Shi Chonggui

Biography

Family Background and Early Life

Shi Chonggui was born on the twenty-seventh day of the sixth month of 914, the eleventh year of the Later Tang Tianyou era, in Fenyang Ward, Taiyuan. He was originally a nephew of Shi Jingtang, founding emperor of Later Jin. His biological father Shi Jingru had served as a cavalry officer under Li Cunxu, Emperor Zhuangzong of Later Tang, but died young. Shi Jingtang was fond of Shi Chonggui and adopted him as a son. The Old History of the Five Dynasties, juan 81, “First Annals of the Young Emperor,” states that the Young Emperor was named Chonggui, was Gaozu's cousin-nephew, was born to Shi Jingru and Lady An at Fenyang Ward in Taiyuan on that date, that Shi Jingru had served as a cavalry officer of Later Tang Zhuangzong and died young, and that Gaozu then took the boy as his son.

As a youth Shi Chonggui spoke and behaved cautiously and was simple and honest, winning Shi Jingtang's affection. Whenever Shi Jingtang was posted to a new command, he took Shi with him and often entrusted him with various affairs. Shi nevertheless loved riding fast horses and archery and was said to have the style of his Shatuo ancestors, while showing little enthusiasm for literary study.

The Jinyang Rebellion and the Defense of Taiyuan

In the fifth month of 936, the second year of the Later Tang Qingtai era, Shi Jingtang rebelled at Jinyang and Later Tang forces besieged Taiyuan. Shi Chonggui alternated between proposing plans and exposing himself to enemy missiles in the defense, leading Shi Jingtang to value his adopted son even more. The Old History of the Five Dynasties says that he “personally braved arrows and stones and repeatedly offered useful plans at his side, so Gaozu valued him increasingly.”

In the seventh month Shi Jingtang requested Khitan aid in exchange for recognizing the Khitan ruler as a father and ceding the Sixteen Prefectures of Yanyun. In the ninth month Yelü Deguang led fifty thousand troops and defeated the Later Tang army surrounding the city. Shi Jingtang then left Taiyuan for Luoyang to seize the throne. Before departing, and on Yelü Deguang's recommendation, he chose Shi Chonggui to remain at Taiyuan. Shi was appointed Defender of the Northern Capital, Grand Master of Splendid Happiness with Gold Seal and Purple Ribbon, Acting Minister of Works, acting mayor of Taiyuan, and Military Commissioner of Hedong. According to the Old History of the Five Dynasties, Yelü Deguang pointed to Shi Chonggui among Shi Jingtang's sons and said that “the one with the large eyes will do.”

Over the next several years Shi's titles continued to rise, but his administrative record remained undistinguished and he “had not yet established a reputation among the people.” In the ninth month of 937 he was summoned back to court and appointed Grand Master of Splendid Happiness, Acting Grand Protector, and Senior General of the Right Jinwu Guard. In the twelfth month of 938 he was appointed mayor of Kaifeng, given the additional title Acting Grand Tutor, enfeoffed as Prince of Zheng, and granted an additional three thousand households in his nominal fief. Soon afterward he was also named Acting Grand Commandant and Participant in Determining Governmental Matters.

Suppressing Rebellion and Accession

In 941, An Chongrong, Military Commissioner of Chengde, showed signs of rebellion. Shi Jingtang used an imperial tour of Yedu to prepare a campaign. Before leaving the Eastern Capital, present-day Kaifeng, he appointed Shi Chonggui Defender of the Eastern Capital, transferred him to the office of mayor of Guangjin, present-day Daming in Hebei, and promoted him to Prince of Qi. He also left more than ten blank proclamations for use in emergencies. In the eleventh month, An Congjin, Military Commissioner of Shannan East Circuit, openly rebelled and attacked Dengzhou. Shi Chonggui immediately sent Zhang Cong'en, Jiao Jixun, and other generals from the capital. The revolt was suppressed the following year.

Shi Jingtang had six sons, five of whom died young, leaving only the young Shi Chongrui. When Shi Jingtang became gravely ill, Grand Councilor Feng Dao once came alone for an audience. Shi had an attendant place the young Shi Chongrui in Feng Dao's arms, expressing his wish that Feng support the child after his death. When Shi Jingtang died on the thirteenth day of the sixth month of 942, the seventh year of the Tianfu era, Feng Dao and Jing Yanguang, commander-in-chief of the imperial guards and then holder of actual military power in the capital, argued that the state faced many dangers and needed an adult ruler. They therefore enthroned the twenty-eight-year-old Shi Chonggui. He took the throne that same day before Shi Jingtang's coffin.

While still a prince, in the entourage of his uncle at Yedu, Shi Chonggui figured in an affair that later ages turned into a sign of heaven's mandate. The Old History of the Five Dynasties, chapter 81, records that "in that year there was drought, and Gaozu sent him to pray for rain at the White Dragon Pool. A white dragon appeared in the middle of the pool, and that night there was a soaking rain of more than a foot, and all men thought it strange — and in the end he did ascend the great throne." The prince sent to pray, the dragon in the pool, the rain of a foot, the wonder of the beholders, and at last the throne — such a tale, like the Khitan ruler's "the big-eyed one will do" in choosing him to hold Taiyuan, is the writing with which later ages traced omens back to a fallen sovereign's accession; it cannot be wholly believed, and yet it shows how the historians of the Five Dynasties habitually disposed of heaven's mandate and human affairs.

Disputed Accession and the Disorder of the Palace

The Zizhi Tongjian, in chapter 283, records Shi Jingtang's deathbed arrangement: while the emperor lay ill and Feng Dao attended him alone, "the emperor ordered his young son Chongrui to come out and bow to him, and then had a eunuch place Chongrui in Dao's arms, his intention being that Dao should support and install him." Afterwards Feng Dao conferred with Jing Yanguang, military governor of Tianping and commander of the imperial guard, and on the plea that "the state is beset with difficulties and a grown ruler should be set up," they installed Shi Chonggui, prince of Qi and governor of Guangjin, as heir. Of Shi Jingtang's six sons five had died young, leaving only the child Chongrui, so the argument for a grown ruler carried. The act was not beyond ritual reproach: the New History of the Five Dynasties, chapter 9, says outright that "when Gaozu fell ill he placed his son Chongrui in Feng Dao's arms and entrusted him to him — how then could the Chudi have been installed?" and condemns the Jin ministers for "setting him up in violation of ritual and in disregard of the charge."

More censured by later ages than the irregular installation was Shi Chonggui's suppression of his own parentage in order to confirm his standing as Gaozu's son. Ouyang Xiu, in the New History of the Five Dynasties, chapter 17, writes that the Jin ministers held that "if the Chudi were Gaozu's son he might be installed, but if he were the son of Jingru he might not, and so they deeply concealed his begetter and cut him off, deceiving the world into taking him for Gaozu's true son." He adds that "the Chudi, toward Jingru, severed the relation of father and son and made him a subject with a title." Ouyang Xiu draws from this a judgment on the whole age: in the Five Dynasties, "an era of weapons and banditry, ritual and music collapsed, the constant ways of the three bonds and five relations were cut off," and since the Jin house rose among the Di and seized the empire by usurpation — "Gaozu took Yelu Deguang as father, and the Chudi toward Deguang called himself grandson and treated him as grandfather, while toward his own begetter he made him a named subject — how can such men be judged by human principle?"

Alongside the dispute over the accession came disorder in the order of the palace. The Zizhi Tongjian, chapter 283, records: "Chongyin died young, and his wife Lady Feng lived in widowhood; she was of great beauty, and the emperor saw her and delighted in her. When Gaozu died and the coffin still lay in the hall, the emperor took her to wife. The assembled ministers all offered congratulations, and the emperor said to Feng Dao and the others: 'By the command of the empress dowager, you and your colleagues are not to make great celebration of it.'" Chongyin was a younger brother of Shi Jingtang, so Lady Feng was by relation Shi Chonggui's aunt by marriage; he took her while the coffin was still unburied, and accepted the congratulations of his ministers. Wang Fuzhi, in the Reading of the Tongjian, therefore condemns him for "taking his aunt Lady Feng to wife, defiling the bonds of kin and confounding the constants, in name a ruler of men, in conduct no better than a beast." Lady Feng was made empress and afterwards went north with Shi Chonggui into Liao territory, husband and wife ending their days together in want and exile.

With his title thus compromised and his prestige thin, the central authority of Shi Chonggui's reign depended unusually on largesse. Later Jin suffered from the outset the flaw of an improper founding — Shi Jingtang had taken the empire by professing vassalage and ceding territory in exchange for Khitan arms, and in his day provincial revolts were frequent; with Shi Chonggui succeeding as a brother's son, the doubt over the legitimacy of the throne grew sharper. The Old History of the Five Dynasties, chapter 81, records that in the seventh month of 942, shortly after his accession, "from this time the marquises and the prefectural governors all received rank and fiefs by grade, to display widespread grace": Du Wei, military governor of Hengzhou, and Liu Zhiyuan of Hedong were both made grand preceptor with the rank of inspector; Yang Guangyuan of Qingzhou was made grand preceptor of state; Jing Yanguang of Yunzhou received special advancement, the title of jointly managing state affairs, and command of the imperial guard; Li Shouzhen of Huazhou and Guo Jin of Xiangzhou were both made imperial guardian. Buying obedience with rank was at once a continuation of Shi Jingtang's policy of curtailing the provinces and a disclosure of how hard the new ruler found it to stand on his own.

The Imperial House and the Princes

After his accession Shi Chonggui heaped posthumous honours on the Shi clan. Among Shi Jingtang's brothers and nephews, one who had served in the Later Tang as a third commandant of the right Zhangsheng guard and killed himself on hearing of Shi Jingtang's rising was posthumously made prince of Guang and given the rank of grand commandant, and Shi Chonggui added the rank of grand preceptor; another, grave and upright by nature and noted for frugality, dying in office, was given the rank of grand guardian by Shi Jingtang, and by Shi Chonggui the rank of grand preceptor and the posthumous fief of prince of Han; those put to death in the Later Tang were given fiefs as prince of Tan or prince of Yi, and Shi Chonggui added further honours and changed the fiefs. The ceremony of honouring these princes was carried out all at once, and it served less to spread blessing over the clan than to lend weight to a new ruler's own position.

Of all the imperial house the one most bound up with the succession was Chongrui, Shi Jingtang's youngest son. The Old History records that Chongrui resembled Shi Jingtang closely, that Shi Chonggui made him grand guardian and prefect of Kaifeng, appointing Bian Wei, casual attendant of the left, to act as administrator of the prefecture. Shi Jingtang on his deathbed had meant him for the throne, but Feng Dao and Jing Yanguang set up Shi Chonggui instead on the argument for a grown ruler. After the fall of Jin, Shi Chongrui went north with Shi Chonggui into Liao territory, and his name thereafter vanished beyond the frontier.

