Jingkang Incident (1127): The Fall of Kaifeng and Northern Song

The Jingkang Incident was the capture of Kaifeng, the capital of China’s Song dynasty, by the Jurchen Jin in January 1127, and the deportation that followed of the retired emperor Huizong, the reigning emperor Qinzong and thousands of members of the court. Named after Qinzong’s reign title, Jingkang, it ended the Northern Song and forced the dynasty to rebuild itself south of the Huai River. Chinese tradition long remembered it as a national humiliation.

Background: the alliance that backfired

For more than a century the Song dynasty had lived beside the Khitan Liao empire in the north, paying it annual gifts of silver and silk under the Treaty of Chanyuan of 1005. The Song deeply resented that the Liao held the “Sixteen Prefectures” around modern Beijing.

In 1115 the Jurchen leader Wanyan Aguda rebelled against the Liao and founded the Jin dynasty. Emperor Huizong saw a chance to recover the lost lands and in 1120 agreed an alliance with the Jin, known as the “Alliance Conducted at Sea” because envoys sailed across the Bohai Gulf. The Jin crushed the Liao, but Song armies failed badly in their own attack on Yanjing (Beijing). The Jin took the city themselves and handed it over only in exchange for large payments, and they formed a low opinion of Song military strength.

Relations broke down when the Song encouraged defectors from the Jin. In late 1125, after the last Liao emperor had been captured, Jin armies invaded the Song.

The first siege (1126)

As two Jin armies under Wanyan Zonghan and Wanyan Zongwang marched south, Huizong abdicated in favour of his son, who became Emperor Qinzong, and fled the capital. Zongwang reached Kaifeng in early 1126. The defence organised by the official Li Gang held, and the Song bought peace by promising a huge indemnity in gold, silver and silk and the cession of three northern prefectures, Taiyuan, Zhongshan and Hejian. The Jin withdrew.

The Song court then hesitated over handing over the prefectures and tried to win back Jin allies. The Jin treated this as a breach of the treaty. In the autumn of 1126 they invaded again, took Taiyuan after a long siege, and converged on Kaifeng late in the year. This time no relief army arrived in time to save the capital.

The fall of Kaifeng (January 1127)

Kaifeng was one of the largest cities in the world, with a population often estimated at around a million, but its defenders were poorly led and short of troops. The outer walls fell in the depths of winter, in January 1127. Qinzong went to the Jin camp to negotiate and surrendered.

The Jin demanded enormous quantities of gold, silver and silk. Officials stripped the treasury, the palaces and private households to meet the demand, and when that was not enough, the Jin took people, including palace women, as part of the payment. In early 1127 the Jin formally deposed the Song emperors and set up a former Song minister, Zhang Bangchang, as puppet ruler of a state called Chu.

Into captivity

In the spring of 1127 the Jin armies withdrew north with Huizong, Qinzong, empresses, princes, princesses, consorts, officials, craftsmen and entertainers. Estimates of the number of captives vary widely, from several thousand to more than ten thousand. They also took the imperial library, ritual bronzes, astronomical instruments, including Su Song’s clock tower, printing blocks and art collections.

Many captives died on the long march or in harsh conditions. The two emperors were given humiliating titles, Huizong as “Duke of Muddled Virtue”, and were finally held at Wuguocheng in northern Manchuria. Huizong, a gifted painter and calligrapher, died there in 1135. Qinzong died in captivity many years later.

Why did Kaifeng fall?

Historians point to several causes. Song military organisation was designed to prevent generals from becoming too powerful: commanders were rotated, armies were directed from the capital and civil officials often oversaw campaigns. This kept the dynasty free of military coups but made it slow to respond to a fast-moving cavalry enemy.

Kaifeng itself was hard to defend. It lay on the open North China Plain with no mountain barriers, and the Yellow River, which might have served as a line of defence, was crossed by Jin troops with little resistance. The court also wavered between war and peace, recalling and dismissing commanders and reversing decisions. Huizong’s costly building projects and his collection of rare rocks and plants for his garden, which required heavy requisitions in the south, had damaged confidence in the government and helped fuel the Fang La rebellion of 1120–1121.

The Jurchens, by contrast, were a young and confident power with excellent mounted archers, and they quickly learned siege warfare from captured Khitan and Chinese engineers.

Cultural losses

The fall of Kaifeng scattered one of the richest cultural centres of the medieval world. Huizong’s palace collections of paintings, calligraphy and antiquities, catalogued in works compiled under his patronage, were looted or dispersed. Some objects survived in Jin hands and later passed to the imperial collections of later dynasties, but much was lost forever.

Key people

• Huizong (1082–1135): emperor 1100–1126, famous patron of painting and calligraphy, whose foreign policy helped provoke the war.
• Qinzong (1100–c. 1161): emperor 1126–1127, who inherited the crisis and was taken captive.
• Wanyan Zonghan and Wanyan Zongwang: the two Jin commanders who led the invasions.
• Li Gang (1083–1140): the official who organised the successful first defence of Kaifeng.
• Zhao Gou (1107–1187): Huizong’s ninth son, who escaped capture and became Emperor Gaozong.

Consequences: the Southern Song

Zhao Gou was outside the capital raising troops when it fell. He was proclaimed emperor at Yingtian (modern Shangqiu) in June 1127. Jin raids drove him south across the Yangtze, and in 1130 he even fled by sea. Eventually the court settled at Hangzhou (Lin’an), and the dynasty survived as the Southern Song until 1279.

North China, including Kaifeng, remained under Jin rule. Generals such as Yue Fei fought to recover it, but the Treaty of Shaoxing in 1141–1142 fixed the border along the Huai River.

Legacy

The phrase “the humiliation of Jingkang” became a byword in Chinese culture for national disgrace. It appears in the famous lyric “Man Jiang Hong”, traditionally attributed to Yue Fei, and in many later plays and novels. The disaster also deepened debates among Song officials over whether to make peace with the north or fight to recover it, a question that shaped politics for the rest of the dynasty.

Timeline

• 1115: Wanyan Aguda founds the Jin dynasty.
• 1120: The Song and Jin agree their alliance against the Liao.
• 1125: The Liao fall; the Jin invade the Song late in the year.
• 1126, January: Huizong abdicates in favour of Qinzong.
• 1126, early: First Jin siege of Kaifeng ends with a treaty.
• 1126, autumn: The Jin invade again and take Taiyuan.
• 1127, January: Kaifeng falls and Qinzong surrenders.
• 1127, spring: The Jin depart north with the two emperors and the court.
• 1127, June: Zhao Gou is proclaimed emperor, founding the Southern Song.
• 1135: Huizong dies in captivity.

Why it matters

The Jingkang Incident split China for more than a century, shifted the Song state and much of its population and culture to the south, and left a lasting memory of national humiliation that later generations invoked in times of crisis.