The Cambridge History of China. Vol. 06. Alien Regimes and Border States, 907-1368
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FOREIGN RELATIONS III
Resumed
warfare with
Koryd,
1011—1019
Until the death in 1009 of the empress dowager, whose funeral was duly
attended by envoys from Kory6, peace continued on the eastern frontier.
However, in that same year there was a violent coup at the Kory6 court.
Kang Cho, governor of the Western Capital (P'ySngyang) was summoned to
the main capital, Kaegy6ng, to help eliminate a clique that was plotting to
depose King Mokchong. Having done as he had been bidden, Kang Cho
himself murdered the king and enthroned a new ruler, Wang Sun (posthu-
mous title Hy6njong; r. 1009—31), who was expected to rule under his
tutelage.
The Khitan sent an expeditionary army of 400,000 men across the Yalu
River to punish the murderer of their former vassal, despite pleas from the
new Korean king to halt the campaign. Its chief commanders were Hsiao
P'ai-ya, elder brother of Hsiao Heng-te, and Yeh-lii P'en-nu. A first clash
went Kory6's way, but in a second attack the Liao were victorious, and Kang
Cho was captured and later killed. The Liao army occupied several border
prefectures north of P'y5ng-yang. The Kory6 king offered to surrender, but
the governor of Kaegy6ng murdered the Liao envoys and prepared to resist.
The Liao army now marched south and took Kaegy6ng after winning a
pitched battle outside the city. Hsiao P'ai-ya and Yeh-lii P'en-nu sacked and
burned the capital, destroying the palaces, official buildings, and the Kory6
archives. The Kory6 king had taken refuge in the south, but his armies
regrouped. The Liao force began to withdraw to the frontier. The surrendered
districts rose against them, and in the depth of winter the army was mired
down in the mountains and forced to abandon much of their armor and
weapons before eventually recrossing the Yalu.
The Koryfi king now sued for peace. But the Liao demanded that he come
to court in person to do obeisance as a vassal and also that he cede key border
areas.
The Kory6 court refused, and a decade of hostility ensued. Both sides
fortified the frontier regions, and Korean intransigence was strengthened by
an internal coup d'etat that left the generals rather than the civil officials in
control of the Kory6 court.
In 1014 the Liao ordered the fortification of
several
border prefectures and
the construction of
a
heavily defended permanent pontoon bridge across the
Yalu. From 1015 to 1019 there
was
incessant warfare, with attacks on Koryd in
1015,
1016, and 1017 in which victory went sometimes to
Kory6,
sometimes
to the Khitan, but in sum were indecisive. In 1018 a huge new expeditionary
force was mobilized by the Khitan and placed under the command of Hsiao
P'ai-ya. The army crossed the Yalu late in 1018 but was ambushed by a
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
112 THE LIAO
superior Kory6 force, suffering severe
losses.
The
Kory6 army
had
also
cut their
line of retreat, and
so
Hsiao P'ai-ya marched south, planning to take the capital
Kaegy6ng, as in ion. But this time the Koreans had prepared defenses
around the capital, and the Khitan, constantly harried by Korean attacks, were
forced to retreat toward the
Yalu.
At Kuju, between the Ch'a and T'o rivers,
they were encircled and attacked by the main Kory6 forces, which almost
annihilated the Khitan army. Only a few thousand men managed to return to
the Liao border. This was
by
far the worst defeat suffered by the Khitan during
Sheng-tsung's reign, and in consequence Hsiao P'ai-ya was stripped of
all
his
titles and offices and disgraced.
In the late summer of 1019 another great army, including many tribal
troops, was assembled to attack Kory6. But it was now clear to both sides
that neither country could win a decisive victory. In 1020 King Hy6njong
sent envoys to pay tribute to the Liao, and Shen-tsung graciously pardoned
him, in 1022 sending an envoy to invest him formally as king. The tributary
relationship was resumed, and envoys were regularly exchanged. When in
1031 Hy6njong died, his son and successor Wang Hum (T6kchong; r. 1031 —
4) was invested as king by the Liao court. From this date until almost the end
of the Liao, Koryo remained a loyal vassal, and peace prevailed between the
two states.
The Kory6 court did not, however, forget the disasters they had suffered in
1010.
While repairing the ravages of this decade of major warfare, they thus
set their defenses on a new footing. The rebuilt capital Kaegy&ng was given a
stronger outer wall in 1029, and defensive walls were constructed between
1033 and 1044 along the entire frontier from the mouth of the Yalu to
Y6np'o on the Tonghae (Sea of
Japan).