Shi Chonggui's own sons are also a matter of doubt. The Old History records that "Yanxu, the Chudi's eldest son, held by remote appointment the military governorship of Shaanxi; Yanbao, his second son, that of Luzhou," yet the same work cites the Veritable Records: "Yanxu and Yanbao were both the Chudi's nephews, adopted as sons." The Zizhi Tongjian likewise says that "Yanxu and his brother Yanbao were both grandsons of Gaozu, adopted by the emperor as sons." On these two accounts the brothers were Shi Chonggui's adopted rather than his own sons. Yet the New History of the Five Dynasties, in the biography of Zhang Yanze, records that "Lady Ding, lady of Chu and wife of the Caozhou military governor Yanxu, was the Chudi's younger brother's mother" — which would make Shi Yanxu not a son but a man of Shi Chonggui's own generation. Since Shi Jingtang's court already had the precedent of adopting a junior clansman as son, and given Lady Ding's title of lady of Chu, scholars have supposed that Shi Yanxu too was adopted, though of his true father the records are silent. Shi Yanxu went north with Shi Chonggui and his end is unknown; Shi Yanbao is said to have served in Liao as senior general of the right Xiaowei guard and grand preceptor, with sons Shi Hongzuo, Shi Zhengba and Shi Hongshun and three daughters.

Early Domestic Policy and the Diplomatic Shift

When Shi Chonggui came to the throne, Later Jin faced a difficult situation. The Khitan, relying on their role in Shi Jingtang's rise, exerted pressure on the Central Plains and repeatedly interfered in Later Jin affairs. To the south stood Wuyue, Later Shu, Southern Tang, and other regimes, of which Southern Tang and Later Shu maintained close relations with the Khitan. To the north the loss of the Sixteen Prefectures of Yanyun had removed an important barrier and exposed the Central Plains to Khitan cavalry. Later Jin's ruling elite was divided, while repeated droughts, locust infestations, floods, and famine left corpses along the roads and intensified popular resentment.

Under Shi Jingtang, Later Jin had maintained a tributary relationship with the Khitan framed both as ruler-subject and father-son ties and had delivered three hundred thousand bolts of silk annually. At Shi Chonggui's accession, most senior ministers urged continued restraint and recommended that memorials describe the emperor both as subject and grandson, thereby avoiding war. Jing Yanguang alone insisted that Shi call himself a grandson but not a subject. Shi ultimately followed Jing. The Comprehensive Mirror in Aid of Governance, juan 283, records the dispute: ministers proposed a memorial of mourning that would call the new emperor a subject; Jing Yanguang proposed a letter calling him a grandson but not a subject. Li Song warned that humbling oneself for the state was no disgrace and predicted that otherwise the emperor would one day have to put on armor and fight the Khitan, when regret would be useless. Jing persisted, Feng Dao remained noncommittal, and the emperor followed Jing. The Khitan ruler became furious, sent envoys to rebuke him, and demanded to know why he had ascended without first obtaining approval. Jing answered again in defiant language.

On the twenty-seventh day of the sixth month of 942, Shi sent Zhu Chongjie, administrator of the Office for the Four Quarters, and Senior General Liang Yan as envoys to the Khitan, presenting a letter in which he called himself a grandson but not a subject. The Khitan sent Qiao Rong, an official of the Guest Office, to rebuke Later Jin. Jing Yanguang replied that the previous emperor had been established by the Khitan court, whereas the present ruler had been enthroned by his own state; being a neighbor and grandson was acceptable, but submitting a memorial as a subject was not. After receiving Qiao's report, Yelü Deguang began planning a southern invasion.

That same seventh month Shi proclaimed a general amnesty, remitted taxes in prefectures and counties struck by locusts, promoted regional commanders and local governors, and rewarded close officials. Feng Dao repeatedly requested restoration of the office of military affairs commissioner, but Shi refused. In the eighth month the Khitan sent several missions of condolence and sacrifice for Shi Jingtang and to negotiate the tributary relationship. That month the court retook Xiangzhou and An Congjin burned himself to death in the city. To reassure the population, Shi reduced taxes in Xiangzhou and pardoned those who had followed the rebellion. In the ninth month Xiangzhou was demoted from a military command to a defense prefecture directly under the capital, weakening the regional power of Shannan.

The Jin–Liao War

At the end of 943, the eighth year of the Tianfu era, encouraged by ambitious figures on both sides, a Khitan army invaded south with Yang Guangyuan, Military Commissioner of Pinglu, as an internal collaborator and advanced toward the Yellow River. Shi Chonggui personally led troops north. Later Jin forces defeated the Khitan at Qicheng and Majia Ford and forced them into a decisive battle near Chanzhou, where the Khitan were defeated and withdrew north.

In 945 the Khitan invaded again. Shi once more campaigned personally. Later Jin forces won a major victory at Baituanwei near Yangcheng, and Yelü Deguang fled north in haste. These two victories temporarily relieved military pressure but did not fundamentally change the balance of power.

By the tenth month of 946, the third year of the Kaiyun era, Shi repeatedly sent envoys offering vassal submission, but it was too late. In the eleventh month Generals Du Chongwei and Li Shouzhen surrendered their armies to the Khitan. On the seventeenth day of the twelfth month, January 11, 947, the surrendered general Zhang Yanze led the Khitan vanguard into Kaifeng. Shi set fire inside the palace and held a sword over more than ten favored palace women, intending to die in the flames, but his guard Xue Chao restrained him. Zhang Yanze soon entered with troops and urged Shi to surrender in accordance with Yelü Deguang's order. Shi had the fire extinguished, embraced Empress Feng, and wept with her. He summoned Hanlin Academician Fan Zhi to draft a surrender memorial in which he described himself as a grandson and subject whose calamity had confused his spirit and whose mandate had ended, announced that he, the empress dowager, Empress Feng, and the entire clan would bind themselves outside the city awaiting punishment, and sent Shi Yanxu and Shi Yanbao with the state seal and three gold seals to meet the conqueror. Shi removed his yellow imperial robe, changed into plain clothing, and surrendered while those around him covered their faces and wept. Later Jin ceased to exist.

The Campaign of the First Year of Kaiyun

Before the Khitan's first invasion the Jin court had already sensed the disloyalty of Yang Guangyuan, military governor of Pinglu at Qingzhou. The Old History of the Five Dynasties, chapter 82, records that in the twelfth month of 943 Yang Chengzuo, prefect of Danzhou, "opened the city gate in the first watch and went out, saying his mother was ill and he was going to Qingzhou to visit her," leaving his tablet of office behind; the court at once "sent Guo Jin, commander of the guard infantry, with troops to Yunzhou," and "sent Cai Xingyu, general of the left Lingjun guard, with soldiers to garrison Yunzhou, and twenty-six palace attendants, from Heyin to the sea mouth, to patrol their several sectors by division — all because Yang Guangyuan of Qingzhou was plotting revolt." Yunzhou, a land-and-water junction northeast of the eastern capital, was the military key to defending against an enemy from Qingzhou; strengthening the patrol of the lower Yellow River was meant to cut Yang Guangyuan off from the Khitan. In the same month Fu Yanqing of Heyang, Gao Xingzhou of Songzhou and Wang Lingwen of Beizhou were also summoned to court, and commissioners were sent to patrol the several prefectures "because the Khitan were invading."

The Khitan host, mainly cavalry, adopted a plan of "advancing by two roads, east and west, in concert": the western road a detachment to hold the Jin, the eastern the main thrust, aimed at crossing the Yellow River and taking the eastern capital. The Old History records that in the first month of 944 "Cang, Heng, Bei and Ye all reported in haste that the Khitan vanguard under Zhao Yanshou and Zhao Yanzhao had entered with fifty thousand horse and was nearing Ganling, called in by Yang Guangyuan of Qingzhou"; then "the Khitan took Beizhou, and its prefect Wu Luan died"; and Taiyuan reported that "the Khitan entered Yanmen and invested the two prefectures of Xin and Dai." The loss of Beizhou came from treachery within: the officer Shao Ke, of violent and perverse temper, had been dismissed by Wang Lingwen, military governor of Yongqing, and going over to the Khitan told them that "Beizhou has much grain and few soldiers, and is easy to take." When the Khitan attacked, Shao Ke asked to hold the south gate, and let the Khitan in by it; Wu Luan threw himself into a well.

Resistance on the western road fell to Hedong. In the first month of 944, "Taiyuan reported a battle with the Khitan at Xiugu, three thousand heads taken, five hundred men captured alive, seventeen enemy generals taken; the enemy scattered into the Yaming valley, and our army has advanced in pursuit." Liu Zhiyuan's force broke the detached army in the valleys, snapping one of the two Khitan thrusts.

The court then deployed its northern line: Gao Xingzhou of Songzhou as commander-in-chief of the northern expeditionary army, Fu Yanqing of Heyang as arraying commissioner of the left cavalry, Huangfu Yu as that of the right cavalry, Wang Zhou of Shanzhou as arraying commissioner of the left infantry, Pan Huan as that of the right infantry. An edict set the imperial progress north for the thirteenth of the month, Li Zhou was made acting keeper of the eastern capital, and on the yiyou day the emperor left the eastern capital; by the dinghai day enemy horse had reached Liyang, and on the wuzi day the emperor came to Chanzhou. "The prefectures of Hebei, hard pressed, sent envoys one after another begging help," and the movement of the imperial carriage to the Yellow River was itself a support to morale at the front.

The battle of Qicheng that first month was the most dangerous action of the campaign. The Khitan, using the mobility of their cavalry, divided to press Chanzhou and to surround Gao Xingzhou's army at Qicheng. Shi Gongba, the vanguard arraying commissioner, met the Khitan north of Qicheng and was encircled; Gao Xingzhou and Fu Yanqing, resting in a grove, "were startled to hear the enemy come and urged their troops forward," but the Khitan were many and ringed them in several layers, and messengers were sent galloping to Jing Yanguang for reinforcements, while "Yanguang delayed, waiting for the emperor's decision." At the height of it Gao Xingzhou and the others "shouted mightily, glaring as they struck at the enemy, and many were killed and wounded, until the emperor came in person with his guards and the siege was raised." After it Shi Chonggui mounted the ancient terrace of Qicheng and set out wine to reward the three generals, and they "all blamed Yanguang for not sending troops to the rescue, and wept to one another." The affair shows Shi Chonggui facing the arrows in person, and also shows his poor choice of men, held back by a powerful minister.

