Yelü Longxu

Biography

Family Background and Early Years

Yelü Longxu was born in the twelfth month of 971, the eldest son of Emperor Jingzong Yelü Xian and Empress Ruizhi Xiao Chuo. From childhood he enjoyed calligraphy and could compose poetry at age ten. As an adult he was skilled in archery, understood music, and enjoyed painting. In 980 he was enfeoffed as Prince of Liang.

His Qidan name was Wenshunu, his native place the upper capital at Linhuang, in what is now Bairin Left Banner in Inner Mongolia, and he was the sixth emperor of Liao, reigning from 983, the first year of Tonghe, to 1031, the eleventh of Taiping. Of his birth and death two reckonings are given: born in the twelfth month of the third year of Baoning, that is 16 January 972, and dying in the sixth month of the eleventh year of Taiping, that is 25 June 1031, aged sixty. In the line of succession, from Taizu Yelu Abaoji through Taizong Deguang, Shizong Ruan, Muzong Jing and Jingzong Xian to Shengzong, only six emperors had reigned since the founding of Liao, and Shengzong alone reigned forty-nine years — longer than the reigns of all five before him together. This was at once the condition of his holding examinations, registering households and managing the frontier commands, and the reason later ages regarded his reign as Liao's most flourishing.

Yelu Longxu was born in the twelfth month of the third year of Baoning, that is 971, the eldest son of the Liao emperor Jingzong, Yelu Xian, his mother being the wise empress Xiao Chuo. He loved calligraphy from childhood and could compose poems at ten; growing up he mastered archery, understood music and delighted in painting, and in 980, the second year of Qianheng, he was enfeoffed as prince of Liang. On the twenty-fourth day of the ninth month of the fourth year of Qianheng, 13 October 982, Emperor Jingzong died; the next day Yelu Longxu took the throne before his father's coffin at the age of twelve. The empress Xiao Chuo took up the government under the late emperor's testament and issued edicts to the circuits; on the first day of the tenth month Yelu Longxu held his first court, and on the third the ministers offered him the honorific Sage Emperor, honored the empress as empress dowager, and proclaimed a general amnesty. From the death of Jingzong to the accession and the dowager's regency was no more than ten days, and the smoothness of the transition owed much to Xiao Chuo's having already taken part in affairs in Jingzong's reign and having men of her own.

Accession as a Minor and the Empress Dowager's Regency

Emperor Jingzong died on October 13, 982. The next day Yelü Longxu ascended the throne before his father's coffin at the age of twelve. Empress Xiao Chuo acted as regent under the late emperor's testament and issued proclamations throughout the circuits. On the first day of the tenth lunar month he first presided over court business; two days later officials presented him with the honorific Zhaosheng Emperor, honored the empress as empress dowager, and proclaimed a general amnesty.

In 983 he changed his honorific to Tianfu Emperor and restored the state name Great Liao to Great Khitan. The empress dowager received the honorific Chengtian. During her regency Xiao Chuo relied on capable ministers such as Yelü Xiezhen and Han Derang, regularized laws and institutions, promoted agriculture and sericulture, repaired waterworks, reduced taxes, reformed official administration, and trained the army. In the eighth month of the first Tonghe year, Yelü Longxu and Yelü Xiezhen exchanged bows, arrows, saddles, and horses before the empress dowager as a pledge of friendship and trust.

In 983, the first year of Tonghe, his honorific was changed to Heaven-Assisting Emperor and the dynastic name was restored from Great Liao to Great Qidan; in the same year the empress dowager received the honorific Empress Dowager Chengtian. During her regency Xiao Chuo employed able ministers such as Yelu Xiezhen and Han Derang, reformed the statutes, attended to farming and sericulture, repaired waterworks, reduced taxes, disciplined the officials and trained the army, so that Liao's strength grew. In the eighth month of 983 Yelu Longxu and Yelu Xiezhen exchanged bows, arrows and saddled horses before the empress dowager and swore friendship as a mark of reliance — for a prince to become the sworn friend of a subject was a common way of binding the Qidan nobility at the time, and it shows the young emperor's dependence on the families of military merit. This arrangement — the mother ruling, the young sovereign honoring his great ministers and employing Chinese officials — ran through the twenty-seven years before he took the government into his own hands, and both the response to the Song invasion of 986 and the treaty of Chanyuan belong to it.

In 986 Northern Song launched the Yongxi Northern Expedition in three columns. Yelü Longxu and Xiao Chuo jointly directed the response, with Yelü Xiuge and Yelü Xiezhen as commanders. Liao forces defeated the Song armies, recovered lost territory, and stabilized the southern frontier.

