As one of the largest ancient civilizations, China has a long history and a splendid culture. In this blog, I will introduce the war and peace between the central government and the nearby nomads (i.e., Liao) in Song dynasty.

China has always been a big agricultural country. In Song dynasty, agriculture developed rapidly. Lots of new tools were invented and utilized in these days, which had significantly improved the productivity of the country and the living standard of common people.


On the north of Song Empire, there was a nomadic regime called Liao. The people there were brave and battlewise, who sometimes invaded Song to plunder some goods. Due to the wide use of horses, the Liao troops had strong maneuverability and sometimes could penetrate deeply into Song.

In 1005, Liao tried another massed armored invasion to Song. As Song failed to occupy the Great Wall, Liao army could successfully penetrate into the heart of Song and soon arrived Chanzhou, a small city which was only 100 kilometers away from the capital of Song. At that time, the Emperor of Song was Zhenzong, who was the third emperor of Song. Compared with his father and uncle, the former emperors of Song, Zhenzong was born in peace and not familiar with military. When he heard that the invaders getting closer and closer, he felt scared and wanted to escape.

At this critical moment, the prime minister of Song, Kouzhun, stood out and tried to persuade Zhenzong to present at the battleground in order to encourage their soldiers. Originally, Zhenzong opposed this proposal very much. Under the constant efforts of the ministers, Zhenzong finally went to Chanzhou, the main battlefield between Song and Liao.

After arriving Chanzhou, Zhenzong only wanted to stay in the city and did not dare to go to the battleground. Then the ministers pushed the emperor to wear thick armor and come to the city wall of Chanzhou.

When seeing their emperor, the soldiers of Song instantly got high morale to fight with the invaders. In the chsos, the chief commander of Liao was killed by a heavy arbalest. However, after this war, this news was blocked by Liao so that Song did not know it at all. After staying in Chanzhou for a few days, Zhenzong felt totally exhausted with the war and tried to make peace with Liao. In the meanwhile, Liao also wanted to retreat before the leakage of the message that they had lost their chief commander.

Finally, Liao and Song reached a peace agreement. The two governments stopped wars and treated each other as brothers. Song presented Liao specific amounts of silver coins and cloths every year, which was not a heavy burden compared with the productivity of Song. Since then, the peace between Song and Liao lasted for about 120 years.