The eastern key was the Majiadu crossing. Zhou Ru, prefect of Bozhou, surrendered his city to the Khitan and secretly agreed with Yang Guangyuan to "bring the Khitan across the river at Majiadu." A small Khitan force camped first on the east bank and attacked the northern ferry of Yunzhou, to support Yang Guangyuan — Yunzhou being, once the Yellow River line was pierced, the only city northeast of the capital that could still be held along the river. Shi Chonggui sent Li Shouzhen with troops by water and land to relieve Wenyang; and Cai Xingyu, general of the left Wuwei guard, sent with several hundred horse to help, fell into an ambush among the reeds, and "after several exchanges his men all fled, and Xingyu was taken; badly wounded by arrow and spear so that he could not ride, he was carried in a basket to the enemy tent." After the western force beat the enemy off at Qicheng, Li Shouzhen, supporting the east, at last defeated the Khitan at Majiakou and destroyed the camps their crossing force had built; and Yang Guangyuan's troops moving west to join the Khitan eastern army were stopped at Yunzhou.

The turn of the campaign came under the walls of Chanzhou. Yelu Deguang took Zhao Yanshou's advice that "the Jin army is all on the river, in fear of our sharpness and certain not to advance; better to attack them at the foot of their city from four sides, seize their pontoon bridge, and the empire is settled," and on the third day of the third month "came in person with more than a hundred thousand men and arrayed them north of Chanzhou city, stretching east and west around both corners of the wall, so that, looking from the wall, no end could be seen." Shi Chonggui led his army out, the two sides fought a whole day with losses on both, and toward evening the Khitan drew off first, then divided into two columns northward, "one by way of Cang and De, one by way of Shen and Ji. What they passed they burned and plundered, over a thousand li square, and the people and goods were all but gone," leaving Zhao Yanzhao as rear commander at Beizhou and sending Madat to take Dezhou and capture its prefect Yin Jufan. The Khitan's first invasion ended in failure, and Jin paid for it with a Hebei laid waste. In the same campaign Li Yiyin, military governor of Dingnan, "crossed the river from Linzhou with forty thousand troops and invaded Khitan territory," being made commissioner for the southwest against the Khitan — a threat to the Khitan rear that Deguang could not ignore.

After the Khitan withdrew, Hebei did not recover. In the fifth month Li Shouzhen was sent with twenty thousand foot and horse against Yang Guangyuan at Qingzhou, and Zhang Congen of Yedu as commander for Beizhou attacked northward; Zhang reported that "the rebel general Zhao Yanzhao at Beizhou set fire and plundered, then abandoned the city and fled." In the eighth month fifteen generals were appointed against the Khitan, and according to the Dongdu Shilue, Fan Zhi was on night duty, and when the Chudi ordered the academicians each to draft the commissions, Fan Zhi, fearing that "the palace gate is shut and secrets may leak," wrote them all himself. In the ninth month Bai Wenke, prefect of Daizhou, defeated the Khitan at Qilifeng, taking more than a thousand heads and seventy officers alive. By the twelfth month Yang Guangyuan of Qingzhou surrendered, closing one chapter of a year of troubles within and without.

The Campaign of the Second Year of Kaiyun

In the intercalary twelfth month of 944 Yelu Deguang and Zhao Yanshou came again with their whole army, invested Hengzhou and detached forces to take Gucheng, Gaocheng, Yuanshi, Gaoyi, Zhaoqing, Ningjin, Puze, Luancheng and Baixiang, their vanguard reaching Xingzhou, while the prefectures of Hebei cried for help; the court ordered Zhang Congen, Ma Quanjie and An Shenqi with their troops to Xingzhou and Zhao Zaili to Yedu. The Khitan host camped at Yuanshi, stronger than on the first invasion, and the court, "dreading the Khitan's strength, ordered Congen and the others to draw their troops back a little" — and that order to fall back at once produced a rout: "the armies were seized with panic, lost all order, threw away weapons and armour, burning and plundering what they passed, and by the time they reached Xiangzhou could no longer be formed." An attempt at caution became the worst defeat of the early part of the year.

In the first month the court redeployed: Zhao Zaili back to Chanzhou, Ma Quanjie back to Yedu, Zhang Yanze, general of the right Shenwu, to Liyang, Jing Yanguang from Huazhou to guard Huliang ferry, Huangfu Yu, military governor of Yicheng, with troops to Xingzhou, and the troops of Huazhou and Yedu ordered forward again against the enemy. The Khitan, using their cavalry, divided to raid Xing, Ming and Ci prefectures, "killing and plundering until scarcely anything was left, and entered the territory of Yedu."

The bloodiest action of the year was at Yulindian. Huangfu Yu and Murong Yanchao, prefect of Puzhou, went forward with several thousand horse to scout the Khitan, and at Yexian, about to cross the Zhang river, fell in with tens of thousands of Khitan; they fought and fell back to Yulindian, where the main Khitan force came up. The two generals conferred: "If we run now, we die to a man!" So they halted, formed, and fought "from noon to the late afternoon, more than a hundred engagements, with heavy losses on both sides." Huangfu Yu's horse was killed and he fought on foot; his servant Du Zhimin gave him his own horse, and he mounted and fought again. When the press eased a little he saw that Du Zhimin had been taken, and said, "Zhimin is a man of honour and must not be abandoned," and with Murong Yanchao he spurred into the Khitan lines and brought Zhimin back. Presently fresh Khitan troops came on, and the two said, "We cannot run; we shall repay the state with our deaths."

The rescue came from An Shenqi's decision. At dusk the generals at Anyang wondered why the scouts had not returned, and An Shenqi said, "The grand preceptor Huangfu has sent no word; he must be hemmed in by the enemy." Before he had finished, a rider reported the two generals surrounded by tens of thousands, and An Shenqi at once led out his cavalry, though Zhang Congen objected that "there is no profit in your going"; An Shenqi answered, "Success or failure is Heaven's. If it goes badly, we shall bear it together. And even if the enemy do not come south, to sit still and lose the grand preceptor Huangfu — with what face should we meet the world?" He crossed the water and advanced. The Khitan, seeing the dust rise, broke off — their own men crying out in alarm that "the whole Jin army has come," and Yelu Deguang at Handan, hearing it, fled north at once, not resting two nights until he reached Gucheng.

Zhang Congen and the other commanders then, on the ground that Xiangzhou had few troops and grain for less than a month, left five hundred infantry to hold the Anyang bridge and moved the main body to the Liyang granaries to stand with their backs to the great river. Fu Yanlun, in charge of Xiangzhou, judged that "five hundred worn-out soldiers — how can they hold a bridge?" and called them into the city overnight and manned the walls. At dawn several tens of thousands of Khitan horse were arrayed north of the Anyang water, and Fu Yanlun had the walls display banners and beat drums to make a show, so that the Khitan could not reckon their strength; toward mid-morning Zhao Yanshou and the Khitan tiyin led their host across the water and around Xiangzhou southward, but when they reached Tangyin and learned the Jin had prepared, they turned back. Zhao Yanshou arrayed his armoured horse below the walls as if to attack, and Fu Yanlun said, "This is an enemy about to leave," and sent out five hundred armoured men to stand north of the city; the Khitan indeed withdrew. To turn back tens of thousands with five hundred tired soldiers was one of the few deft strokes of Jin defence that year.

Shi Chonggui, his illness somewhat better, and on the report of Ma Quanjie, deputy commissioner of the northern expedition, that "by the account of deserters the enemy are not many and are scattered back to their tribes, and a great stroke should be made straight at Youzhou," levied troops throughout the provinces, issued the edict of personal campaign on the twenty-fifth of the first month, and left the eastern capital three days later. In the second month he came to Huazhou, ordered An Shenqi to garrison Yedu, went on to Chanzhou, and the commander-in-chief Du Wei joined with Ma Quanjie and the other armies coming north in succession. The Khitan, returning from Hengzhou, drove lean cattle and sheep past the walls of Qizhou; the prefect Shen Bin came out against them, and the Khitan took his gate with picked horse, so that the prefectural troops could not get back, and the next day the city fell and Shen Bin killed himself. The Jin took Taizhou, Mancheng and Suicheng, capturing the Khitan chief Mola and two thousand of his men; but Zhao Yanshou's men who came over reported that the Khitan ruler had got back to Hubelkou, and hearing that Jin had taken Taizhou, had turned south again with some eighty thousand horse and would arrive the next night. Du Wei and the others, afraid, fell back on Taizhou; the Khitan followed, and the Jin army moving south fought them at Yangcheng, driving them back more than ten li, and the Khitan crossed the White Ditch and went off.

The action at Baituanwei village was the peak of Shi Chonggui's military fortune. The Jin army formed and moved south with the barbarian horse closing in like a mountain from four sides; the armies fought hard to hold them off, making barely ten li in a day, men and horses famished; at Baituanwei they dug in stakes for a field camp, and the Khitan ringed them in several layers and sent a detachment behind the camp to cut the supply road. That night a great northeast wind rose, breaking roofs and snapping trees; the wells they dug in camp collapsed as soon as they reached water, and the soldiers took the mud and "wrung it in cloth to drink — men and horses alike were parched." By dawn the wind was worse, and Yelu Deguang, seated in his Xi carriage, ordered: "The Jin army is no more than this; we shall take them all, then go south and take Daliang!" He ordered the Iron Falcons to dismount on all sides, pull up the stakes and come in, fighting with short weapons, and set fires and raised dust with the wind to help them. The soldiers cried out in anger: "Why does the commander-in-chief not use his troops and let the men wait for death!" The generals asked to fight, and Du Wei said, "Wait until the wind slackens and we shall see." Li Shouzhen, inspector of foot and horse, said: "They are many and we few; in a sandstorm their numbers cannot be told, and only the hard fighter wins — this wind is helping us. If we wait for it to stop, there will be none of us left!" He shouted, "All armies, strike together!" and said to Du Wei, "Let the lord commandant keep the defence; Shouzhen will decide it with the centre in death or victory!" Yao Yuanfu, arraying commissioner of the right cavalry, alone said to Zhang Yanze: "Our men are already starving and parched; if we wait for the wind to turn, we shall all be the enemy's. They think we cannot fight against the wind; we should strike before they expect it — this is the devious way of war." Fu Yanqing, arraying commissioner of both wings, said: "Rather than fold our hands and be taken, better to give our bodies for the state!" So with Zhang Yanze, Yao Yuanfu and Huangfu Yu he led picked horse out of the west gate and attacked, and the other generals followed. Fu Yanqing and his fellows, with more than ten thousand horse, struck across the Khitan line, their shouts shaking heaven and earth, and the Khitan broke and ran like a collapsing mountain; Li Shouzhen too made the infantry pull up the stakes and come out, foot and horse advancing together, driving them back more than twenty li. The Iron Falcons, having dismounted, could not get back on their horses in the panic and left horses and armour strewn over the ground. Yelu Deguang rode off more than ten li in his Xi carriage, and with the pursuit close, caught a camel and rode that.