In 986, the fourth year of Tonghe, the Northern Song launched its invasion in three columns, the gravest test of Yelu Longxu's reign to that point. In the third month Yuye Xiuge reported that the Song had sent Cao Bin, Cui Yanjin and Mi Xin by the Xiongzhou road, Tian Zhongjin by the Feihu road and Pan Mei with Yang Ye by the Yanmen road, and that Qigou, Zhuozhou, Gu'an and Xincheng had all fallen. The court sent the commissioner Pu Ling at speed to the south of Yan to consult Xiuge on operations, dispatched envoys to levy troops of the tribes to reinforce him, and sent the keeper of the eastern capital, Yelu Mozhi, with the main army to follow, giving him a sword with power to execute; and proclamation was made to the tombs, temples, mountains and rivers that the emperor was taking the field in person. Though the Song gained ground for a time — the prefect of Huanzhou, Zhao Yanzhang, revolted and joined them, their troops entered Zhuozhou, and the deputy commissioner Zhao Xizan revolted at Shuozhou — the Liao response was consistently methodical: Qin De was ordered to guard the coast of Pingzhou against a landing, Yelu Xiezhen was made commander of the Shanxi forces with Pu Ling as commander of the southern expedition under Xiuge, and Mou Luggu was sent south with the elite of the imperial guards to help Xiuge. The Liao were at one point worsted at Feihu, where the defender of Jizhou, Da Pengyi, and others were taken, and the defections of Ai Zheng at Yingzhou, Lü Xingde at Feihu and Mu Chao at Lingqiu show that the Song advance did shake the loyalty of the southern garrisons.

In the fourth month Yelu Longxu and the empress dowager camped at Tuoluo mouth, and he led the ministers in congratulating her, sacrificing to heaven and earth with wine and dried meat; Xiuge and Pu Ling reported victories, Cao Bin and Mi Xin crossed north over the Juma river and drew up opposite Xiuge with camps six or seven li long, while the imperial camp lay only fifty li east of Zhuozhou. On the gengwu day of the fifth month the Liao army crushed Cao Bin and Mi Xin at Qigou pass and pursued them to the Juma river, where the drowned could not be counted; the remnant fled to Gaoyang and were struck again, tens of thousands dying and their arms and armor left "like hills"; many thousands of the Song transport workers hid in the empty walled town of Qigou and were besieged, and on the renshen day, the empress dowager's birthday, were all released. The Liao then recovered Zhuozhou and broke into Gu'an, where the commander Yelu Pode was first over the wall; in the sixth month they crossed the Juyong pass; and in the seventh Xiezhen reported the recovery of Shuozhou and the capture of the Song general Yang Ye. The annals record that Yang Ye, who prided himself on his valor and was known as Yang the Invincible, holding the several prefectures of Yun and Shuo in the north, marched south thirty li from Shuozhou to Wolf-Tooth village, disliked the name of the place and would not advance until his officers pressed him, whereupon Xiezhen's ambush rose on every side, and he was struck by a stray arrow, fell from his horse and was taken; his wound festered, he would not eat, and he died on the third day, his head being sent in a box to the court. From that time the Song commanders holding Yun and Ying heard of his death and abandoned their cities. The campaign not only recovered the lost ground and secured the southern frontier, but left Liao with the initiative against the Song for more than a decade.

The settlement of occupied areas and of people who came over after the Song invasion leaves many details in the annals. After the army returned in the first month of 989, an edict in the second month moved two hundred households of Jibi stockade to the prefectures of Tan, Shun and Ji, and another ordered that where captives taken in the southern campaign had kin distributed among the camps the government should pay to redeem them so that families might be reunited; in the third month grazing was forbidden where it would damage crops, the defenders of Yizhou were ordered to gather the bones of the fallen and raise a mound over them, and seventeen Song graduates who came over with their households were examined and appointed, those who placed to the state academy and the rest as assistant magistrates and commandants; in the fourth month arrears of tax in Yunzhou were remitted and the Qifeng road was opened for the Yizhou market; in the seventh month the soldiers and people of Yizhou were moved to Yanjing and eight hundred who had surrendered there were escorted home to their native places by the prefect of Zhuozhou; and in the twelfth month Song captives were settled in the newly walled town of Xingguo and Yizhou was established. In 990 Song prisoners of war were distributed among the armies and fields were registered; in 991 five hundred of them were formed into the Xuanli army, and in the same year the land tax of the three capitals and all the circuits was remitted and the registering of fields stopped — the formation of the corps and the ending of the registration coming in one year shows the court weighing the use of men against the disturbance of farming. These measures belong with the redemption of captives' families and the examination and employment of southern scholars: the men and scholars the war brought in were to be entered as quickly as possible into manageable prefectures and military registers.

Religion and state ceremony also hold a considerable place. In 986, for the victory over the Song, a month of Buddhist services was ordered at the Kailong monastery in the upper capital with a myriad monks fed; in 994, when the stone image of Jingzong was finished, the emperor visited the Yanshou monastery and fed the monks; in 995 the stone images of Jingzong and the empress dowager were installed at Yanfangdian; in 1014 the emperor again fed monks at the Yanshou monastery; and in 1027 the hanlin attendant Chen Sheng was ordered to paint the "Picture of the Victorious Southern Campaign" in the Wuluan hall of the upper capital. To celebrate victories by Buddhist services and to record ancestors and exploits in stone and painting was how Liao joined religious ceremony, ancestral sacrifice and military success. Against this stand the repeated restraints on the monastic order: private ordination forbidden in 991, excessive ordination in 997, the monks of the eastern capital reduced in 1014, and in 1029 monks forbidden to burn themselves or their fingers. Loosening and tightening together accord with the praise of him as one who curbed extravagance, and show that what is called superstition lay rather in large-scale endowment and ceremony than in any surrender of control over the sangha.