Kory6 was taking no chances with its
belligerent neighbor.
The Po-hai
rebellion,
1029
The end of Sheng-tsung's long reign was marked by the first really serious
rebellion of a subject people against the Khitan, the great rebellion of the
people of Po-hai.
After the flight of its first king, Pei, in 930, the part of the old territories
of Po-hai that had been incorporated into the Khitan state, the kingdom of
Tung-tan, had been slowly integrated into the Liao administrative system as
the Eastern Capital circuit. Much of the old Po-hai administrative structure
was abolished, and some settlements of Chinese and Khitan were planted in
former Po-hai territory, many of them comprising soldiers from the
ordos
of
various members of
the
imperial family. But in one important respect the Po-
hai retained a favored position: For taxation purposes the old Po-hai territo-
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FOREIGN RELATIONS 113
ries were treated as a tribute-bearing border state, paying an annual levy of
one thousand horses and 150,000 lengths of cloth.
IO
3
There were no mo-
nopoly taxes levied on salt or wine in the area and only minimal levies on
commerce.
There can also be little doubt that the campaigns against Kory6 had
impoverished the Eastern Capital region by their heavy levies of grain and
manpower. Then in the 1020s two successive Chinese tax commissioners at
the Eastern Capital attempted to extend to this region the tax system en-
forced in the Southern Capital circuit and to impose further harsh levies of
tax and labor service. This seems to have been provoked by conditions in the
Southern Capital, which had experienced several years of famine and was
suffering from a shortage of food and huge tax arrears. The Po-hai people
were ordered to build boats to transport grain to the area around modern
Peking. But the journey was dangerous, and many of these boats and their
crews were lost. These changes caused widespread resentment.
The rebellion was led by Ta Yen-lin, a distant descendant of the old Po-
hai royal family, who was an army commander at the Eastern Capital. In
the eighth month of 1029 he imprisoned the viceroy Hsiao Hsiao-hsien and
his wife, killed the offending tax commissioners and the chief military
commander, and declared a new dynasty of Hsing-Liao, with its own regnal
title.
He reported his actions to the Kory6 court and requested their assis-
tance. They refused to give him aid, however, and he remained isolated.
Moreover, the Po-hai commander of Pao-chou, a crucial garrison on the
Yalu, refused to join in the rebellion and informed the Khitan regional
commandant, who executed all the potentially mutinous Po-hai troops
under his command. Only a handful of the assimilated Jurchen tribes joined
the rebel regime.
After being defeated, Ta Yen-lin, realizing that his forces were no match
for the Liao armies, retreated to defend his capital. Just a year after the
rebellion began, one of his own officers betrayed him, opening the gates of
the Eastern Capital to the Liao army. Ta Yen-lin was captured; the remnants
of his army were quickly finished off; and his short-lived dynasty came to
an end.
To obviate any more trouble, the new governor of the Eastern Capital,
Hsiao Hsiao-mu, quickly redressed the injustices committed by the Chinese
tax commissioners and restored order with a light hand. But the old Po-hai
nobility, with the exception of those who had remained loyal, were banished
from the Eastern Capital and resettled along the shore of the Po-hai gulf in an
area controlled from the Central Capital. Many refugees also fled across the
103 LS, 72, p. 1210.
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114 THE
LIAO
Yalu into Kory6 territory, among them not only Po-hai but many Khitan and
Hsi as well, who eventually settled in
Korea.
IO
+
THE REIGN OF HSING-TSUNG
Sheng-tsung died in the sixth month 1031. He had been on the throne for
almost half a century and was now sixty years old. On his deathbed he
summoned his trusted ministers Hsiao Hsiao-mu and Hsiao Hsiao-hsien to
supervise the enthronement of his successor. His designated heir, his oldest
surviving son Tsung-chen (1016—55; Khitan name I-pu-chin, subsequently
canonized as Hsing-tsung) succeeded to the throne.
Hsing-tsung was still a boy of fifteen, and a regency was clearly necessary,
but this raised a complicated problem. Hsing-tsung was not the emperor's
son by his legitimate empress Ch'i-t'ien. Although she had borne him two
sons,
both had died in infancy. In 1016, however, one of his lesser consorts,
Nou-chin (entitled Yuan-fei and posthumously entitled Empress Ch'in-ai), a
niece of Han Te-jang and a sister of
Hsiao
Hsiao-mu, gave birth to a son, the
future Hsing-tsung, and Empress Ch'i-t'ien adopted and raised him.
10
'
Although Sheng-tsung's dying testament had ordered the new emperor
to preserve Empress Ch'i-t'ien's life, as soon as he succeeded, Nou-chin
began plotting to remove her so that she herself could become regent.
