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RISE OF THE KINS.

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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 Hoeitsong 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 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

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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 The that prince's victorious general Sioua on the other. 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.

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.

NOT A MAN IN CHINA.

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exercised by the doubts and dangers which beset the Sung ruler. The Kins, full of the exultation of victory, demanded the surrender of all the country north of the Hoangho, and their ambassadors warned the Chinese ministers in no uncertain language that they would be conferring a real benefit on the Sung House by complying without delay or useless opposition. There is a wisdom of the highest character in timely concessions, but few distressed potentates have ever recognized it. The Kin troops proceeded to carry out the plan proposed by their ruler, and Hoeitsong bent before the approaching storm. He resigned his place to his son Kintsong, who was to bear the whole brunt of the danger; but even by a cowardly abdication Hoeitsong could not escape all the penalty of the acts of weakness and irresolution which had reduced the state to this helpless condition in the face of a powerful foe.

Kintsong endeavoured by a proffer of friendship to arrest the further advance of the Kin army, but his offers were treated with scorn.

The Chinese troops were defeated in several engagements, and failed to defend the crossing of the Hoangho, where a small body of determined troops could have successfully arrested the advance of a host. The Kin general exclaimed, when he found his men marshalled on the southern bank without having encountered any opposition, 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." The invaders then continued their march on the capital, from which Hoeitsong fled for safety to Nankin, leaving his son to make the best stand he could against the invader. The Kin general Walipou carried everything before him, and menaced the capital Kaifong; but the Kins had not yet determined how far they should prosecute their enterprise against the Sungs. There were many among them who considered that the Hoangho marked the proper limit of their sway. Fresh negotiations ensued, and a treaty was concluded, on the strength of which Hoeitsong returned to Kaifong.

But Walipou himself desired above all things to humble

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