The Chanyuan Treaty and Liao-Song Peace

In 1004 Yelü Longxu and Xiao Chuo personally led a southern campaign deep into Song territory and reached Chanzhou, present-day Puyang in Henan. Emperor Zhenzong of Song, urged by war advocates including Kou Zhun, went to the front, and the two sides faced each other. They ultimately negotiated the Chanyuan Treaty: Song would annually deliver 100,000 taels of silver and 200,000 bolts of silk to Liao, and the two rulers recognized a fraternal relationship between the states. For more than a century afterward, no large-scale war broke out between Liao and Song, and the border remained comparatively peaceful.

The southern campaign of 1004 and the treaty of Chanyuan were the most enduring events of Yelu Longxu's reign. According to the annals, the army marched south in the intercalary ninth month, halted at Gu'an and shot the captured Song scouts with "ghost arrows," a Qidan rite of aversion performed on prisoners; on the bingyin day the Liao crushed the Song at Tangxing, on the dingmao day Xiao Talin beat them at Suicheng, and on the gengwu they camped at Wangdu. In the tenth month they failed to take Yingzhou but took Qizhou, rewarding the surrendered troops with wine and meat and sacrificing to heaven and earth. In the eleventh month the cavalry commander Yelu Keli met and drove back Song troops at Mingzhou; the keeper of the eastern capital, Xiao Paiya, took the Song officials of the Wei prefecture, Tian Fengji, Guo Shourong, Chang Xian and Liu Chao, and presented them; the southern prince Shanbu reported that the Song had sent Wang Jizhong bows and arrows and secretly asked for peace, and Wang Jizhong was ordered to meet the Song envoy and grant it; then Deqing army was stormed, and on the renshen day the emperor camped at Chanyuan, where Xiao Talin was killed by a crossbow from an ambush; on the yihai day Tongli army was stormed; and on the dingchou day the Song sent Cao Liyong, an assistant commissioner of the court of ceremonial, to sue for peace, whereupon the Liao sent the flying-dragon commissioner Han Qi with letters in return.

In the twelfth month the Song sent Cao Liyong again, and since they showed no intention of returning territory the Liao sent the general of the gate guard, Yao Jianzhi, with letters in reply; on the wuzi day the Song sent Li Jichang to ask for peace, offering to treat the empress dowager as an aunt and to send annually a hundred thousand taels of silver and two hundred thousand bolts of silk, which was granted, and the palace gate commissioner Ding Zhen was sent with letters in return; on the jichou day the armies were ordered to stand down and that month returned. The treaty was thus concluded: the Song were to send each year a hundred thousand taels of silver and two hundred thousand bolts of silk, and the two states were to be as brothers. Two threads led to it: in the field, the Liao had driven deep into Song territory and taken Deqing and Tongli, but had failed at Yingzhou and lost their commander Xiao Talin to a crossbow, so that their offensive was at its last strength; and behind the scenes the captured Song general Wang Jizhong served as intermediary, the secret request for peace and the gift of bows and arrows both passing through him. For more than a century afterwards no great war broke out between Liao and Song and the frontier was quiet; for Liao the gain was not only the annual payments but an external environment in which internal government could be pursued at leisure. In the same month the empress dowager granted the chancellor, the prince of Qi Han Dechang, the surname Yelu and moved his title to Jin — the extraordinary favor shown to Han Derang; and that year Li Kefeng and two others passed the examinations.

Personal Rule and Campaigns on Several Fronts

After Xiao Chuo died in 1009, Yelü Longxu began ruling personally. He largely continued her policies, opposed excessively harsh punishments, emphasized the selection of capable officials, promoted the imperial examination system, and employed Han Chinese literati. His armies repeatedly campaigned against the Ganzhou Uyghurs, Goryeo, and other powers, expanding Liao territory and influence. During the Kaitai era, Liao forces repeatedly invaded Goryeo and compelled King Hyeonjong to send envoys seeking peace and to acknowledge tributary subordination to Liao.

In the twelfth month of 1009, the twenty-seventh year of Tonghe, the empress dowager Chengtian, Xiao Chuo, died and Yelu Longxu took the government into his own hands. In the first month of the following year no congratulations were received because of the mourning; the coffin was placed in the mourning hall at Qianzhou; in the second month the Song sent Wang Sui and Wang Ru to condole and Koryo sent Wei Shouyu, while Liao sent the general Xiao Hezhuo to present the late dowager's effects to the Song and Xiao Xulie and Zhang Chongji to thank them for their condolences; in the third month her posthumous name was fixed as the sage, divine, proclaimed and offered empress, and both Song and Koryo sent envoys to the funeral; in the fourth month she was buried at Qianling, and the chancellor Yelu Dechang was given the name Longyun with a residence and a place at the tomb — Dechang being Han Derang, for whom the grant of surname, name, mansion and burial place was the utmost honor a Chinese minister ever received in Liao, and a sign that the empress dowager's trusted men still held the key posts after her death. From the third to the fifth month the northwestern commissioner Xiao Tuyu reported the campaign against the Ganzhou Uyghurs, the breaking of Xiaozhou and the capture of its whole population, and an order was made to repair the old town at Tuwelk to settle them; and in the fifth month, when the western capital of Koryo, Kang Zhao, murdered his sovereign Song and set up Song's cousin Xun in his place, the circuits were ordered to prepare armor for an eastern campaign. The two great matters at the start of his personal rule — the Ganzhou Uyghurs in the northwest and Koryo in the east — lay outside the Song-Liao relation, which accords with the absence of trouble in the south after Chanyuan.