Accordingly, she had Empress Ch'i-t'ien falsely implicated in plotting rebel-
lion with two of her most powerful supporters, the emperor's uncle Hsiao
Pi-ti
Io6
and her own son-in-law, the northern prime minister Hsiao Cho-
pu.'°
7
Hsiao Pi-ti and Hsiao Cho-pu were arrested, sent to the Supreme
Capital, and executed with many of their relatives and partisans. Purges of
their supporters went on for months. Empress Ch'i-t'ien was banished.
Shortly afterward Nou-chin sent agents to murder her, and she committed
suicide.'
08
Nou-chin now had herself entitled empress dowager and formally assumed
the regency. Her birthday was declared a public holiday,
109
and she was
clearly determined to become the real ruler of
Liao.
On New Year's Day 1032
104 On the Po-hai rebellion, see LS, 17, pp. 203—6; Chong In-ji et al., comps.,
KorySsa
(Tokyo, 1908—
9),
5, pp. 71-73.
103 Empress Ch'in-ai also bore a second son, Chung-yuan, and two daughters.
106 Hsiao Pi-ti was an orphaned nephew of the former chancellor Hsiao P'ai-ya, who had been raised in
the palace and was married to Sheng-tsung's sister.
107 Hsiao Cho-pu, who also appears as Hsiao Cho-pu and Hsiao Tsu-pu-li, was the first husband of the
much-married princess Yen-mu-chin.
108 LS, 18, pp. 211
—13;
71, pp. 1202-4; 88, p. 1343.
CTKC,
8, pp. 68—9, gives a somewhat different
account.
109 LS, 71, p. 1203.
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THE REIGN OF HSING-TSUNG 115
she held court, received the homage of the emperor and the members of the
court, and gave audience to the envoys from Sung.
110
She also lavishly distributed titles and offices to the members of her own
family, especially to her younger brothers and their supporters. To complete
her dominance, however, Nou-chin needed to replace the young emperor,
who was already chafing with resentment at her actions."
1
Although the
emperor was her natural son, he had been raised in Empress Ch'i-tien's family
and had been closely attached to his adoptive mother. In 1034 the empress
dowager, with her younger brothers, planned to dethrone him and replace
him with his younger brother Chung-yuan,
II2
whom she herself had brought
up and who, she thought, would be more pliant to her bidding. Chung-
yuan, however, wanted no part of this and informed his brother what was
being planned. The emperor acted at once, stripped the empress dowager of
her seals of office, banished her to Sheng-tsung's mausoleum at Ch'ing-chou,
and took over the reins of government
himself.
Hsing-tsung was not, however, able to eliminate Nou-chin's power com-
pletely. Her relatives remained entrenched in many positions of authority. In
1037 the emperor attempted a reconciliation and thereafter began to treat her
with great ceremony, regularly visiting her to pay his respects. She never
forgave him but, rather, resumed her part in a complex pattern of divided
authority. "
3
In 1037 the emperor appointed Nou-chin's brother Hsiao
Hsiao-mu as northern chancellor. Indeed, no fewer than five of her brothers
subsequently held this post, and members of her family provided the major-
ity of the northern prime ministers until the 1070s. In 1039 the empress
dowager was allowed to return to the capital, where she underwent the
rebirth ceremony, as Sheng-tsung's mother had done in the 980s, to reestab-
lish her position in the eyes of the Khitan nobility."
4
The Sung court again
began to send separate envoys to pay respects to her as well as those to the
emperor, a practice they had discontinued when she had been banished."'
In the meantime, Hsing-tsung remained on close personal terms with
some members of the empress dowager's family. He also had to compensate
his brother Chung-yuan for his part in defeating the coup, appointing him to
the specially honored position of "Imperial Younger Brother," and thereafter
Chung-yuan filled a succession of the highest-ranking posts - commander in
no LS, 18, p. 313.
in CTKC, 8, p. 69.
H2 For his biography, see LS, 112, pp. 1501-3. In Sung sources his name is wrirten Tsung-yiian.
113 As lace as 1034 she was advocating the succession of
brothers,
in the Khitan mode, to the Sung envoy
Wang Hung-ch'en, whereas Ching-tsung was reasserting hereditary succession in the Chinese fash-
ion.
She was still, it would seem, backing Chung-yuan as candidate for the throne. See HCP, 177,
pp.
4281-2.