The failure was in the pursuit. The generals asked to chase them hard, and Du Wei proclaimed: "To meet the enemy and not die is luck enough — do you want his baggage too?" Li Shouzhen likewise argued that "for two days men and horses have been parched, and now that they have drunk they are heavy and cannot chase," and urged bringing the army back whole; so they retired to Dingzhou. The Khitan ruler, reaching Youzhou, gathered his scattered men and, for the defeat, "had his chiefs beaten several hundred strokes each, only Zhao Yanshou escaping." The victory at Baituanwei saved Jin for a season but could not be turned into a strategic opening; and Du Wei's later refusal to fight and his grasping at power had already laid the line to the state's destruction two years on.

The Northern Expedition of the Third Year of Kaiyun and the Fall of the State

After the victory at Baituanwei, Later Jin tried to open a breach inside the Khitan camp, and instead walked into a trap. The Old History of the Five Dynasties, chapter 84, records that in the third month the court "again sent Du Wei of Yedu with a letter to Zhao Yanshou, setting out the court's wishes and tempting him with rich profit," and sent Zhao Xingshi, an officer of Mingzhou who had once served Zhao Yanshou, to carry it and "secretly convey the close understanding." In the seventh month Zhao Xingshi returned from Yan with Zhao Yanshou's reply, saying that "long sunk in the frontier court, he wished to return to China, and begged that a great general be sent to receive him, whereupon he would extricate himself and go south," words earnest and full of detail, and the court gladly agreed. But Zhao Yanshou had long since told Yelu Deguang, who turned it about and had him feign submission. By the tenth month Liu Yanzuo, the defending general of Yingzhou, "received the Khitan command to feign sincere adherence and lure our army," and the state believed it wholly, and so the plan of a campaign was made. Those whom Later Jin relied on as allies within were all bait.

In the tenth month Shi Chonggui issued the edict of the northern campaign, declaring that he would "first take Ying and Mo and settle the south of the pass; then recover You and Yan and sweep the north clean," and made Du Wei commander-in-chief of the northern expeditionary army, Li Shouzhen acting military supervisor, An Shenqi commander of the left and right wings, Fu Yanqing of Xuzhou commander of the left cavalry, Huangfu Yu of Huazhou commander of the right cavalry, Liang Hanzhang of Beizhou commissioner of cavalry array, Song Yanjun commissioner of the left infantry, Wang Rao of the Fengguo left wing commissioner of the right infantry, and Xue Huairang, regiment commander of Mingzhou, commissioner of the vanguard — marching north from Yedu. The commander so appointed was the man who afterwards opened the gates to the enemy.

In the eleventh month Du Wei led the generals to the walls of Yingzhou, where the gates stood wide open; Du Wei, suspecting an ambush, dared not enter. Presently, hearing that the Khitan defending general Gao Mohan had fled with his troops, he sent Liang Hanzhang with two thousand horse in pursuit, and Liang Hanzhang, meeting the main Khitan army at Nanyangwu, was destroyed with all his men. On the report Du Wei drew his army south, and at Wuqiang, hearing that Yelu Deguang was coming south with a great host, he thought not of resisting northward but of taking the road through Ji and Bei and withdrawing south with all speed. Zhang Yanze, then camped at Hengzhou, hearing that Du Wei had fallen back to Wuqiang, hurried a part of his cavalry to join him, told him how the Khitan might be broken, and urged him north again; only then did Du Wei turn west with Zhang Yanze as vanguard and advance on Hengzhou. The want of any will to fight was plain from this point.

Reaching the Zhongdu bridge, the Jin found the Khitan already in possession; Zhang Yanze led horse to contest it, and the Khitan burned the bridge and withdrew, so that the two armies stood on opposite banks of the Hutuo. At first, seeing the Jin host come up and losing the bridge, the Khitan feared the Jin would cross at once and, joining with Hengzhou, attack them between two forces, and had discussed going back; but when they learned that the Jin were only building ramparts for a long stand, they stayed. While they faced one another, Yelu Deguang sent his general Xiao Han with the interpreter Liu Zhongjin "with a hundred horse and worn-out troops along the western hills to come out behind the Jin army and cut their supply road and their way home." The woodcutters who met them were all carried off, and those who escaped back spoke of the enemy's numbers, so that panic ran through the camp. Xiao Han reached Luancheng, whose garrison of more than a thousand, unaware of his coming, surrendered in disorder; and the Khitan, taking Jin subjects, "branded their faces with the words 'By imperial command, not killed,' and let them go south," so that the transport men meeting them abandoned their carts and scattered. Xiao Han was the Khitan ruler's uncle, and a detachment of a hundred men cut the supply road and the line of retreat of an army of two hundred thousand.

In the early days of the twelfth month the court learned that Du Wei was at the Zhongdu bridge, and Shi Chonggui sent Fu Yanqing and afterwards Gao Xingzhou to reinforce Chanzhou and ordered Jing Yanguang to hold Heyang, to strengthen the Yellow River line. On the eighth day the Khitan surrounded Du Wei's camp, his grain was nearly gone, and Yelu Deguang tempted him with the offer of the throne; on the tenth day Du Wei and Li Shouzhen accepted and surrendered with more than two hundred thousand men, and Du Wei went himself under the walls of Hengzhou to call on its commander to submit. Fang Tai of Xingzhou reported that "on the sixth of this month the Khitan fought the royal army at Zhongdu, the royal army fared ill, and Wang Qing, commissioner of the Fengguo left wing, died in the fight"; and on the renshen day "news first came that Du Wei, Li Shouzhen and the rest had surrendered all their armies to the Khitan on the tenth of this month." That night Zhang Yanze, military governor of Xiangzhou, under Khitan orders, led two thousand vanguard troops in through the Fengqiu gate by force, and at dawn on the following day halted outside the Mingde gate, and the capital was thrown into confusion. Shi Yun, the Chudi's uncle and formerly military governor of Caozhou, died in the fighting.

Shi Chonggui sought death and did not get it. Fires were lit in the palace, and he "took his sword himself and drove more than ten of the palace women before him to go into the fire, but was restrained by Xue Chao, an officer of his own guard"; presently a letter from the Khitan ruler to the empress dowager was handed in at the Kuanren gate, comforting them greatly and asking to see Sang Weihan and Jing Yanguang, and Shi Chonggui desisted, "ordered the fires put out," and opened the palace gates wide and surrendered. He sat in the garden, weeping with his consorts, and called Fan Zhi, academician of the Hanlin, to draft the memorial of surrender: "Your grandson and servant Chonggui speaks... Then heaven sent down great calamity and my late father departed this life, and I, obeying his testament, assumed his foundation. In the first days of mourning I was confused and out of order, and all weighty matters of state I gave over to the generals and ministers. As for presuming to continue the ancestral line, it was not by your commission; and lightly issuing letters, I dared resist the honoured one. I myself opened the quarrel, and indeed brought down your wrath: calamity came and my spirit was dazed, my course was run and heaven destroyed me. A hundred thousand troops looked to the wind and folded their hands; millions of common people stretched out their necks and turned their hearts to you. I, your servant, have borne shame against righteousness, clung to life and swallowed disgrace, and brought ruin on myself and shame on my ancestors, passing the mornings and evenings in stealth, keeping a little breath... I, with the empress dowager and my wife Lady Feng, await sentence bound in the open country." Fan Zhi also drafted a memorial for the empress dowager Li, reproaching herself that "the weapons were moved again and again, and the team of four could not be recalled; the fault was indeed self-inflicted, and on whom is the blame to rest?" Beyond the memorial there was the matter of the seal: the New History of the Five Dynasties, chapter 17, records that the Khitan, receiving it, "thought the workmanship not fine and unlike what the histories described, and ordered Yanxu and the others to return and seek the true seal," and the Chudi answered that "when Prince Congke of Lu burned himself at Luoyang the seal's whereabouts became unknown, and it is supposed to have been burned; my late father, receiving the mandate, had a seal made by a jade worker, as all the ministers then in office know," whereupon the matter was dropped.

After the surrender Shi Chonggui lost his freedom at once. On the eighteenth of the twelfth month Zhang Yanze moved him with the empress dowager Li and the whole palace household to the Kaifeng prefecture, hurrying them, allowing them to take none of the inner treasury's wealth, and set Li Rong, commander of the Konghe guard, with troops to watch them and cut off all communication with the ministers outside, so that memorials from him and the empress dowager to the Khitan ruler had first to be shown to Zhang Yanze before they could go out. That night Sang Weihan, prefect of Kaifeng, and Meng Chenghui, commissioner of the palace audience, were both killed — Sang Weihan being precisely the man who had urged Shi Chonggui again and again to make peace with the Khitan. The histories say that he was ugly, short in body and long of face, and that when the Khitan ruler entered Bian he asked Li Song where Sang Weihan was, and hearing that he had been killed, sighed: "I did not wish to kill Weihan — why did Weihan kill himself?" A man whom even the enemy regretted after the fall of the state died at the hands of his own sovereign and colleagues.

Removal North and Later Years

In the first month of 947, the fourth year of the Liao Huitong era, Yelü Deguang reduced Shi Chonggui to Grand Master of Splendid Happiness and Acting Grand Commandant and enfeoffed him as Marquis of Fuyi, “Marquis Who Failed in Righteousness.” Shi, Empress Dowager Li, Empress Feng, other relatives, and more than one hundred palace attendants were ordered north toward Huanglong Prefecture, escorted in effect as prisoners by three hundred Khitan cavalry. The household suffered hunger, cold, and intermittent food. Former Later Jin officials feared Yelü Deguang and did not dare offer supplies. Only Li Gu, prefect of Cizhou, waited beside the road. When Shi's party arrived, Li wept with him and lamented that it was shameful for a subject to remain safe when his ruler had fallen. He supplied extensive provisions, allowing the group temporary relief.

After crossing beyond the passes, they received no further Khitan provisions and were forced to gather wild grasses and fruits with palace women and eunuchs. At Jinzhou, Shi was required to kneel before the tomb of the Liao founder. Unable to bear the humiliation, he cried that Xue Chao had caused this by preventing his suicide. Empress Feng secretly ordered attendants to seek poison so that she and Shi might kill themselves, but the plan did not succeed. In 949 Shi was moved to Huanglong Prefecture and was later transferred to Jianzhou, where he, Empress Dowager Li, and Empress Feng were forced to farm for a living. Even when ill they could not afford a physician.

Historical sources disagree over Shi's death. The Old History of the Five Dynasties, quoting Fan Zhi's Record of the Jin Court's Fall among the Foreigners, says that he died after eighteen years in captivity, implying 964. Shi Chonggui's epitaph, now held by the Liaoning Provincial Museum, instead states that he died of illness on the eighteenth day of the sixth month of 974, the sixth year of the Liao Baoning era, at the age of sixty-one. Modern scholars generally follow the epitaph and accept 974.

