The Cambridge History of China. Vol. 06. Alien Regimes and Border States, 907-1368
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THE SUCCESSION CRISIS AND THE REIGN OF T'AI-TSUNG 71
The
Sixteen
Prefectures
ceded
to Khitan, 937
*EASTERN
CAPITAL
SSST JK'ar-fengl
(Lo-yangl-
MAP
3. The Khitan and north China,
A.D.
943
The northern and northeastern frontier areas of China were now part of the
dominion of the border peoples and would remain beyond Chinese control
until the late fourteenth century. The Khitan, for their part, were also now
inextricably involved in the affairs of the Chinese world.
It is doubtful whether the principal actors understood the momentous
implications of these events. Shih Ching-t'ang was a Turk, not of Chinese
origin, and this may explain why he was not sensitive to the issue of Chinese
subservience to a non-Han regime. He was far more concerned with preserv-
ing peace with the Khitan so that he could concentrate on his own pressing
internal problems than he was with such niceties of status. During his reign
(936—42) he duly fulfilled his obligations as a vassal and made no objections
when the Khitan entered into closer relations with the states of southern
China, particularly with his neighbor and rival the Southern T'ang. He even
allowed Khitan embassies to southern China to pass through his own terri-
tory by land, rather than travel by sea, as they had done before.
The Khitan were well aware of events in China beyond the borders of the
neighboring northern regimes. As early as 915 Ch'ien Liu, ruler of the
coastal state of Wu-Yiieh in modern Chekiang, had sent an envoy by sea to
the Khitan court. Wu-yiieh formally acknowledged the supremacy of the
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72 THE LIAO
successive regimes in north China. Their motives for also opening relations
with the Khitan were chiefly commercial: They wished to protect their trade
interests in Po-hai and Korea. The Khitan, for their part, sought access to
the seaborne trade with Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean, to obtain
exotic articles, spices, and luxury
goods.
The Southern T'ang also established
relations with the Khitan, but in their case the motivation was political.
They wished to form an alliance with the Khitan against the Later T'ang. The
king of Southern T'ang and the Khitan emperor addressed one another as
brothers, thus giving Southern T'ang superior status in Khitan eyes to their
northern neighbors, the Later T'ang. At a single audience in 937 T'ai-tsung
received envoys from the Later T'ang, from the semi-independent governor of
T'ai-yiian, Liu Chih-yiian, and from the newly enthroned emperor of South-
ern T'ang. The Khitan were thus closely involved in the complex interstate
politics of the various independent regimes in China.
Relations with Southern T'ang were not purely formal. The southern court
provided crucial intelligence to the Khitan about developments in the Chin
in 940, 941, and 943. After the fall of Chin and the Khitan attempt to set up
a regime at K'ai-feng in 947 had ended in failure and withdrawal, the
Southern T'ang again suggested a military alliance against the short-lived
Han regime (948-51) that succeeded the Chin. And as late as 957 they again
provided the Liao with military intelligence about the Chou regime in the
north, which was currently threatening the Southern T'ang.
The relations between the Khitan and the southern states of Wu-Yiieh and
Southern T'ang were at their height in the late 930s and 940s; for a while
Wu-Yiieh even used the Khitan calendar. But T'ai-tsung's invasion showed
the south what a potential threat the Khitan posed. After the accession of the
Liao emperor Mu-tsung in
951,
the politically inactive Khitan leader showed
no interest in intervening in the everlasting power struggles among the
Chinese states. Thereafter both diplomatic contacts and trade with the south-
ern courts fell off dramatically. They deteriorated even further after 954,
when Mu-tsung's uncle, who had been sent as an envoy to Southern T'ang,
was assassinated. He thus refused to send any further envoys, although
Southern T'ang envoys reached the Liao in 955 and again in 957, still seeking
help against the Chou.