114 LS, 18, p. 222.
115 CTKC, 8, p. 71.
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Il6 THE LIAO
chief in 1038, northern commissioner of military affairs, and viceroy of the
Southern Capital from 1045 until the end of the reign. The last seems an odd
appointment, as the post gave Chung-yuan authority over a largely Chinese
population, even though he seems to have been much involved with the
"nativist" Khitan interest at court, as we shall see later.
The politics at Hsing-tsung's court was thus very complex, with both the
empress dowager and, to a lesser extent, Chung-yuan supported by rival
groups of kinsmen and allies. The first decade and more of his reign was
passed in intricate political maneuvers to establish a balance of power be-
tween the emperor and these various groups in both the imperial clan and the
consort clan of Hsiao.
In general there were no striking departures from those policies laid down
under Sheng-tsung that tended to favor Chinese methods of governance.
The codification of law was carried an important stage further with the
promulgation of the Hsin-ting
t'iao-chib,
the first formal codification of
legislation enacted under the Liao. This was heavily influenced by Chinese
models.
1
'
6
Containing 547 articles and compiling together all the laws
passed since A-pao-chi's reign, it was promulgated in 1036 and made
universally applicable. Centralized legal control was further strengthened in
1046 when local administrations were ordered to report all legal cases
annually to the capital.
117
The codified laws were further revised in
1051.
118
The new code, however, left unresolved many anomalies between Chinese
written law and tribal custom. Signs of opposition to the increasing
sinification of law and to the favorable treatment enjoyed by the Chinese
element of the population under both Sheng-tsung and the new emperor
began to appear. In 1044, at the suggestion of the pro-Khitan Chung-yuan,
Khitan police inspectors were established at each of the five capitals to
protect the interests of the Khitan under the new legal
system.
"9
In 1046
Khitan were forbidden to sell slaves to Chinese subjects,
120
and in 1043 all
the Chinese living in the southern parts of the empire were forbidden to own
bows and arrows.
121
The treatment of the recently rebellious Po-hai people was, on the con-
trary, relaxed. Under the influence of Hsiao Hsiao-mu, in 1041 the ban
against playing polo in the Eastern Capital circuit, which was regarded as a
116 One of the persons ordered to compile it was Yeh-lii Shu-ch'eng, a skilled translator who had
translated Chinese medical writings into Khitan. Another was Hsiao Te, an expert on ritual and law.
See LS, 89, p. 1349; 96, p. 1400.
117 LS, 19, p. 233.
118 LS, 20, p. 243.
119 LS, 19, p. 230; 112, p. 1502.
120 LS, 19, p. 233.
121 LS, 19, p. 228.
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THE REIGN OF HSING-TSUNG 117
form of military training, was lifted,
122
and the viceroy of
the
Eastern Capital
circuit
was
specially ordered
to
commend
to the
central government able
members
of
his local
staff.
"3
In
1044 the
system
of
regional administration through
the
circuits
at-
tached
to
the five capitals was completed when Yiin-chou (modern Ta-t'ung)
was elevated
to
the status of Western Capital, controlling the western part
of
the territories acquired
in 938 and the
region
of the
Yin-shan Mountains
north
of
the great bend
of
the Yellow River,
in
what
is
now Inner Mongo-
lia.
124
This territory
had
formerly been part
of
the Southern Capital circuit
and had
a
fairly large Chinese population (see Map
7).
But
the
main problem
of
internal administration during Hsing-tsung's
reign was the aftermath of the constant wars of Sheng-tsung's time.
It
is clear
that these decades
of
warfare
had
caused much hardship
and
disruption
among
the
population,
and
there
is
some evidence that
the
Khitan
war
machine had begun
to
deteriorate.
The most pressing problem was the burden placed
on
the people, rich and
poor alike,
by
the constant levies
of
manpower and military service, particu-
larly
on the
distant western
and
northern frontiers. Sometime
in the
late
1030s
the
emperor asked
his
ministers
for
their advice
on
how
to
deal with
growing distress
and
impoverishment, internal discontent,
and
banditry
arising from excessive demands
for
corvee
and
military service.
The
court's
most prominent Confucian scholar, Hsiao Han-chia-nu, presented
a
detailed
memorial advising
the
withdrawal
of
overextended garrisons from distant
frontier areas
and the
cessation
of
expansionist policies that gained useless
territory and no real advantages
for
the Khitan. He advocated the concentra-
tion of military efforts
on
strengthening the really important frontiers
in the
south
and
east."
5
Unfortunately,
we do not
know
the
emperor's response,
but whatever
the
outcome
at the
time, similar complaints about
the
diffi-
culty and expense of providing logistic support
for
garrisons
in
remote tribal
areas continued until the end
of
the eleventh century.