In the eighth month of that year the emperor took the field in person against Koryo and sent word to the Song, leaving his younger brother, the prince of Chu, Longyou, in the capital, with the northern chancellor Xiao Paiya as commander and the northern linya Sengnu as supervisor; in the ninth month he sent envoys to invest Li Dezhao, prince of Xiping, as king of Xia, and sent Gao Zheng and Han Qi to question the king of Koryo, Wang Xun; in the tenth month the Jurchen sent ten thousand fine horses and asked to join the campaign, which was granted; Wang Xun sent a memorial asking that the army be withdrawn, which was refused. In the eleventh month the army crossed the Yalu; Kang Zhao resisted, was beaten and fell back on Tongzhou; coming out again, he was taken with his deputy Li Li by the right Pishi supervisor Yelu Dilu, who pursued them for tens of li and took their abandoned grain and armor; Tong, Huo, Gui and Ning submitted; Paiya reached Nuguda ridge, met the enemy and beat them; and Wang Xun sent a memorial asking to come to court, which was granted. The plundering of soldiers was then forbidden, Ma Baoyou was made keeper of Kaijing, and the grand tutor of the heir apparent, Yilin, was sent with a thousand cavalry to escort him there; but the Koryo commander Zhuo Sizheng killed the Liao envoys Han Xisun and nine others and came out in arms, so that Ma Baoyou returned to camp and Yilin was sent against him, whereupon Zhuo Sizheng fled to the western capital. The Liao besieged the city five days without success and camped west of it; a Koryo official, the Bohai Tuoshi, came over; and Paiya and Pennu were then sent against Kaijing, where they beat the Koryo troops, Wang Xun abandoned the city and fled, and the Liao burned Kaijing and pursued to the Qing river before returning. The campaign began as a punitive expedition and ended with the burning of the enemy capital, a brilliant result which nevertheless failed to bring real submission, as the revolt of the surrendered cities the next year shows.

After taking the government into his own hands Yelu Longxu took many measures concerning ritual and learning. In the third month of 1012, the first year of Kai Tai, he enfeoffed eight of his daughters as commandery princesses; in the same month he ordered divination for a day to perform the rites of worshiping the mountains and the great willow-shooting, appointing the northern chancellor, the consort Xiao Ning, prince of Lanling, and the privy councillor and minister of works Xing Baozhi to supervise the preparation of the instruments — mountain worship and willow-shooting being the most politically charged of Qidan customs, that the chancellors were set to manage them shows the court deliberately turning custom into state ceremony. In the fifth month Pei Xuangan and Xing Xiang were appointed to conduct the examinations of the ministry of rites, and nineteen men passed under Shi Jian. In the seventh month the graduates Kang Wenzhao, Zhang Suchen and Lang Xuanda were punished for discussing the alleged favoritism of the examiners Pei Xuangan and Xing Xiang, and Li Wan, a proofreader of the secretariat, was beaten and exiled for a memorial amounting to complaint. In the eighth month the Shili chief Nasha brought more than a hundred Wure households to Binzhou and was given silk; he asked for a Buddha image and Confucian books and was granted the image of the Guardian King and one copy each of the Changes, Odes, Documents, Spring and Autumn and Record of Rites — granting Buddhist scripture and the five classics together to a frontier tribe is a small emblem of Liao's policy of pacifying the frontier by Buddhism and transforming customs by Confucianism. In the eleventh month the civil and military officials added to his honorific the style of the cultured, martial, reverent, supremely virtuous, benevolent, filial, wise, sagely, spirit-aided, heaven-assisting emperor; a general amnesty was proclaimed, the era changed to Kai Tai, and the Youdu prefecture was renamed Xijin, the counties of Jibei and Youdu becoming Xijin and Wanping — names still borne by the region of Beijing. In the same month Zhang Tingmei of Liaozhou, whose household had lived six generations together, and Liu Xingyin of Yikunzhou, whose household had lived four together, were each exempted from taxes for three years, in the same spirit as the honoring of filial households in the first Tonghe years. In the twelfth month the stone images of the former emperors were moved to the Guan De hall of the central capital; an order was made that where flood-stricken people had sold their sons and daughters, from the first month of the next year their labor should be reckoned at ten cash a day and when the price was worked off they should be returned to their families; Guizhou reported that its people, moved from Silla, were unlettered and asked for a school, which was granted; seven prefectures began collecting commercial taxes by decree; and the garrisons were ordered to build halls for the public posting of edicts.

In 1013 eight new counties were created out of named rivers, valleys and settlements, and more than twenty-five thousand four hundred households registered by Han Bin in the Yan and other prefectures were settled in ten new counties — the joining point of his policy of registering households and that of encouraging farming. In 1018 the five northeastern tribes of Yuelidu, Pouali, Aolimi, Punuli and Tieli were ordered to send yearly tribute of sixty-five thousand sable skins and three hundred horses; the commissioner of the Wugu, Xiao Puda, destroyed the rebellious Dielie; famine in Chuan and Rao prefectures and poverty in the central capital were relieved; anonymous letters were forbidden; his son Zongzhen was made prince of Liang and more than ten of the imperial kinsmen were given posts from military commissioner down to defense commissioner; and Zhang Jian was made acting minister of works and chancellor. In ritual, examinations, counties, relief, prohibitions and the enfeoffment of kinsmen alike, the Kai Tai years show a court long in power and settling into system.

