to assist the Chinese in obtaining possession of the Yen province, which formed the southern portion of the dominions of the Khitans. Each of the allies was to place a large army in the field, and the Khitans were to be finally crushed as if "between the upper and the nether millstone."

The alliance proved of a nature not conducive to its permanence. The Chinese army was slow to take the field, and when it crossed over into Yen, the Khitans met and defeated it in several encounters. The Tartars who had first won Empire under the great Apaoki might have to confess a superior in the hardier kinsmen who, under the name of Kins, were issuing from beyond their northern frontier, but they were still incontestably the superiors, as warriors, of the Chinese, whom a long peace had rendered effeminate and deprived of generals. When When Hoeitsong's commanders sought to retrieve their bad fortune in the following year, they were treated still more roughly by Sioua, the Khitan general, and their army was ignominiously expelled from the district they hoped to conquer. The peasants of Yen made jokes and composed ballads about the inexperience of Hoeitsong's lieutenants, and the rude reception they had met with in their country.

Akouta's plans fared better. The Khitan army feared to encounter his, and their king fled before him to the desert of Shamo. A body of fresh troops, sent to his assistance by the Prince of Hia, was intercepted on the march, and severely defeated. The greatness of his own success, and the failure of Hoeitsong's attempt on Yen, led Akouta to place less value on the Chinese alliance, and to indulge hopes of extending his dominion beyond the dominions of the Khitan ruler. Hoeitsong's anxiety to acquire fresh territory was so great that he ignored the sentiment passing through the mind of his Kin ally, and, wishing to obtain as large a share as possible

of the spoil, sent an embassy to propose that to the province of Yen, which his armies had failed to conquer, there should be added several neighbouring cities as well. Akouta had no difficulty in exposing the unreasonable nature of this demand, and compelled Hoeitsong to make large concessions in other matters to obtain his consent to an arrangement which he was fully resolved to break at the first favourable opportunity. For the sake of maintaining an appearance of unity in face of the yet unsubdued Khitans, the old oaths were re-sworn, and the formalities of a defensive and offensive alliance performed over again.

Akouta then turned with all his energy to the task of finally vanquishing the Khitan king on the one hand, and that prince's victorious general Sioua on the other. The latter enterprise appeared the more difficult, and was the first essayed. Meantime the fragments of the two defeated Chinese armies had been collected and placed under the command of a fresh general, while Akouta detached a large body of his troops to attack the Prince of Yen on the north. Akouta's force was completely successful, while the Chinese troops remained passive spectators of the fray. Sioua and the Regent Princess, lately rejoicing at the repulse of Hoeitsong's armies, saw their hopes shattered like a house of cards at the first contact with the Kins, and were compelled to flee for safety. The province of Yen was thus at last subdued; but it had been conquered by the valour of the Kins, not by that of the Chinese, and Akouta had no intention of resigning his hold over it.

In the meanwhile Akouta was prosecuting in person the campaign against the unfortunate Khitan king, the descendant of the great Apaoki. With the few troops left at his disposal, the latter strove to check the victorious career of his opponent, but bad fortune attended all his measures. The strategy by which he sought to replace the want of numbers and of confidence was foiled, and the loss of his eldest son in battle further disheartened this last scion of a royal race. Despairing of success, he resolved to abstain from further effort, and to take refuge within the dominions of the Prince of Hia; but even there he found no certain shelter from his enemies, and

was fain to retire into the desert. During two years he led there a wandering existence, when he had often to go without proper nourishment, and was constantly in fear of his pursuers. In the year A.D. 1125 a detachment of the Kin army took him prisoner, and he died shortly afterwards of an illness brought on by physical suffering and grief at his misfortunes. With his death, the illustrious dynasty of the Khitans or Leaous reached its termination. It had held power from a period fifty years before the accession of the Sungs to this date, when the hand of destiny was already beckoning to those Chinese rulers, although half their course had not yet been run.

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The great chief Akouta had not lived to behold the final triumph of his arms. Seized with a violent illness he had died suddenly in A.D. 1123, leaving his Empire to his brother Oukimai. The Chinese themselves praise his extraordinary aptitude for war, and in a not less degree that rare gift, the capacity of judging one's fellows and knowing how best to employ their talents, which carried him to the height of fortune, and rendered it true to say of him that he succeeded with everything which he undertook. In his character may be seen the germ of the great qualities which enabled the Manchus to complete, five hundred years later, the task almost accomplished by their ancestors the Kins.

Meanwhile the much-disputed province of Yen had been placed under the nominal authority of the Emperor by the treachery of one of the Kin governors, but Hoeitsong did not long rejoice in the possession of a province which he had so much coveted. He was obliged to send Oukimai the head of the rebellious governor, and to acquiesce in the re-establishment of Kin authority. Numerous signs were seen in the air predicting a coming change, and the public mind was much

A.D. 907-1125.

"Even in their ashes lived their wonted fires." A Khitan prince, at the head of the relics of his army and his race, like an Asiatic Æneas, crossed the Gobi Desert, and penetrated into Central Asia, where, after conquering several Mahomedan states, he founded the kingdom of the Kara Khitay (in which name its origin is proclaimed), and assumed the title of Gurkhan. This dynasty endured for 77 years (A.D. 1124-1201), when it was extinguished by Koshluk, the King of the Naimans. The Gurkhan is one of the potentates identified with Prester John.