Conquest of the North

Anna Beltramini, Writer

             

             During the few years there has been controversy about the land between the Sung dynasty and the Jurchens. This battle ended with the Sung dynasty losing a little less than half of its Empire. The fact that we didn’t start the battles yet we still lost a major and valuable part of our Empire, which included our capital, is incredibly unfair and one-sided. The Jurchens are a part of the Liao Empire but they decided on their own, to rebel and make their own state, also known as the Jin dynasty. After the Jurchens made themselves their own dynasty the Song dynasty wanted them to be allies. One of the Sung dynasty officials told the Emperor to make an alliance and so he did. Once the alliance was made the Sung dynasty took advantage of being allies with the Jin dynasty. They took advantage because once the alliance was made they completely conquered the Liao Dynasty by 1125 A.D.

The Jurchens thought that the Sung dynasty had a weak military so they took advantage of that and broke the alliance. “Launching an invasion into Sung territory in 1125 and another in 1127; in this later invasion, the Jurchens captured not only the Sung capital at Kaifeng, but the retired emperor Huizong,” (Song). This act performed by the Jin dynasty was an unfair act in several ways one being that The two dynasties has an alliance but just because one of them did not have the best military the other has to go and take half of the others territory. Also that part of the Sung dynasty contained our capital, and to add on to it they captured a retired emperor! That is an unfair and unnecessary action just because one army had a “poor performance and military weakness”. If it was not bad enough to attack your allies, the Jurchens had to take the capital and emperor too. “Withdrew south of the Yangtze River to establish the Song Dynasty's new capital at Lin'an,” (Song). To attack and conquer your allies land and make them switch their capital to another city in completely unfair and untrustworthy.