Details of the Journey North

Shi Chonggui sought to see Yelu Deguang and did not. Learning that the Khitan ruler was about to reach the eastern capital, he sent up a memorial asking to go out of the city with the empress dowager to meet him, and Yelu Deguang refused on the ground that "how can two sons of heaven meet upon the road," sending him only the knife he wore at his side to comfort him and having his cousin Madat say, "Do not worry, grandson — I shall certainly leave you a place where you may eat." On the first day of the first month of the following year the Khitan ruler camped north of the eastern capital; the civil and military officials took leave of Shi Chonggui from afar in the Fengshan temple and went to the northern suburbs to welcome Yelu Deguang; and Shi Chonggui went out of the Fengqiu gate with all his house, carried in a sedan to the open country, where the Khitan ruler would not see him and "sent him to lodge in the Fengshan temple." On the seventh day Cui Tingxun, a Khitan general, was sent with troops to guard them; it was the depth of winter, the family was starving and freezing in the temple, and the monks refused food on the ground that "the barbarians' mind cannot be fathomed, and we dare not offer it," until the empress dowager Li had them told: "I have fed tens of thousands of monks in this place — is there not one today who remembers it?" In the end Shi Chonggui "secretly begged the guards, and so got a little food."

On the seventeenth of the first month Shi Chonggui went north with the empress dowager Li, the grand consort An, the empress Feng, his younger brother Chongrui and his sons Yanxu and Yanbao, attended by fifty palace women, thirty eunuchs, fifty of the east and west ranks, one physician, four Konghe officers, seven cooks, three of the tea and wine office, three of the ceremonial office and twenty soldiers of the six armies, with Zhao Ying, Feng Yu and Li Yantao also going with them. Yelu Deguang had the empress dowager Li told: "I hear your son Chonggui did not follow your teaching and came to this; you may seek your own convenience and not go with him." She answered: "Chonggui served me with great care. His fault was to go against my late lord's will and break the friendship of the two states; yet as he goes now, he is favoured with great grace, to keep his life and preserve his house. If a mother does not follow her son, where should she go?" So the whole house went north together. The Old History records that afterwards "one day the emperor and the empress dowager had nothing to eat and killed a beast to eat it"; and that coming to the Zhongdu bridge and seeing the traces of Du Wei's camp, Shi Chonggui sighed in anger and said to those about him: "In what did my house wrong this traitor, that he should break it? Heaven! Heaven!" and wept aloud and went on.

Beyond the pass there was no more supply. The Old History records that from Fanyang they went several stages, past Jizhou and Pingzhou, to the sandy frontier at Yuguan, "with practically no provisions; wherever they halted it was in the open road, and all the party went hungry, the palace women and attendants gathering nuts and wild herbs to stay the pangs." Coming to Youzhou, "the whole city, gentry and commoners, came out along the road to look, and seeing the emperor so broken, all sighed"; they stayed more than ten days, and the commander of the prefecture, under Khitan orders, feasted them in his office, and Zhao Yanshou's mother sent food. Seven or eight stages further they came to Jinzhou, where the Khitan compelled Shi Chonggui and his consorts to go and bow to the likeness of Taizu Yelu Abaoji, and he, unable to bear the humiliation, wept and said: "Xue Chao ruined me in not letting me die, and so it has come to this day." The Qidan Guozhi records another detail of the road: from Youzhou, some ten li, past Pingzhou, with no provisions on the way and nothing to eat, he "sent the palace women and attendants to gather nuts and wild herbs to eat." It is said that coming to a stone bridge on the border between the two states, he looked back toward his homeland and knew he could not return, and pointing at the bridge said, "From now on you shall be called the Homecoming Bridge." The Xuanzheng Zalu places this bridge at Liangyuwu in Jixian and says that when Emperor Huizong of Song was taken north a century later "the country people still called it so" — another emperor carried north stepped onto it, and the name proved a prophecy.

The empress Feng twice sought death and could not. After Shi Chonggui's humiliation in captivity, "the empress Feng, because the emperor was sunk among the barbarians and endured great hardship, had a eunuch secretly seek poison, meaning to drink it herself and give it to him, but it came to nothing"; and earlier, at Jinzhou, she had also sought poison to die with him. After Huanglongfu, the Khitan empress dowager Shulüping summoned the party to Huaimizhou, some thousand li northwest of Huanglongfu, but two hundred li past Liaoyang she was herself seized by the Yongkang prince Yelu Ruan, who sent Shi Chonggui back to Liaoyang, and their supply improved a little. In the fourth month of 948 Yelu Ruan came to Liaoyang, and Shi Chonggui, "in white robe and gauze cap," went to his tent to present himself; Ruan had him appear in ordinary dress. He fell to the ground weeping, setting out his faults, and Ruan had him raised up, sat with him, drank wine and had music played. "The musicians and attendants in the tent, seeing their former sovereign, all wept and could not master their grief, and vied in giving him clothes and medicine" — a scene that tells more of a fallen ruler's state than any memorial of surrender.

In Liao territory Shi Chonggui could not keep even his family. When Yelu Ruan left Liaoyang he took fifteen eunuchs, fifteen of the east and west ranks and the prince Shi Yanxu with him to the pass; and his wife's brother Chuonuoxili, learning that Shi Chonggui had a young princess at home, came to ask for her, and Shi Chonggui put him off on the ground of her youth, whereupon a few days later Ruan sent horsemen to take her away. Afterwards Shulüwang, son of Taizong, "sent horsemen to take the Chudi's favourite concubines Lady Zhao and Lady Nie." In the second month of 948 the Khitan moved Shi Chonggui and the empress dowager to Jianzhou; on the way the grand consort An died, leaving the charge that her bones be "burned to ash and scattered to the south, so that her ghost might perhaps return to China." At Jianzhou the military governor Zhao Yanhui gave up his own chamber for them, and some tens of li from the city they were given more than fifty qing of land, which Shi Chonggui "had his followers plough to feed themselves"; the History of Liao records that the Khitan allowed the empress dowager Li "land of fifty qing forty li south of Jianzhou, to build houses and found an ancestral temple." In the eighth month of the next year the empress dowager Li fell ill with no physician or medicine, and would cry to heaven and "shake her fist and curse Du Wei and Li Shouzhen," and at the end said to Shi Chonggui: "When I die, burn my bones and send them to the Buddhist temple at Fanyang; do not let me be a ghost in barbarian land!"

Shi Chonggui lived nearly thirty years in the north, and his end long remained obscure. The Old History, citing Fan Zhi's Record of Jin's Captivity among the Barbarians, says that "in all eighteen years he died," that is in 964; but the epitaph tablet of Shi Chonggui, acquired by the Liaoning Provincial Museum in the 1970s, records his death on the eighteenth of the sixth month of 974, the sixth year of Baoning in Liao, at the age of sixty-one. The tablet is ninety-seven centimetres square, bordered with a continuous key pattern and with swastika and chequer motifs at the corners, twenty-seven lines each way and 409 characters in all, entitled "Epitaph and Preface of the Late Prince of Jin of the Great Khitan State." In May 2011 archaeologists found two further Liao epitaphs in Chaoyang county, Liaoning, those of Shi Chonggui's principal mother the empress dowager Li and his own mother the grand consort An, in a Liao grave cluster near Huangdao Yingzi village in Wulanheshuo township; and with the Liao city site found in the third national survey of cultural relics at Boluochi, scholars generally hold that the legendary "Anjin city" lies at the Liao site near Boluochi village in Chaoyang county.

Legends and Afterlife

After the journey north, news of Shi Chonggui was long cut off from the Central Plain. The Qidan Guozhi preserves a rumour from the south: "In the Xiance era of Zhou there came a Chinese from Liao who said that the lord of Jin and the empress and the princes were all in good health, but that of his followers those who had fled home or died were more than half." The Xiance era of Zhou is the reign of Shizong of Later Zhou, nearly ten years after the fall of Jin, and all that men in China could learn was that Shi Chonggui, his wife and sons were still alive, while of the hundred-odd attendants who had gone with him, fled or dead, more than half were gone. A company of a hundred-odd souls scattered among the prefectures of Liao gradually vanished from the Chinese record, until the excavation of the epitaphs restored to it a definite date.

The settlement of Shi Chonggui's family in Liao territory was not a total abandonment. The Khitan allowed the empress dowager Li "land of fifty qing forty li south of Jianzhou, to build houses and found an ancestral temple," and gave more than fifty qing some tens of li from the city, which Shi Chonggui "had his followers plough to feed themselves"; and the empress dowager herself appeared before the Khitan emperor to ask "to plough and feed herself beside the Chinese city," and was permitted. For a fallen sovereign to plough for his own food, and yet be able to build houses and found a temple, was a leniency rare among fallen rulers; and yet the empress dowager's illness with no physician, the grand consort An's charge that her bones be burned and scattered south, and the empress Feng's two attempts to obtain poison still show what their days in Liao were. Shi Chonggui himself lived through the reigns of Taizong Yelu Deguang, Shizong Yelu Ruan and Muzong Yelu Jing, and died at Jianzhou on the eighteenth of the sixth month of 974, the sixth year of Baoning under Jingzong, aged sixty-one: compared with the twenty-nine years of the state that Shi Jingtang bought with ceded land and professed vassalage, his years in a foreign land were the longer.

Major Activities

Accession and Diplomatic Shift

Shi Chonggui's most consequential decision after taking the throne was to abandon the vassal policy toward the Khitan followed under Shi Jingtang. He accepted Jing Yanguang's recommendation to write to the Khitan ruler as a grandson but not a subject. This directly contributed to the breakdown of Jin–Liao relations and the outbreak of war. Historical assessments of the decision remain divided. Supporters see it as a legitimate effort to free Later Jin from Khitan domination, while critics argue that given the disparity in power it was strategically unwise and accelerated the dynasty's fall.

The Full Turning of Foreign Policy toward the Khitan

On his accession Shi Chonggui sent envoys to announce the mourning to the Khitan, and his letter styled him grandson but not vassal. The History of Liao, chapter 4, records: "In the seventh month, on the gengyin day, Jin sent Liang Yan, general of the left Jinwu guard, and Zhu Chongjie, controller of the four quarters hostel, to give thanks; their letter called him grandson and not vassal, and Kebuisi Qiao Rong was sent to reprove him. Jing Yanguang answered: 'The late emperor was installed by your sacred dynasty; the present ruler was established by our own state. To be a neighbour and a grandson is possible; to submit a memorial as a vassal is not.' Rong returned and reported the whole to the emperor, and only then did the emperor conceive the intention of a southern campaign." The New History of the Five Dynasties, chapter 29, adds that "when the Chudi was installed, the Jin ministers proposed to notify the Khitan with a memorial of vassalage; Yanguang alone refused, and sent a letter calling him grandson only, and though the ministers knew it would not do, they could not overrule him." A difference in the wording of one letter became the beginning of war between the two states.