After the death of Shih Ching-t'ang in 942, relations between the Khitan
and the Chin rapidly deteriorated. Shih Ching-t'ang may have been a Khitan
puppet, but he had quietly restored the authority of his dynasty over the
fractious provinces, strengthened the structure of government, and built up a
strong centralized army. His successor, Shih Ch'ung-kuei (temple name
Ch'u-ti; reigned 942—6), came under the influence of a violently anti-Khitan
court faction led by the commander of the imperial army Ching Yen-kuang,
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THE SUCCESSION CRISIS AND THE REIGN OF T'AI-TSUNG 73
and he openly repudiated the former supremacy of T'ai-tsung and his "North-
ern Dynasty." In 943 Shih Ch'ung-kuei abolished the privileges of Khitan
merchants at the Chin capital, K'ai-feng, confiscated their property, and sent
their representative, who also managed trade in Chin on behalf of
the
Khitan
court, back home bearing an insulting letter to T'ai-tsung.
T'ai-tsung decided to invade. At the end of
944,
Khitan forces crossed the
border of Hopei at several points, followed by T'ai-tsung's main army. The
fighting dragged on for three years, and not all of it went the Khitans' way.
In the late spring of
945
the invading army was seriously defeated, and T'ai-
tsung himself had to flee the battlefield mounted ignominiously on a camel.
But the Khitan persisted, wearing down the Chin armies. The province of
Ho-pei, where most of
the
fighting took place, was devastated. The outcome
was decided at the end of
946
when Tu Ch'ung-wei, the Chin commander in
chief and uncle of the emperor, surrendered. T'ai-tsung was able to enter the
capital, K'ai-feng, without meeting any resistance.
At the beginning of 947, T'ai-tsung made a triumphal entry into K'ai-
feng riding in the imperial carriage, took up his residence in the palace of the
Chin emperor, and held court in the ceremonial audience hall, demanding
the attendance of the remaining Chin courtiers. The Chin emperor and his
family were sent in exile to the Liao Supreme Capital in Manchuria. The
Chin imperial armies, after the surrender of Tu Ch'ung-wei, were disarmed
and disbanded, and their cavalry horses were confiscated. T'ai-tsung formally
announced a general act of grace, adopted a new dynastic name for the
Khitan state
—
now to be known as the Greater Liao
—
and adopted a new
reign title and a new calendar (which had in fact been devised under the Chin
in 939). The new reign title he chose was Ta-t'ung, "Great Unity," and this
publicly proclaimed that he was determined to make himself emperor of all
north China. The Liao court diarists recorded that more than a million
households of the Chin population had been incorporated into their empire.
But the Chinese population thought otherwise. The Khitan army had
brought no adequate supplies with them and now looted the capital and
plundered the countryside in search of food and forage. Oppressive levies
were imposed on the citizens of K'ai-feng, and everywhere there was resent-
ment and fear of the invaders' unbridled violence. The populace began to
attack the Khitan; mutinies and uprisings broke out all over Ho-pei. The
Khitan were totally unprepared to govern such a vast territory, inhabited by a
hostile sedentary population that far outnumbered them. T'ai-tsung com-
plained to his entourage: "I never knew that the Chinese could be so difficult
to govern as this!"
The Khitan now began to loot the capital thoroughly. It
was
decided to take
back to Manchuria the entire body of Chin officials. This proved impossible,
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74 THE LIAO
but in the third month of 947 they began shipping off to the Supreme Capital
the personnel of the main ministries, the palace women, eunuchs, diviners,
and artisans in their thousands; books, maps; astronomical charts, instru-
ments, and astronomers; musical treatises and ceremonial musical instru-
ments; the imperial carriages and ritual impedimenta; the weapons and armor
from the arsenals; and even the copies of the Confucian classics engraved on
stone slabs. While T'ai-tsung stripped bare the palace and government offices,
his troops continued to pillage the city and surrounding countryside.
The Khitan, already harried by popular resistance and guerrilla attacks,
were now faced with a more severe threat. Liu Chih-yuan, the governor of the
fiercely independent Sha-t'o stronghold of T'ai-yiian who had stood aside
when the Khitan invaded Hopei, refused to acknowledge T'ai-tsung as
emperor or to attend his "court" in K'ai-feng. In the second month of 947 he
declared himself the emperor of a rival new dynasty, the Han. Discontented
elements in the neighboring provinces rallied to his banner, posing an imme-
diate threat to K'ai-feng and Lo-yang. T'ai-tsung was now in a precarious
position, facing not only widespread guerrilla resistance, local uprisings, and
mutinies throughout Ho-pei but also the threat of
a
full-scale military con-
frontation with the only major commander in the north whose forces had
remained intact after T'ai-tsung had disbanded the Chin imperial army.