In 1021, the first year of Taiping, Yelu Longxu took a further honorific, changed the era name and settled the succession. In the first month the Song envoys came with congratulations; in the fourth month the keeper of the eastern capital reported that the chiefs of thirty Jurchen tribes asked to send their sons to the court as attendants, and they were ordered to come with their fathers to receive terms; and Laizhou was established. In the seventh month Gulii was sent to the central capital to fetch the jade seal the Later Jin had presented. In the tenth month he visited the Tongtian abbey to see the spectacle of fish and dragons in procession, went again the next day, and on returning mounted the jade carriage and entered the Wanshou hall through the inner gates, poured libations before the portraits of the seven emperors and feasted the imperial clan; in the eleventh month, at the Zhaoqing hall, the civil and military officials offered him the honorific of cultured, martial, way-revering, supremely virtuous, benevolent, filial, work-accomplishing, order-establishing, sagely, spirit-aided, heaven-assisting emperor, a general amnesty was proclaimed, the era changed to Taiping, officials were advanced in grade, the Song sent envoys to congratulate him and Xia and Koryo sent tribute; and on the same day his son Zongzhen, prince of Liang, was made heir apparent — Zongzhen having been born in 1015 and being now seven, the succession was fixed. In 1025 he went to the Huntong river in the first month; in the second the wearing of bright, twisted and threaded gold was forbidden throughout the empire, with imperial kinsmen to wear it only on memorializing for permission; Zhang Jian, the chancellor of the left, was made commissioner of the Wuding army and chancellor of the department of state affairs; in the eleventh month he feasted in the inner orchard with the people of the capital looking on, and in the same month sought out graduates and having obtained seventy-two, set them to compose poems and graded their skill, appointing Zhang Yu and thirteen others as collators for the heir apparent and Han Luan and fifty-eight others as collators of the Chongwen hall; and in the twelfth month, the harvest being good in Yan and the emperor having come among them, the people vied in bringing local produce, he honored the aged and relieved widowers and widows, gave them wine, and by night the six streets were bright as day with lamps while the townsfolk sported, and the emperor himself went out in disguise to see it — one of the few scenes of peace in the annals of the reign. In the twelfth month of 1026 another edict reformed officialdom: the northern and southern tribes were to inspect the officials of the prefectures and counties and of the shilie and mili and dismiss the incompetent; officials great or small who were rapacious and cruel to the people were to be dismissed at once and never employed again; the corrupt and dishonest were to be replaced even in high office; the clean and diligent were to be recommended even in low place; and kinsmen of the imperial house who took bribes were to be punished as commoners were. This last is the sharpest clause of his whole effort to discipline the officials.

The other face of the Taiping years was the loss of control in the northeast. In 1026 the northwestern commissioner Xiao Hui was sent against the Ganzhou Uyghurs, and in the eighth month he failed to take Ganzhou and returned; from that time the Zubu tribes all rebelled, and whenever the Liao fought them they were beaten, the supervisor Nieligu and the grandee of the dowager's clan Helu Bu dying in the field, so that Yelu Honggu and the linya Huage were sent against them. In the same year the Tangut tribe Tasi was placed under a Qidan commissioner; and when the Zubu invaded, Xiao Hui beat them. By the end of his reign the northwest and the northeast were both in trouble, which is what the Liao History means by the loss in Ganzhou in the west: long campaigning without a settlement left the frontier tribes' adherence a source of future weakness.

The care of the aged and the weak under Shengzong appears in a number of concrete entries. In 994 the annals record that Li Zaiyou of Bazhou, aged one hundred and thirty-three, was given bundles of silk, a brocade robe and a silver belt, with mutton and wine monthly, and his household exempted from taxes — a rare instance of honor to great age in the Liao record. In 1025, when the harvest in Yan was good and the emperor came among the people, he honored the aged and relieved widowers and widows, giving them wine to drink, and joined the people in their pleasure with the old and the solitary first provided for. There are also the grants of oxen to the poor households of the southern capital's army commission in 994, the order of 989 that livestock be issued to the poor of the frontier tribes, the granting of the Dowager of Concord's interest income to relieve the poor in 1013, and the encouragement in 997 of rich households of the Pin tribe to contribute money for the relief of the poor — showing that relief did not depend on state granaries alone but called on the imperial clan and the wealthy. All this accords with the praise that he relieved the poverty of the tribes and employed the sons of the fallen: in 990 the sons of officers killed against Koryo were taken into service, and in 1027 additional fiefs were granted to the wives of generals killed there.