Beyond the dropping of vassalage, Later Jin indulged Jing Yanguang in words meant to provoke. The Old History of the Five Dynasties, chapter 88, records that when the Khitan sent envoys to reprove them, Jing Yanguang had Qiao Rong, the Khitan's returning-trade commissioner in Jin, report to his sovereign: "The late emperor was installed by the northern court; the present ruler was chosen by China itself. To be a neighbour and a grandson is possible; there is no principle of vassalage." He added that "the Jin court has a hundred thousand mouths of swords ground for battle; if the old man wants war, let him come early — if he cannot restrain his grandson another day, he will be laughed at by the world." Once spoken, "from this they stood as enemies with the Khitan, and armed conflict came daily." For a tributary state to make such a declaration to its overlord was, in the East Asian order of the day, an act of rupture.

The provocation went on to touch persons and property. The Zizhi Tongjian, chapter 283, records that Qiao Rong, a tooth general of Heyang, had followed Zhao Yanshou into Khitan service, where he was made commissioner of returning trade, moving goods to and fro in Jin with a residence at Daliang; and when Khitan and Jin fell out, "Jing Yanguang persuaded the emperor to imprison Rong and take all the goods in his residence. All Khitan traders within Jin territory were killed and their goods seized." To imprison his envoy, seize his goods and kill his merchants — the three together left no room for recovery between the two states. Nor was Shi Chonggui ignorant of it; he let Jing Yanguang act, for his hardness toward the Khitan served both to cast off vassalage and to establish his authority at home.

To see in this only a fit of temper is to misread it. Shi Chonggui needed both to strengthen central power and to raise the legitimacy of his regime, and casting off Liao was one way of asserting himself politically; already in Shi Jingtang's time, with Sang Weihan's help, Later Jin had been quietly biding its time and preparing in secret to escape Khitan control, and the diplomacy of Shi Chonggui's reign marks the point where that policy turned from concealment to openness. For Yelu Deguang the turn was unacceptable: casting off Liao defeated the purpose of having installed a puppet, while the strengthening of the centre and the weakening of divisive forces among the provinces would leave him no opening to advance into China. When repeated diplomatic means could neither undo the secession nor prevent worse provocation, the Khitan leadership concluded that only war could reestablish its standing as overlord. That is the crux of the deterioration between Jin and Liao, of which the diplomatic provocations were merely the violent surface.

Two Faces of the Khitan Policy

Shi Chonggui's abandonment of vassalage toward the Khitan has always drawn two opposite judgments, and the division is already visible in Song writers. The Qidan Guozhi quotes Hu Wending, who separates the "act" from the "feeling": "Judged as an act, Jing Yanguang's guilt in destroying Jin admits of no expiation; judged as a feeling, that Jin served the barbarians as a father was something no heart inside or outside the court could accept. Hence he burned to wash it away, and gave no thought to lightly breaking faith and goodwill and provoking the quarrel himself. The ministers were not of one mind, the generals had other purposes, the ruler's virtue was foul, the people's strength exhausted — and to fight the barbarians under such conditions, how could it end well? Narrow in mind and shallow in plan, in the anger of a moment he forgot himself and his sovereign." This judgment grants that the refusal of the court and people to serve the Khitan had its rightness, and yet points out that to fight a strong enemy when the ministers were not of one mind, the generals had other purposes, the ruler's virtue was foul and the people's strength exhausted could only end in ruin, whatever the motive. Wang Fuzhi goes further: the fault lay not in resisting but in having no means to resist. "It was not by resisting that he perished, but by resisting without the means to hold them off. Strong as the Khitan were, whenever they entered China they had misgivings. On hearing of a defeat they thought at once of flight, and had no plan for a long effort. Had the generals and soldiers been of one heart and arms and food been ready, to meet a short effort with a long one and leisure with fatigue, what was there they could not have overcome? But between ruler and minister in the Five Dynasties there was no firm purpose. At the least balance of victory they looked this way and that, and there were those who would break without fighting. And the Chudi's own measures had in them every tendency to ruin." In his view the Khitan, a long-range cavalry expedition, had no staying power, and the battles of Qicheng, Majiakou, Yulindian and Baituanwei had twice over proved they could be beaten; Jin perished of unfirm purpose and disordered measures, not of resistance itself.

This judgment can be checked against Shi Chonggui's own conduct. He was not wholly without nerve — he went twice on personal campaign, at Qicheng "came in person with his guards and raised the siege," and the victory at Baituanwei fell in the period of his second campaign; yet the same emperor could launch a northern expedition on the strength of a single report from Ma Quanjie that "the enemy are not many and are scattered back to their tribes, and a great stroke should be made straight at Youzhou," could refuse to listen to Sang Weihan's remonstrance because it did not suit him, could allow Jing Yanguang to imprison envoys and seize goods and provoke a strong neighbour in words. The will to resist and the preparation to resist were wholly out of joint: in strategy he wanted to cast off vassalage and establish the state's dignity, while in practice he gave the military power to Du Wei and Li Shouzhen and the civil power to Jing Yanguang, Feng Yu and Li Yantao. Wang Fuzhi's "reversal in the use of men" is the plainest expression of that disjunction.

Leading the War against the Khitan

From the end of 943 to 945, the Khitan launched two major invasions. Shi personally led campaigns on both occasions. Later Jin won major victories at Qicheng, Majia Ford, and Baituanwei near Yangcheng, forcing Khitan withdrawals. The source notes that the actual battlefield command in these engagements was mainly exercised by generals, while the emperor's presence served more to encourage morale.

Fall of the Dynasty and Captivity

In the twelfth month of 946, Du Chongwei and Li Shouzhen surrendered with their forces to the Khitan, whose troops entered Kaifeng and forced Shi to capitulate. He was thereafter demoted to Marquis of Fuyi and moved north with his clan, living successively at Huanglong Prefecture, Jianzhou, and elsewhere. He spent nearly thirty years as a captive and eventually died far from his homeland.

Suppressing An Congjin's Rebellion

In the eleventh month of 941, An Congjin, Military Commissioner of Shannan East Circuit, rebelled and attacked Dengzhou. Shi Chonggui, then Defender of the Eastern Capital, immediately dispatched Zhang Cong'en, Jiao Jixun, and other generals. The revolt was defeated the following year. This was his most important military accomplishment before accession and one reason officials regarded him as the mature ruler needed for a troubled state.

Curtailing the Provinces and Strengthening the Centre

After Shi Jingtang's death Shi Chonggui continued his father's long policy of holding down the military provinces, and with sharper means: the court emphasised centralisation more strongly, pressing and dividing the great commands, weakening the traditionally powerful provincial forces, and strengthening the imperial guard. Shi Jingtang had reunited the guard and given the reorganised force to his most trusted general, Jing Yanguang, who thereafter, as a guard commander, held provincial commands by remote appointment or was posted to a key province in order to keep the strong commands in check — a comparatively gentle method. In the later part of Shi Jingtang's reign the court had used the rebellions of Chengde and Shannandong to press the great provinces further, and Shi Chonggui carried this on.

Jing Yanguang's position in this arrangement was very great. The Old History of the Five Dynasties, chapter 88, says that as commander-in-chief "the advance and retreat of the whole army came from his own breast, and the Chudi could not control him, so that all feared and resented him." As head of the guard he held the military power, and "he also commanded the night guard, so that no minister could contend with him." The war with the Khitan in the Kaiyun years gave the court a reason to draw on every resource, and these resources served the imperial power and in turn greatly changed the balance of provincial power. Hebei, central and southern, was most affected: in the years of war with the Khitan the military provinces of Hebei were "drained to the dregs" and could no longer threaten the central government.

Yet the same policy bred fresh disaffection. While Jing Yanguang pressed the provinces, he also turned several of their commanders against the court, none more than Yang Guangyuan of Pinglu at Qingzhou, whose rebellion the pressure of two reigns hastened. In the twelfth month of 943 Yang revolted, sending troops to take Zizhou and drag its prefect Zhai Jinzong into Qingzhou, and "worked on the Khitan, setting out the Chudi's failings in friendship and saying that after the great famine the state's funds were empty and that one stroke could now settle it" — giving the Khitan both a pretext and an ally inside. To press the provinces and to invite a frontier war were, in Yang Guangyuan's case, two faces of one act.

Finance, Calamity and the Hardship of the People

In the earlier part of Shi Jingtang's reign the military provinces had frequently presented goods and grain to the centre, and the centre used them to ease its financial straits and keep state and army steady; after the rebellion of Fan Yanguang was put down and the situation settled, Shi Jingtang, to spare the people, several times forbade the provinces to send such frequent presentations, so as to lessen their exactions and let the people rest. Under Shi Chonggui the position reversed: calamity followed calamity within Later Jin — locusts, great drought, storms and breaches of the Yellow River — so that fields yielded less or nothing. These disasters cut the court's tax revenue while the army lacked grain, and Shi Chonggui again accepted the provinces' presentations; as the disasters went on, the court could only go on accepting them. Such presentations were usually levied in addition to the two regular taxes, and the burden fell at last on the common people.

The record of the suffering is plain. The Old History, chapter 82, notes that in the fourth month of 944 "Tong and Hua reported that the people were eating one another," and in the same month that "Longzhou reported fifty-six thousand dead of hunger." At the beginning of his reign Shi Chonggui could still relieve distress: in the seventh month of 942 he proclaimed a general amnesty with the order that "wherever there are locusts in the realm, the land tax shall be remitted," and after the recovery of Xiangzhou "bestowed millet on the people within the city, two hu to the great households and one to the small, because they had long been besieged," remitting that year's house tax within the city and two years' land tax for those encamped outside, "and all who were compelled to follow An Congjin were to be left unpunished." But such acts were scattered among the prefectures and could not offset the double drain of unending disaster and military expense.

What broke the people's strength was the wartime levy. With the Khitan invading, the state's funds were exhausted, and the Zizhi Tongjian, chapter 284, records: "Because of the Khitan invasion the state's funds being more exhausted, envoys were again sent, thirty-six of them, by separate roads to levy the people's wealth, each given a sword. The envoys took many clerks and soldiers with them and brought locks and chains and weapons into the people's houses, so that great and small alike were terrified, and sought death in vain." Envoys carrying swords and chains into private houses to seize property is the truest picture of the fiscal misery of the Kaiyun years. In the same period the court "ordered the militia registered in the several prefectures to be styled the Wuding army, in all more than seventy thousand men," and "had the city of Deqingjun rebuilt, settling the people of Deqing and Nanle in it" — soldiers, walls and money all taken from the people at once.