T'ai-tsung wisely decided to withdraw to the north, to "avoid the heat of
summer" as he claimed but, in reality, to avoid being trapped with his army
in an indefensible position deep in hostile territory. He had enjoyed his
occupation of the capital at K'ai-feng for only three months. In the fourth
month the Liao armies and his vast baggage train began to withdraw, con-
stantly harassed en route by Chinese attacks. The invasion had plainly been a
major miscalculation. T'ai-tsung himself admitted that he had made grave
mistakes in permitting the looting of the countryside, in imposing harsh
penal levies on the cities, and in failing to deal firmly with the provincial
governors, who were still a key factor in the power structure of northern
China. Moreover, his campaign had never won general approval among the
Khitan nobility. Never again would a Liao emperor seriously plan a campaign
of conquest in China.
Shortly before reaching Liao territory in northern Ho-pei, T'ai-tsung, who
was still only forty-five, suddenly fell ill and died at Luan-ch'eng (south of
present-day Shih-chia chuang, Hopei). The Liao, having suffered a major
disaster in their invasion of
China,
now faced yet another succession crisis at
home.
Meanwhile, Liu Chih-yuan entered K'ai-feng in the sixth month and
established the shortest-lived of the Five Dynasties, the Han (947-50). He
left his provincial capital at T'ai-yiian in the hands of
his
cousin Liu Ch'ung.
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THE SUCCESSION OF SHIH-TSUNG 75
This provincial power base was strong enough to survive the collapse of the
ephemeral Han dynasty. When that fell in 950, Liu Ch'ung declared himself
emperor of the independent regional state of the Northern Han, a state that
would survive until 979 and whose fortunes would remain tied to the Khitan
until the end.
THE SUCCESSION OF SHIH-TSUNG
Immediately after T'ai-tsung's death, Yeh-lii Yuan
(918—51;
Khitan name
Wu-yii) the eldest son of Pei, A-pao-chi's original heir apparent, declared
himself emperor "before his father's coffin" at Chen-chou in Ho-pei. His
uncle T'ai-tsung had loved him as if he were his own son; he had accompa-
nied the emperor in his campaign against Chin and had taken part in the
occupation of K'ai-feng, gaining a reputation among the Khitan nobles as a
brave and capable commander. A dignified, generous, and magnanimous
man and a skilled horseman and archer, Yeh-lii Yuan was generally respected.
He reached the Liao Southern Capital (modern Peking) in the sixth month
and marched north at the head of his army.
Yeh-lii Yiian's assumption of the throne by hereditary right as the eldest
son of A-pao-chi's eldest son roused the opposition of the still-formidable
empress dowager Ying-t'ien. She supported the claim of her own favorite
third son Li-hu, the younger brother of the deceased emperor. His claim was
not groundless, for in 930 T'ai-tsung had appointed him heir apparent or,
according to some sources, as the imperial great younger brother (huang t'ai
ti).
Once again there was a conflict between the Chinese style of hereditary
succession and the Khitan tribal custom of succession by brothers. The
empress sent Li-hu with an army to block Yiian's return to the capital. When
Li-hu's army was defeated, the redoubtable old lady led her own army to
confront the new emperor. On the Shira muren, just south of the Supreme
Capital, the two armies faced each other for several days.
The crisis was resolved by the mediation of a royal cousin named Yeh-lii
Wu-chih (916-72). This time the empress dowager was unable to have her
way. Wu-chih and the Khitan nobles rejected Li-hu on the grounds that he
had made himself generally hated because of his cruelty. The empress dowa-
ger gave in, telling Li-hu that he had brought failure on
himself.
21
21 LS, 77, pp. 1255—6. An interesting source regarding these events is the account written by Hu
Chiao, a Chinese official of the Chin who had been taken back on the retreat from K'ai-feng in Hsiao
Han's entourage. After the latter's execution for his part in a plot in 949, Hu fled east and then
eventually back to China in 953. His account is cited in Ou-yang Hsiu, Hsin Wu-tai shib, 73, pp.
904—8;
Ma Tuan-lin,
Wen
hsien t'ung k'ao, in Sbih t'ung (Shanghai, 1936), 345, pp. 2704c—5c. For a
translation, see F.douard Chavannes, "Voyageurs Chinois chez les Khitan et les Joutchen," pt. 1,
Journal Aiiatiqut, 9th series, no. 9 (1897), pp. 390—411.