The foreign relations of the reign may be followed along four lines. The relation with Song was the steadiest: after Chanyuan the embassies went with the annual festivals, as when in the first month of 1021 the Song sent Lu Zongdao and Chengji with congratulations, in 1025 the Song empress dowager sent Feng Yuanzong and Shi Fang for the Shuntian festival, and in 1027 the Song sent Lü Yijian and Cao Zhang for the Thousand-Year Festival — Lü Yijian afterwards becoming a famous chancellor under Renzong — while Liao sent envoys each year for the Song emperor's birthday and the New Year. Keyed to the festivals, the relation became predictable business. The line with Koryo was the most tortuous: in 1010, when the western capital of Koryo murdered its sovereign and set up Wang Xun, came the personal campaign, and the next year's withdrawal was followed by the revolt of the surrendered cities; in 1012 Koryo sent Cai Zhongshun asking to be a vassal as before, Wang Xun was summoned to come in person and pleaded illness, and the six prefectures were ordered retaken; in 1013 Yelu Zizhong was sent for them; in 1016 Yelu Shiliang and Xiao Qulie beat the Koryo west of Guozhou with tens of thousands of heads taken; in 1018 Xiao Paiya was defeated at the Cha and Tuo rivers; and only in 1020, when Yelu Zizhong returned and Wang Xun asked to be a vassal and send tribute and to return the Liao envoy Zhilali — who, the annals say, kept his loyalty unbroken for six years in Koryo and was made a linya for it — did the court pardon Wang Xun and grant his request. In 1029 envoys were sent with gifts to Wang Qin of Koryo; and the refusal of Koryo's gift of singing girls in 1005 is regularly cited with the praise in the annals as proof that he did not indulge in music and women.

The Tangut line was the most strategic: in 986 Li Jiqian, holding the Dingnan command, came to the frontier with five hundred riders offering marriage with a great state and perpetual service as a vassal, and a daughter of the prince's household was made princess Yicheng and given him with three thousand horses; in 991 envoys invested Li Jiqian as king of Xia; in 1012 Li Dezhao, prince of Xiping, was invested as king of Xia; in 1004 Li Dezhao sent envoys to thank him for the patent; and in 1026 envoys were sent to ask Xia why it had fought the Song in the fifth month. By marriage, by patents of kingship and by such inquiries Liao stood as overlord to the Tangut while using them to hold the Song in check, an arrangement fixed in this reign and lasting more than a century. Relations with remoter states also appear: in 1021 the king of the Arabs asked for marriage and a daughter of the prince's household, Kelao, was made a princess and given him; in 1029 the Arabs sent envoys with an elephant and local goods, asking a bride for his son Cega; and the Tibetan king Binglizun asked leave to pass through Xia when bringing tribute. In the north, an edict of 1028 fixed the Zubu tribute at seventeen hundred horses, four hundred and forty camels, ten thousand sable skins and twenty-five thousand squirrel skins a year, holding the steppe tribes by fixed quotas.

Later Years and Death

In his later years Yelü Longxu became increasingly devoted to Buddhism and extravagant, while Liao power began to decline. In 1029 Dayanlin rebelled in Liaodong. Although the rebellion was suppressed, it exposed internal tensions. Yelü Longxu died on June 25, 1031, at the traveling palace on the Dafu River, aged sixty. He received the posthumous name Emperor Wenwu Daxiao Xuan and the temple name Shengzong and was buried at Qingling, in present-day Bairin Right Banner, Inner Mongolia.

In the sixth month of 1031, the eleventh year of Taiping, Yelu Longxu died at the Dafu river travelling palace at the age of sixty, receiving the posthumous name of the cultured, martial, greatly filial and proclaimed emperor and the temple name Shengzong, and was buried in the Qing tomb, in what is now Bairin Right Banner in Inner Mongolia. From his accession in 982 to that year he reigned forty-nine years, longer than any other Liao emperor. The verdict of the Liao History's annals on him gives both his merit and his fault: that he came to the throne as a child with the government in his mother's hands; that when the Song attacked by two roads he took the field in armor himself, recovering Yan and Yun at a stroke and defeating Xin and Bin, and in a second campaign overran the lands of the Yellow river and Shuo, which was indeed great; but that once his thoughts turned to extravagance and to war, misfortune followed, with the defeat at the Cha and Tuo rivers in the east and the loss in Ganzhou in the west, the fault of one hardened by constant victory; and yet that in forty-nine years of rule he settled long-pending wrongs, promoted men of ability, checked greed and cruelty, curbed extravagance and usurpation, employed the sons of the fallen, relieved the poverty of the tribes, condemned those who merely flattered, and refused the gift of Koryo dancing girls — and that among the Liao emperors, for length of reign and lasting name, it is Shengzong alone.

These three levels in the verdict correspond to the three stages of his political life: the childhood accession with the government in his mother's hands; the defeat of the Song invasion and the treaty of Chanyuan, when he took the field himself and recovered Yan and Yun; and the years after, when his thoughts turned to extravagance and war, with the repeated campaigns against Koryo, the Ganzhou Uyghurs and the Zubu, in which victory and defeat alternated because he had been hardened by constant success. Modern scholars generally hold the reign to be the turning point at which Liao passed from strength to decline: powerful in its early years under Xiao Chuo's support, it lost ground in the last years through his devotion to Buddhism and his extravagance. As the annals show, he did restrain rather than indulge the Buddhist establishment — forbidding private ordination in 991, excessive ordination in 997, reducing the monks of the eastern capital in 1014 and forbidding monks to burn themselves or their fingers in 1029 — but the record is also full of temple building, feeding of monks and grants of monastic office, which accords with the judgment of superstition. Not long after his death Liao entered the reigns of Xingzong and Daozong with growing internal disorder and frontier trouble, so that the forty-nine settled years of his reign came to be seen as the dynasty's high point.