Hand in hand with the finances went extravagance in reward. After the victory at Yangcheng Shi Chonggui "thought there was no more trouble under heaven and grew ever more extravagant": rare tribute from every quarter went to the inner treasury, he made many vessels for pleasure, enlarged the palaces, adorned the inner quarters "beyond anything of the recent dynasties," built a Brocade Tower to weave carpets with several hundred weavers taking a full year, and rewarded actors without measure. The Zizhi Tongjian records Sang Weihan's remonstrance: "Formerly, when Your Majesty went in person against the barbarian foe, the badly wounded were rewarded with no more than a few lengths of silk. Now a jester whose one phrase or one laugh pleases you is often given bundles of silk, ten thousand coins, brocade robes and silver belts. Will not the soldiers, seeing it, resent it and say among themselves: 'We who face the naked blades and have our sinews cut and bones broken are worth less than one phrase and one laugh!' So the soldiers' hearts will dissolve, and with whom will Your Majesty guard the state?" The emperor did not listen. With military costs and rewards both immense and the levy falling only on the common people, the finances of Later Jin in its last years had no room left to move.

Neighbouring Regimes and Frontier Peoples

Shi Chonggui's court also sought allies abroad to check the Khitan. King Wang Jian of Koguryo had swallowed his neighbours by arms and grown strong, and his monk Senglou had once told Shi Jingtang that "Pohai is our in-law; its king has been taken by the Khitan — let us with the court attack and take it," to which Shi Jingtang made no reply. When Shi Chonggui became the Khitan's enemy, Senglou raised it again, and Shi Chonggui "wished to have Koguryo trouble the Khitan's eastern frontier and so divide their forces." It happened that Wang Jian died and his son Wang Wu declared himself acting administrator and sent a memorial of mourning, whereupon Jin made Wang Wu commissioner of the Great Righteous Army and king of Koguryo and sent Guo Renyu, usher of the court, to his country to instruct him to attack the Khitan. But Guo Renyu, arriving, found their troops exceedingly weak, and knew Senglou's earlier words to have been the boasting of Wang Jian; Koguryo in truth dared not take the Khitan as an enemy. Renyu returned, and Wang Wu excused himself on other grounds. The design of using Koguryo to hold the Khitan in check came to nothing.

Toward the southern states Shi Chonggui broadly continued the investitures of Shi Jingtang's reign. Gao Conghui, military governor of Jingnan and prince of Nanping, was given concurrently the post of director of the secretariat; Ma Xifan, military governor of Hunan and prince of Chu, the rank of grand tutor; Qian Hongzuo, military governor of the two Zhe and king of Wuyue, and Wang Yanxi, military governor of Fujian, both received additional fiefs and new honorific titles; and Zhu Wenjin was given the office of jointly managing state affairs and made king of Min. The Old History observes that "from this time the marquises and the prefectural governors all received rank and fiefs by grade, to display widespread grace." Chu and Wuyue sent frequent tribute, in quantity and quality alike of the first order; the investiture of the Gao family of Jingnan had been raised a grade above the previous dynasty already in Shi Jingtang's time; and toward Later Shu the old hostility eased somewhat, Jin sending envoys to Shu to speak of marriage ties and repair relations, though Shu remained stiff and kept the two states on equal terms, twice receiving Jin generals who came over to it.

The loyalty of the Tuyuhun on the northern frontier was among the hardest problems of the reign. Their people had been subject to the Khitan by reason of Shi Jingtang's cession, and, unable to bear the oppression and humiliation, had come over in a body to Later Jin — one of the occasions of the breach between Jin and Liao — and in the fighting between the two they gave Jin substantial help. Yet the Tuyuhun did not keep Jin's law, and when Liu Zhiyuan, military governor of Hedong, punished them by law they bore him a grudge; and seeing the court's government decay and its strength slight, and that it could not be relied on, one part of them slipped back to their old lands. Shi Chonggui several times summoned their chief Bai Chengfu to court with rich banquets and gifts, and Bai Chengfu fought with him against the Khitan at Chanzhou; another chief, Bai Kejiu, next below Chengfu in rank, led his followers over to the Khitan first. Those who remained within the frontier Liu Zhiyuan regarded as "a disease at the heart," and luring Bai Chengfu and the others into Taiyuan, he accused five of their clans of plotting rebellion and surrounded and killed them to the number of four hundred, confiscating their property; the court instead praised and rewarded him. The Old History records that "men all thought it unjust," and that "the Tuyuhun declined from this."

The Northern Frontier and the Frontier Peoples

By the Kaiyun years the northern frontier defence of Later Jin was close to dissolution. The garrison towns between Chanzhou and Yedu all fell to the Khitan, and men argued that since the two cities were fifty li apart a city should be built between them to connect north and south, which the court accepted, and so "the city of Deqingjun was rebuilt, and the people of Deqing and Nanle were settled in it" — settling the people of two counties in a single new city being the normal practice of a frontier at war. The Deqing army, formerly placed in the old Chanzhou city, had itself been meant against the Khitan, and fell with the other garrison towns between Chanzhou and Yedu the moment they invaded, which shows how hollow the frontier was.

The wavering of the frontier militia shows the court's mismanagement most plainly. Two hundred li northwest of Dingzhou stands Mount Lang, where the local people had built a fort to escape the barbarian raiders, and in the fort stood a Buddhist house where a nun, Sun Shenyi, lived, "deluding the crowd with magic arts and speaking of things with much accuracy, so that far and near believed in her"; Sun Fangjian of Zhongshan and his younger brother Xingyou claimed to be her nephews, ate no meat and drank no wine, and served her with care. After her death Fangjian carried on her arts, "declaring that Shenyi had died sitting in meditation, adorned the image and served it as if alive." It being a time when Jin had broken with the Khitan, with heavy taxes and corvée on the northern frontier and banditry everywhere so that the people could not settle to their work, Fangjian and Xingyou led the strong men of their neighbourhood to hold the temple as a stockade for their own protection; when the Khitan invaded, Fangjian led his followers to strike at them and "took a good deal of armour, horses, cattle and military supplies," so that more and more families came to him and in time there were more than a thousand households and he had become a local power. The court, using him against the Khitan, made him commissioner of the northeast for recruiting; but Fangjian raided Khitan territory and "his demands did not stop, and whenever the court did not quite accord with his wishes he would surrender his stockade to the Khitan, asking to serve as their guide in raiding." The road the Khitan took south in 946 was shown them by this militia that had once fought them.

The Tangut revolt in the northwest came of the same causes. When Feng Hui was military governor of Shuofang at Lingzhou he kept the Tangut chief Tuoba Yanchao at the city as a hostage and combined kindness with severity, so that the tribes dared not raid, and he supplied Later Jin with horses — "buying horses for a year, to five thousand head." The court, jealous of his hold on the Qiang and Hu, moved him to Binzhou and Shanzhou and sent Wang Lingwen, formerly military governor of Zhangwu, in his place. Wang Lingwen abandoned the policy of conciliation and, "not comforting the Qiang and Hu but measuring them by Chinese law," provoked their anger; the Qiang and Hu all rebelled, and Tuoba Yanchao, with the three clans of Shi Cun and Yesibao, went over to Liao and attacked Lingzhou, killing Wang Lingwen's younger brother Lingzhou, and Lingzhou fell into chaos. The court had no choice but to restore Feng Hui as military governor of Shuofang, leading the troops of the western passes against the Qiang and Hu. Feng Hui, crossing the Hanhai to Huide, had exhausted his rations; Tuoba Yanchao had tens of thousands in three arrays blocking the road and holding the springs, and the army was greatly afraid. Feng Hui offered bribes for peace and Yanchao consented in appearance while keeping his troops in place. Yao Yuanfu, seeing that "they know we are hungry and thirsty and pretend to agree in order to wear us down," asked leave to take picked horse first against those arrayed against the western hills, agreeing that on a small success he would raise a yellow flag and the whole army would fall on them together; he led his horse forward and fought at close quarters. Yanchao fell back a little, Yuanfu raised the yellow flag, Feng Hui led the army in, and Yanchao was heavily defeated, and the next day Feng Hui entered Lingzhou. With Jin and the Khitan locked for years in an even struggle, the peoples of the frontier could run riot as the season served, "now attaching themselves to Later Jin, now going over to the Khitan, and becoming a plague on the border," of which the affair at Lingzhou is one instance.

The Choice of Men and the Blame for the Fall

Jing Yanguang was the most powerful and most disputed minister of the reign. As head of the guard he held the military power, so that "the advance and retreat of the whole army came from his own breast, and the Chudi could not control him"; at Qicheng, when Gao Xingzhou urgently asked for reinforcements, "Yanguang kept his troops back" and nearly lost the forward army; and after the Khitan withdrew he still "shut his ramparts and held them," so that the officials mocked him: "When you broke with the Khitan, how brave your words were; now that the Khitan have come, how spent your spirit." When the news of his mother's death reached him he "moved from the north bank of the Chanyuan ferry to the south bank, and before two nights had passed was back at military business, showing no sign of grief," so that even the common folk heard of it and disliked him; and out of a private grudge he had Wang Xu, assistant of the grand ceremonial, accused of plotting with Yang Guangyuan, worked up the case, and had him executed in the market, "and men thought it greatly unjust." After the emperor's return to the capital he once visited his house in person, and the gifts and favours exchanged "made his power and favour the first of the reign"; presently he fell out with Sang Weihan, and the Chudi, dreading that he could not be controlled, took away his military power and sent him out as keeper of the western capital. Thereafter he was sullen and out of sorts, and reckoning that the Khitan were strong and the state failing, he "gave himself up to drinking through the night and no longer cared about supporting the throne."

Sang Weihan's rise and fall shows how fitfully the emperor used men. In the sixth month of 944 someone said to the emperor: "If Your Majesty wishes to hold off the northern barbarians and settle the empire, no one but Sang Weihan will do." The court accordingly restored the Bureau of Military Affairs and made Sang Weihan concurrently director of the secretariat and commissioner, "and all matters great and small were given over to him, so that within a few months the court was well ordered." He had consistently held that Jin should make temporary peace with the Khitan to ease the state's troubles, and repeatedly urged Shi Chonggui to sue for peace, once "sending Zhang Hui, an officer of the Kaifeng army, made a palace attendant, with a memorial of vassalage to the Khitan, in humble words acknowledging faults." The Khitan ruler demanded that Jing Yanguang and Sang Weihan come in person and that Zhen and Ding be ceded to him, and the court, taking his tone as angry and his will as not for peace, stopped. After entering Daliang the Khitan ruler said to Li Song and the others: "Had the Jin envoys come once more, north and south would not have fought." Sang Weihan's own end in Later Jin was to be pushed out and killed.