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-]6 THE LIAO
The confrontation between the legitimate hereditary heir and the late
emperor's brother was thus resolved in favor of
the
hereditary heir. But it was
not his hereditary claim that had prevailed; rather, his rival had been rejected
by the nobility because he was personally unacceptable as a ruler. Although
the empress lost, the Khitan principle of "electing" a suitable candidate was
what swayed the decision. Moreover, opposition to the new emperor, whose
posthumous temple name is Shih-tsung (r. 947—51), remained powerful.
Much of his short reign was spent dealing with dissidence among the royal
family and nobility.
Both the empress dowager and Li-hu were banished from court and sent to
live in retirement at Tsu-chou, the Khitan ancestral cult center. (The empress
outlived Shih-tsung and died in 953, aged seventy-four.) If the new emperor
hoped that this would secure his position, he was soon disillusioned. The
internal situation in the Liao remained unstable.
In 948 a plot against the emperor's life was organized by T'ien-te, the
second son of T'ai-tsung. The conspiracy failed, and T'ien-te was executed.
Although the other conspirators were punished, their lives were spared.
Among them was Hsiao Han, a nephew of the empress dowager who was
married to the new emperor's sister, A-pu-li. The next year he was involved
in another plot with some dissident nobles. Again, even though he was
proved guilty, the emperor tried to hush up the matter and released him.
Finally in 949 a letter was intercepted in which Hsiao Han was plotting
another uprising, this time with An-tuan, one of A-pao-chi's surviving
brothers. This time Shih-tsung had had enough; Hsiao Han was executed and
the princess died in prison.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF GOVERNMENT INSTITUTIONS
Shih-tsung was not entirely preoccupied with this constant round of in-
trigue. During his brief reign there were some important institutional
changes. They were not entirely innovations but, rather, the culmination of
changes that had been taking place gradually for many years. It is difficult to
follow the development of Liao government institutions. The Liao shib"
provides a detailed, if often confusing, picture of the mature government
system as it existed in the early eleventh century, but few clues to the stages
by which various offices and bureaus came into being and almost nothing
about how they intermeshed to form a working system of administration.
Shih-tsung's reign was clearly a crucial time. Ever since the acquisition of the
sixteen Chinese prefectures in 938, it had been necessary to establish more
22 LS, 45-8, pp. 685-831.
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THE DEVELOPMENT OF GOVERNMENT INSTITUTIONS 77
and more sophisticated government institutions to control the millions of
new Chinese subjects. The temporary occupation of north China brought a
huge number of former Chinese officials into the Liao system and with them
came a tendency to adopt many of the techniques of Chinese administration.
The most striking feature of Liao administration was the dual system of
government that had been gradually emerging for many years. Since early in
the tenth century, it had been customary to divide offices into "northern" and
"southern." The imperial clan itself had a southern division, made up of A-pao-
chi's close relatives of the Six Divisions, and a northern division comprising
more distant relatives. A-pao-chi had appointed northern and southern prime
ministers
{pei-fu
tsai-hsiang, nan-fu tsai-hsiang). The nature of this system was
symbolized in a decree of T'ai-tsung's later years that ordered that the offi-
cials of the Northern Administration and the empress dowager
—
the arch-
representative of the old tribal ways - wear Khitan costume and that the
officials of the Southern Administration and the emperor himself dress in
Chinese style.
2
' This northern and southern division of government was not a
strictly geographical one; the "Northern Administration" was responsible for
the Khitan and tribal peoples, wherever they lived, and the "Southern Ad-
ministration" was responsible for the Chinese population, as had been the
Chinese Office (Han-erh ssu) that A-pao-chi had set up in his early years.
At the beginning of Shih-tsung's reign, immediately after his return to the
Supreme Capital, he formally divided the empire into Northern and Southern
Regions (Pei-mien, Nan-mien). These were true regional divisions of Liao
territory. The Southern Region comprised the predominantly Chinese and
Po-hai areas of the south and east. The Northern Region was the area largely
settled by Khitan and dependent tribal peoples. Because the Northern Re-
gion also included stable settlements of Chinese, Po-hai, and even Uighurs,
it was given a dual administrative system. It had therefore both a Khitan
Northern Commission for Military Affairs (Ch'i-tan Pei shu-mi yiian) and a
Khitan Southern Commission for Military Affairs (Ch'i-tan Nan shu-mi
yiian).