Major Activities

Political Reform and Institutional Development

During his reign Yelü Longxu carried out political reforms, including expansion of examinations modeled on Chinese institutions to recruit Han Chinese literati into government. He regularized law, opposed severe and indiscriminate punishments, repeatedly ordered officials to administer justice impartially rather than flatter superiors, provided relief during disasters, reduced taxation, and encouraged agriculture and sericulture.

The annals of the Liao give a detailed record of the first years of Tonghe, from which the priorities of the mother and son in government can be read. In the first month of 983, court was not held because of the late emperor's lying in state; then by the testament the late emperor's elder half-brother was recalled and re-enfeoffed as prince of Ning, favors were granted to the chancellor Shi Fang and others, Yuye Xiuge was made keeper of the southern capital with the seal of the southern camp command to direct frontier affairs, and when the prefect of Zhuozhou reported that the Song were building a walled town north of the river, Xiuge was ordered to harass them and prevent its completion; the southwestern commissioner Han Dewei reported that fifteen Tangut tribes had raided the border and had been beaten. In the second month Jingzong was buried at Qianling; officials, soldiers and people were forbidden to gather and talk privately without cause or to walk abroad at night against the prohibition, on pain of punishment; and the southern capital reported that the Song were gathering grain on the frontier, whereupon Xiuge was ordered to prepare carefully. In the third month the commissioner of Tianhe army, Tui La, and his son fell in battle and his younger brother took the title. In the fourth month the emperor visited the eastern capital and the ancestral temple of Taizu. In the fifth month the empress dowager's brother Xiao Daoning asked leave to perform ceremonies in his parents' house for her birthday. In the sixth month he led the ministers in offering the empress dowager the honorific Chengtian and the emperor the honorific Heaven-Assisting, proclaimed an amnesty and changed the era name to Tonghe, and advanced every civil and military official one grade. In the seventh month the empress dowager held court, the emperor personally reviewed prisoners, and in the eighth he went on a western progress, visiting the ancestral tombs while the dowager sacrificed at the tomb of Xiao Siwen, prince of Chu, and together they visited the Huai tomb; in the ninth month, because of drought and locusts in the eastern capital and Pingzhou, relief was ordered, and when the keeper of the southern capital reported that autumn rains had damaged the crops and asked that the pass duties be suspended so that trade in grain with Shanxi might flow, it was granted; the officials asked that the emperor's birthday be made the Thousand-Year Festival, and it was granted. In the eleventh month he ordered the officers of the three capitals and of every circuit and army to hold to the public standard and not to flatter, ordered the magistrates and their assistants not to yield when prefectural officers or court envoys made improper demands, and required constant inquiry to grade them; he provided that where parents were alive and sons had set up separate households, neighbors might report it and the offenders be punished, while those who served their parents filially and kept three generations under one roof should have their gates honored; and in the twelfth month he decreed that prisoners whose cases were closed but who had grievances might appeal to the censorate.

In the following year the dowager decided long-pending cases and reports came of victories over the Jurchen; in the fifth month the dowager judged cases to the end of the month, and in the eighth the keeper of the eastern capital reported that eight Jurchen clans asked to submit, which was granted. In 985 the privy council reported that the Qidan households liable for service were much impoverished and asked that rich households be substituted; the emperor, reviewing the registers of the tribes, found the Niela and Wukui tribes short of households and heavily burdened and remitted their service accordingly; in the sixth month he ordered the circuits to repair their armor for the eastern campaign against Koryo; in the eighth, because the marshes were sodden and the roads impassable, the campaign was given up and Yelu Xiezhen was made commander against the Jurchen; in the eleventh month Han Derang was given the chancellorship as well; and when in the intercalary ninth month Susha reported that the Shubugu tribes had come near the palace grounds and that some asked leave to take captives, the emperor said that those tribes had done the state no wrong and that to seize captives would merely make trouble, and refused. Three tendencies run through these entries: the defense of the frontiers against Song, Tangut and Jurchen came first; relief of burdens and clearing of long-pending cases recur constantly, in remissions of service, decisions of old suits, famine relief and suspension of duties; and officials were required to hold to the public standard, with the honoring of filial households used to promote morals. All three together are what is meant by reforming the statutes and attending to farming.

The settlement after the invasion shows the same method in the mother's and son's government. According to the annals, on the advice of Shi Fang and Han Derang the land tax of Shanxi for that year was remitted, and an order was issued grading the merit and fault of the Shanxi officers for reward and punishment: the chancellor of the Yishi camp, An Ning, being equal in merit and fault, had one patent of office withdrawn; the commissioner of Diju, Fonu, received fifty strokes; Yao Sheng and the commissioners of Shuozhou, Yingzhou, Yunzhou and Weizhou were deprived of office for having withdrawn on hearing of the enemy, one of them being sent back to his native place, and Wang Liu, commanding the empress dowager's clan troops, received fifty strokes; while Xiezhen was raised to acting grand guardian and his officers rewarded for their earlier victories over the Jurchen and their later success against the Song. In the ninth month the emperor took the empress Xiao. In the twelfth month Xiuge beat the Song at Wangdu; Yelu Longxu led the main army against the Song generals Liu Tingrang and Li Jingyuan at Mozhou and beat them, taking He Lingtu and Yang Zhongjin, and a mound of heads was raised; Xingzhou surrendered and Shenzhou was stormed. Meanwhile Li Jiqian, holding the Dingnan command, came to the frontier with five hundred riders offering marriage with a great state and perpetual service as a vassal, and the court gave him in marriage a daughter of the prince's household, Yelu Xiang, as princess Yicheng, with three thousand horses — a match that began the long friendship between Liao and the Tangut which Liao afterwards used to hold the Song in check.