126
To provide
a
basis
for
levying manpower,
in
1039
a
general census
was
ordered.
127
A
registration
of
the armies
and
their dependents was ordered
in
1046,
128
and the military registers were further revised
in
1051.
12
'
The army
also seems
to
have been short of
horses,
once the Khitans' major resource.
In
122
LS,
19, p. 225.
123 LS, 19, p. 226.
124 LS, 19, p. 231; 37, p. 438.
125
LS,
103, pp. 1446—9; translated
in
Wittfogel and Feng, pp. 557—9.
126
IS,
104, p.
1455.
127
IS,
18, p. 221.
128 LS, 19, p. 233.
129 LS, 20, p. 243.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
n8
THE LIAO
THE REIGN
OF
HSING-TSUNG
119
f ruan-cnou
j
r
.»
Chiang-sheng
,-v.
w
,
h
• X* I?™
1
chou
1-choul^
--wei-chou^
s^
.T'ung
Shen-
chou
/chou
ng-chou
EASTERN
CAPIT
Yin-chou
hou
;
techou
Cheng-i
chou
Huan-chou
Ya-fu*P,Jurchen
ASTERN
WESTERN CAPITAL
CIRCUIT
HQoftheSW
Pacification Office
hou
/
Kuei-huachou
Ju
.
cn(JU
\
Te-chou'
Feng-sheng chou
. ',
Tung-shengchou Hung
' §£tT &" ,.
.
WESTERN.
U
» ,
r
m S
\
r
'"*
c
in-»u
\
CAPITAL Yu-chou.
r'cho-
SOUTHERN
.Ying-chou
'
cnou
Shuo-chou
^-^
/l-chou
u-chou
/" 2
-u
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SOUTHERN
CAPITAL CIRCUIT
MAP
7.
The Liao empire, ca.
1045
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I2O
THE
LIAO
1043,
therefore,
the
sacrifice
of
horses
or
oxen
in
funerary ceremonies
was
prohibited,
130
and in
1048 commissioners were sent
out to
register horses.
1
'
1
There were also misgivings about
the
troops' training, particularly
the
Chinese units.
In 1035 the
armies were enjoined
to
supervise
the
regular
training
of
their catapulteers, crossbowmen, archers,
and
swordsmen.
1
'
3
In
1046
the
emperor watched
the
exercises
of
Chinese troops while they prac-
ticed using catapults
and
bows,
1
''
but
serious concern about
the
inferior
skills
of the
Chinese armies' catapulteers
and
crossbowmen continued
through
the
next reign.
1
'
4
These were skills that were irrelevant
to the
Khitans' traditional mobile cavalry warfare
but
essential
to
their warfare with
their sedentary Chinese
and
Korean neighbors. Such
a
concern suggests that
the Khitan generals
had
learned
the
lessons
of the
wars
of
Sheng-tsung's
time,
when
the
Liao armies
had
never succeeded
in
taking
a
fortified place of
any size.
Foreign relations under Hsing-tsung
One
of
the injunctions that Sheng-tsung issued
to his
heir was
to
maintain
intact the peace treaty with the Sung,
1
" which was the most important factor
in dynastic stability. The regular procession of envoys between the two courts
thus continued uninterrupted.
The
relationship with Kory6 also remained
cautiously amicable.
The
central problem
in
foreign relations
had
shifted
to
the southwest, where
the
Hsi Hsia state
had
rapidly grown
in
power. Deeply
involved with both
the
Khitan
and the
Sung,
the Hsi
Hsia threatened
to
engulf the whole northern frontier
in
warfare.
During
the
early part
of
the
eleventh century
the
Hsia had paid tribute
to
both
the
Khitan
and the
Sung, playing
the
great powers
off
against each
other
to
secure their
own
independence
and to
gain
the
opportunity
to
enlarge their
own
territory
and
influence. Their ambitions were centered
in
the west, where they steadily expanded
at the
expense
of
the Uighurs
(see
Chapter
2).
This westward expansion brought them into conflict with
the
Khitan, with whom they competed for control of
the
trade routes
to
the west,
rather than
for
territory.
At this time there were three independent regimes
in
what
is
now western
Kansu. Liang-chou was under Tibetan warlords.
In
Kan-chou was
a
Uighur
state,
dominating
the
central part
of
the Kansu corridor,
and
farther west,
130 LS, 19, p. 228.
13:
LS, 20, p. 239.
132 LS, 18, p. 217.
133 LS, 19, p. 232.
134 LS, 26, p. 308. This is dated 109;.
135 CTKC, 7, p. 66.
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