The southern commissioners were usually members of the Yeh-lii royal
clan, the northern commissioners mostly members of the Hsiao consort clan.
The administration of the Northern Region was mainly, though not exclu-
sively, staffed by Khitan holding traditional Khitan titles. Its most powerful
officers were the Khitan commissioners for military affairs, the prime minis-
ters of the Northern and Southern administrations
{Pei-fu
tsai-hsiang, Nan-fu
tsai-hsiang),
the Northern and Southern Great Kings
{Pei
Ta-wang, Nan Ta-
wang),
both of whom were members of the royal clan, and the commander in
chief {yu-yueh). These men controlled all military and tribal affairs, the
23 LS, 56, p. 908.
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78 THE LIAO
selection of military commanders, the disposition of the tribal herds, and the
allocation of pastures. Beneath them was a bewildering array of tribal offi-
cials,
an office for the royal clan of the former Po-hai state, and a range of
offices providing services to the imperial house: artisans, physicians, hunts-
men, and commissioners responsible for the royal herds, stud farms, and
stables. No one could possibly confuse the administration of the Northern
Region with the orderly model of T'ang government. It was essentially a
great tribal leader's personal retinue, and many of its offices were specifically
reserved for members of one or another branch of the royal or consort clans
and filled by hereditary selection
(shih-hsiian).
The government of the Southern Region was more of
a
deliberate creation
than that of the Northern Region, which had evolved from traditional
Khitan institutions. It came into being after 948, when Shih-tsung returned
to the capital following the capture of K'ai-feng and the transportation to the
Khitan capital of great numbers of Chinese officials. It was modeled closely
on the government institutions of T'ang and the Five Dynasties. The Khitan
had used many Chinese titles earlier than this, both before and after the
assimilation of the sixteen border prefectures in 937. But it is unclear how far
these titles had implied the existence of Chinese-style bureaus with any
regular
staff.
In many cases they were clearly honorific titles, the Khitan
emperors following the old-established practice of the T'ang court in confer-
ring ranks and honorary offices with no real duties, as a reward for loyal
services.
In 947, however, the Khitan had at last created a Chinese-style dynasty,
with all the outward trappings of a Chinese court. The government of the
Southern Region was designed in imitation of
a
T'ang model. It was based,
as was the government of the Northern Region, at the Supreme Capital,
where it had its main offices. It had the traditional groups of elder states-
men, the Three Preceptors
(san shih)
and the Three Dukes
(san kung)
to act as
imperial advisers, and a complex bureaucracy at the head of which were three
ministries similar to the three central ministries
(san sheng)
of early T'ang.
There was a Chinese Commission for Military Affairs (Han-jen Shu-mi
yiian),
which combined the functions of the Commission for Military Affairs
(Shu-mi yiian) under the Five Dynasties with those of the T'ang Department
of State Affairs (Shang-shu sheng) and controlled five rather than six execu-
tive boards; a Secretariat (at first called Cheng-shih sheng; after 1044,
Chung-shu sheng) headed by a grand prime minister (ta
ch'eng-hsiang)
and
two deputy prime ministers
(ch'eng-hsiang)
and including a staff of secretaries
and councillors; and a Chancellery (Men-hsia sheng) responsible for drafting
documents. Each of these ministries had, on paper at least, a complicated
bureaucratic establishment similar to its T'ang model, but only the Secretar-
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THE DEVELOPMENT OF GOVERNMENT INSTITUTIONS 79
iat played any significant role in political decisions. There was also the
Censorate (Yii-shih t'ai), the Han-lin Academy, the Office of Historiogra-
phy, and various groups of court scholars, all organized along Tang lines.
There was an imperial household department, various specialized courts
(ssu)
and directorates
(chieri),
a formal establishment for the heir apparent, and a
military organization of royal guards
{wet).
The basic provincial organization also began to take shape along Chinese
lines.