Those who pushed him out were Feng Yu and Li Yantao. The Zizhi Tongjian records that Feng Yu "was always good at anticipating the emperor's wishes, and so grew more favoured"; Shi Chonggui once said to his chancellors: "For offices above prefect, wait until Feng Yu has come in, and then appoint" — appointments above the rank of prefect waited on a favourite's attendance at court. Feng Yu accordingly "took advantage to manipulate power, and bribes from every quarter converged on his gate, so that the government grew worse." Li Yantao "had served Yan Bao as a servant," and was later attached to Shi Jingtang's tent, becoming Shi Chonggui's confidant for having attended him; artful and petty, "he joined with the favourites to shut out the emperor's eyes and ears," so that "the promotion and dismissal of generals and chancellors was also open to his counsel." He once said to others: "I do not know what the court keeps civil officials for; I intend to purge them and in time do away with them all." The two joined with Li Shouzhen to push out Sang Weihan, and Feng Yu, using the fact that Sang Weihan had sent a maidservant into the palace to inquire after the reading of the emperor's brother Chongrui, accused him of "intending to depose and install," so that he was removed from office and made prefect of Kaifeng. From this point the government's decay could not be halted.

Du Wei was the worst of Shi Chonggui's appointments. As a kinsman by marriage he held Hengzhou for years, "greedy and cruel by nature, trusting to his relationship to the empress, and much given to lawlessness," levying money and silk from officials and people "to fill his private stores" under the pretext of frontier defence, seizing the valuable goods, beautiful women and fine horses of rich houses, or accusing them of crimes and killing them to confiscate their property; and he "was cowardly beyond measure — when a few dozen Khitan horse crossed the border, Wei would already have shut his gates and mounted the wall," and when a few Khitan horsemen drove thousands of captured Chinese past the city he "only glared and stretched his neck to look." His districts were repeatedly slaughtered while he never sent out a soldier, so that "for a thousand li the bones lay like grass, and the villages were all but gone." Hated by his people and afraid of the Khitan's strength, he sent up memorial after memorial asking to come to court and was refused, whereupon "without waiting for a reply he abandoned his command and came to court"; Sang Weihan asked that this be used to dismiss him, "so that there be no later trouble," and Shi Chonggui was displeased, saying: "Wei is my close kinsman and will certainly have no other purpose." Sang Weihan then asked that he be given a small prefecture near the capital and "no longer entrusted with a great command," and was again refused; and afterwards he was allowed the Tianxiong standard. Coming to court, Du Wei presented four thousand foot and horse of his household troops with armour and weapons, and then a hundred thousand hu of grain and two hundred thousand bundles of fodder, yet "asked to keep them as his own guard, with their pay and allowances to come from the county officials." Shi Chonggui trusted him as a close kinsman, and that kinsman surrendered with two hundred thousand men and went himself to call on the commander of Hengzhou to submit.

Wang Fuzhi, in the Reading of the Tongjian, points straight at the reversal in the use of men: "Within, he gave the seat of government to Li Song and Feng Yu and banished Sang Weihan to a nominal office; without, he gave the military power to Du Wei and Li Shouzhen and abandoned Liu Zhiyuan in an outer province. That reversal in the use of men was foreseen by men of understanding — what was there to discuss in the reckoning of victory and defeat?" He adds that at the fall of Jin "there was one Sang Weihan, set aside and unused; Du and Li surrendered to the enemy on the frontier, Feng and Li surrendered to the enemy at the state's gate, and Weihan was dead. Who undertook the work? Who died for honour?" As for Liu Zhiyuan, who held his troops at Taiyuan and would not come to the rescue, Wang Fuzhi makes a case: "Li Shouzhen, Du Wei and Zhang Yanze were of strength not far apart and bore each other jealous hatred; Sang Weihan sat in the centre holding the handle and, leaning on the Khitan, controlled the provincial commanders; Shi Chonggui was rash and nourished deep suspicion, advancing and retreating without constancy and tending ever to defeat; what heaven was destroying could not be propped up, and to die with it would only have broken him too."

Habits of Rule and the Decay of Government

Shi Chonggui's personal habits are not a section of the record of his fall that can be passed over. The Zizhi Tongjian notes that "after the victory at Yangcheng he thought there was no more trouble under heaven and grew ever more extravagant," that rare tribute from every quarter went into the inner treasury, and that he "made many vessels for pleasure, enlarged the palaces, adorned the inner quarters beyond anything of the recent dynasties," building a Brocade Tower for carpets with several hundred weavers taking a full year. The same work records his passion for hunting, and that he "gave the whole power of appointment in the court to the ministers close to him," producing a generation of inadequate favourites in power — Jing Yanguang, Feng Yu and their like. Feng Yu "was always good at anticipating the emperor's wishes and so grew more favoured," until "for offices above prefect, wait until Feng Yu has come in, and then appoint." With government in the hands of those who pleased him and arms in the hands of kinsmen by marriage, the channels of counsel closed: when Sang Weihan argued that rewards to actors exceeding those to soldiers would "dissolve the soldiers' hearts," Shi Chonggui did not listen; when Li Song argued that "to bend oneself for the altars of state, what shame is there in it?" and opposed the dropping of vassalage, he did not follow him either.

Beyond appointments, the failure of reward and punishment further weakened the court's authority. Jing Yanguang, who at Qicheng "kept his troops back" and left the forward army encircled, was not called to account but instead enjoyed "power and favour the first of the reign"; Du Wei, long holding Hengzhou, enriching himself, and refusing to fight, sent memorial after memorial asking to come to court and was refused, and then "without waiting for a reply abandoned his command and came to court," at which the court "was shocked," yet could not bring him to justice, Sang Weihan twice asking that he be dismissed or given a small prefecture near the capital and being refused both times. When one laugh from an actor outweighed several lengths of silk for a gravely wounded soldier, and a commander who abandoned his post could enter the capital unpunished and be given a greater standard, the court's hold on its generals was nearly gone.

The fall of Later Jin cannot be laid to Shi Chonggui alone. Shi Jingtang had bought Khitan aid by ceding the sixteen prefectures north of Yanmen and professing vassalage and sonship, and from that moment the Central Plain had lost its northern shield — a structural debt. In Shi Chonggui's reign came locusts, drought, flood and famine year after year, with the dead lying in the fields, so that with taxes insufficient and army grain scarce the court could only take from the people by levy; the military provinces drifted away and frontier peoples rioted as the season served, and the garrison towns of the frontier all fell; and the Khitan, with You and Yun in hand, "grew stronger by the day, able in war to advance and to hold," while taking the Central Plain southward had been a wish since Yelu Abaoji. The choices open to Shi Chonggui in such a situation were few, and the ones he made were to drop vassalage and provoke a strong neighbour in words, and to give the command of his most vital army to the man least fit to hold it. Later writers blame him for rashness, for his choice of men, for hunting and extravagance in reward; they are pointing at one thing: a ruler of middling ability who, in a sinking state, gave its affairs to men unequal to them.

Personal Relations

• Shi Jingtang: adoptive father, Gaozu of Later Jin.
• Shi Jingru: biological father, died young.
• Lady An: biological mother.
• Empress Feng: empress.
• Shi Yanxu: eldest son.
• Shi Yanbao: second son.
• A daughter of the Shi family: forcibly married to Channu, elder brother of the wife of Emperor Shizong of Liao.
• Feng Dao: grand councilor who helped place Shi on the throne.
• Jing Yanguang: commander-in-chief of the imperial guards who advocated a hard line toward the Khitan and was later demoted and killed after Khitan pressure.
• Yelü Deguang: Khitan ruler who later demoted Shi to Marquis of Fuyi after the fall of Later Jin.
• Du Chongwei: Later Jin general who surrendered to the Khitan in the third year of Kaiyun.
• Li Shouzhen: Later Jin general who surrendered to the Khitan in the third year of Kaiyun.
• Zhang Yanze: Later Jin defector who led the Khitan vanguard into Kaifeng.
• Li Gu: prefect of Cizhou who supplied Shi's party during the northward journey.
• An Congjin: Military Commissioner of Shannan East Circuit, rebelled in the sixth year of Tianfu.
• Yang Guangyuan: Military Commissioner of Pinglu, assisted the Khitan invasion.
• An Chongrong: Military Commissioner of Chengde, harbored rebellious intentions.

Historical Assessment

Five Dynasties / Contemporary

• The Old History of the Five Dynasties describes Shi as “cautious and honest in youth” and as fond of riding and archery with the style of his ancestors, but gives a low assessment of his administrative reputation, noting that he had “not established popular standing” while at Bingzhou.
• After Shi surrendered, the defector Zhang Yanze merely smiled when Shi sought an audience and did not answer, displaying a mocking attitude that reflected the loss of awe surrounding the fallen emperor.
• During the northward journey, Li Gu wept with Shi and lamented that he, a subject, remained unharmed and had thereby failed his emperor, expressing both loyalty and grief over the dynasty's fall.

Song and Yuan Periods

• Ouyang Xiu's New History of the Five Dynasties criticized the legality of Shi's accession, holding that Feng Dao and others violated ritual and disregarded the deceased ruler's intent. It also harshly criticized Shi for concealing his biological parentage and presenting himself to the realm as a true son of Gaozu.
• Sima Guang's Comprehensive Mirror in Aid of Governance gives a detailed account of the debate over whether Shi should call himself both subject and grandson. It records Jing Yanguang's hard line and Li Song's pragmatic warning without an explicit verdict.
• Song historians generally held that the ultimate root of Later Jin's collapse lay in Shi Jingtang's cession of the Sixteen Prefectures, while Shi Chonggui's hard line toward the Khitan accelerated the process.

Ming and Qing Periods

• Wang Fuzhi, discussing the fall of Later Jin in Reflections on Reading the Comprehensive Mirror, argued that Shi Chonggui faced powerful northern enemies with a weak state and that failure was structurally likely, while also criticizing his poor choice of men and trust in commanders such as Du Chongwei.
• Qing historian Zhao Yi, in Notes on the Twenty-Two Histories, largely followed Song assessments of the rise and fall of Shatuo regimes in the Five Dynasties and viewed Shi as insufficiently aware of his own strength, courageous but lacking strategy.

Modern Period

• Modern assessments are more varied. Some scholars praise his refusal to continue vassal submission as an expression of political dignity, while others argue that the hard line lacked strategic calculation given the military imbalance and hastened the destruction of Later Jin.
• Research on his death changed after the Liaoning Provincial Museum acquired his epitaph in the 1970s. The inscription supports a death in 974, the sixth year of the Liao Baoning era, correcting the statement cited in the Old History of the Five Dynasties from Fan Zhi's Record of the Jin Court's Fall among the Foreigners that he died after eighteen years.
• As a representative fallen ruler of the Five Dynasties, Shi's experience is often used to discuss the complex relationship between Shatuo regimes and the Khitan and the dilemmas Central Plains dynasties faced in managing relations with neighboring peoples.