Beside the Supreme Capital there was now an Eastern Capital at Liao-
yang, controlling former territories of Po-hai, and a Southern Capital at
modern Peking, controlling the former Chinese territories acquired in 937.
A fourth Central Capital was to be added in 1007, built on the site of
the
old
Hsi capital, at the time when the Hsi were finally assimilated into the
Khitan state. Last, a Western Capital at Ta-t'ung was established in 1044.
Each of
these
capitals was not so much an alternative seat of imperial govern-
ment (as, e.g., Ch'ang-an and Lo-yang had been in early T'ang) as the
regional center of a circuit, a local administrative network. Each of these
circuits seems to have followed administrative procedures appropriate to its
own population. The picture was further complicated during the tenth cen-
tury by the fact that two of the larger groups of conquered peoples, the Hsi
and Po-hai, retained a great degree of autonomy under their own leaders and
paid tribute as vassals rather than taxes as subjects. Only in the early eleventh
century were these populations fully incorporated into the Liao system of
government.
The viceroys
(liu-hou)
of these capitals wielded great power over their
circuits, especially those of the Southern and Eastern capitals, who were
among the most powerful men in the Liao system of government. They
presided over a hierarchy of numerous prefectures and counties that provided
the field administration for the settled regions of the empire and that in
many areas coexisted with tribal organizations ruled on traditional lines.
The system of government in the Southern Region was similar, at least in
its outward forms, to that of the T'ang and the Five Dynasties. Many of its
officials, especially at the lower and middle levels, were ethnic Chinese.
Historians familiar with Chinese institutions of
the
ninth and tenth centuries
may, however, be tempted to ascribe an unreal importance to the holders of
titles which, in the Chinese system, implied great power and influence.
There was one important distinction, however, between the officers of the
Northern and Southern regions, apart from their different racial origins. Liao
emperors were constantly on the move and resided in their Supreme Capital
only for short periods each year as they traveled from one traditional seasonal
hunting camp
(na-po)
to the next. Twice a year, in the fifth and tenth lunar
months, the officers of both the Northern and Southern administrations were
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80 THE LIAO
summoned to the emperor's camp for deliberations on state affairs. In winter
the officers of the Southern Administration went south to the Central Capital
to mediate the affairs of the Chinese subjects of the Southern Region. But for
most of the year, as the emperor's great retinue progressed around the north-
ern territories, making contact with the leaders of the tribal world, the
emperor was still expected personally to make all the important decisions
affecting the state and to mete out justice. On these peregrinations he was
accompanied by most of the great officers of the Northern Administration,
who lived with him on close personal terms, as much his companions (like
the
nokor
of Mongol times) as his great officers of state. By contrast, only a
handful of officials from the Southern Administration - a single prime minis-
ter and a small group of secretaries and drafting officials
—
formed a part of
his regular entourage. Clearly the officials of the Northern Administration,
by virtue of their constant access to the emperor, enjoyed far greater real
power than did those of the Southern Administration.
Thus the Southern Administration was essentially an executive organiza-
tion for the southern areas and their settled population. The high-sounding
titles of its officers should not conceal the fact that routine decision making
and all military authority (southern officials were specifically excluded from
decisions on military affairs at court) were concentrated in the emperor's
Khitan entourage drawn from the Northern Administration.
Moreover, we should not be too influenced by the official structure de-
scribed in the Liao history. Many of the offices seem to have been filled only
sporadically. Power in the Khitan world, in spite of the bureaucratization
that began in Shih-tsung's time and continued in fits and starts into the
eleventh century, had little connection with a formal and orderly government
structure. It remained to the end far more dependent on an individual's
personal qualities and his achievements, on his family connections, his per-
sonal relationship with the emperor and powerful ministers, his friendships,
and his military following. Powerful personalities and brute force still far
overshadowed institutional niceties in the Khitan world.
RELATION WITH REGIMES IN CHINA
Under Shih-tsung, the Liao, in spite of their withdrawal from K'ai-feng,
remained embroiled in the turbulent politics of northern China. In 948 the
Southern T'ang renewed their attempt to form an alliance with the Khitan
against their northern neighbors, this time the new northern regime of the
Han. They were rebuffed. In the winter of 949-50 Shih-tsung launched a
large-scale raid into Hopei, attacking several cities well inside the Han
border and taking many captives and much booty. The Southern T'ang court
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