The next year the army returned in the first month; in the second the emperor received the congratulations of the officials at the Yuanhe hall, envoys came with tribute from the Uyghurs, Khotan and Ceylon, the soldiers were feasted, and Han Derang was enfeoffed as prince of Chu; and an order was made that where captives taken in the southern campaign had relatives distributed among the camps, the government would pay to redeem them so that families might be reunited. In the third month seventeen Song graduates came over with their households, and the court had them examined, appointing those who placed to posts in the state academy and the rest as assistant magistrates and commandants — showing that Liao already had a workable method of employing Chinese civil officials according to their examination standing. In the fourth month the remonstrating official Ma Dechen, because the emperor was fond of ball games, memorialized in strong terms that there were three improprieties in it: that lord and minister taking opposite sides and contending for victory while the winner snatched the loser's stroke destroyed the order of superior and inferior; that in the crossing and interweaving of play, with the spirit of contention roused and all ritual forgotten, a careless swing might strike the imperial robe, so that the minister lost his deportment and the emperor could not reprove him; and that to slight the dignity of the ruler and pursue pleasure in an open field, where the ground though level was hard and the best horse might stumble, meant that an uncontrolled fall might injure the imperial person and alarm the empress dowager; and he begged the emperor to remember the weight of the succession and give up a dangerous sport. The memorial was received with great approval. In the sixth month the waste lands of Yanle and Miyun counties were opened to cultivation with ten years' exemption from tax. From the graded accounting of officers in the field to the redemption of captives' families, the examination and employment of southern scholars and the acceptance of a remonstrating official's criticism, the Liao court after the invasion showed an order that could actually function.

In justice and local government his reign left a notably dense record. First, the institutionalizing of inspections of prisons: in 991 Xing Baopu, Li Si, Liu Jing, Zhang Gan and Wu Hao were sent to decide long-pending cases in the circuits, and Ma Shouqi, Qi Zheng, Cui You and Cui Jian were sent after them; in 1013 the vice commissioner of the northern privy council, Gao Zheng, was sent to inspect the prisons of the circuits; and in 1018 Liu Jing, Wu Shuda, Qiu Zhengji, Cheng Zhu, Nan Chengyan and Wang Jingyun were sent by separate routes to inspect judicial matters. Together with the frequent entries on reviewing prisoners, deciding old cases and the prisons being empty, this shows the clearing of arrears to have become regular business. Second, pardon and redemption: in 994 the review of prisoners released all below the capital crime, and in 1012 an order provided for the redemption of flood victims sold into servitude. Third, taxes, service and registers: in 994 an equalized tax law was decreed; in 995 households that had been forced into clientship since the Yingli era were ordered re-registered in the prefectures and counties, and in the same year charity granaries were established; in 997 household registers were generally taken and arrears and granary loans of the southern capital remitted; and in 1013 twenty-five thousand registered households were settled in ten counties. Fourth, encouragement of farming and opening of waste: in 995 the circuits were ordered to encourage agriculture, in 997 to encourage tree planting, and land of the Pin tribe was opened to cultivation, with ten years' exemption for those who broke the waste at Luanzhou; and in 1018 relief was given to Chuan and Rao and to the poor of the central capital, with livestock issued to the poor of the frontier tribes. Fifth, prohibitions and the reform of manners: private ordination of monks and nuns was forbidden in 991 and the temples were forbidden to ordain beyond number in 997, the monks of the eastern capital were reduced in 1014, the remarriage of titled ladies forbidden in 1016, the wearing of bright, twisted and applied gold prohibited in 1018, and officials who, when caught taking bribes, blamed their sons or servants were expressly forbidden to do so.

Taken together, two features stand out: relief in substance — remissions of tax and service, famine relief, redemption of those sold, grants of oxen and waste land exempt from tax, in almost every year — and the disciplining of officialdom under the name of purifying government — inspections of prisons by separate routes, decisions of old cases, reviews of prisoners, punishment of unfair examiners, prohibition of shifting blame for bribery, and the requirement that approved business be entered in the daily record. These correspond broadly to what the Liao History praises in him: settling long-pending wrongs, promoting talent, checking greed and cruelty, curbing extravagance and usurpation, employing the sons of the fallen, relieving the poverty of the tribes and condemning the disloyal who merely flattered. Their limits should also be noted: the inspections and reviews were ad hoc commissions rather than a standing censorate; the examinations passed only a few men or a few dozen a year; and the treatment of the relocated Yujue, whose able-bodied men were killed, shows that the line between relieving the people and waging war was always drawn by the interests of the Qidan nobility and the safety of the frontier.

The creation of prefectures and counties, the adjustment of garrisons and the remissions of taxes were the daily business of local government under Shengzong, and the annals are unusually detailed. In establishment: in 991 the three walled towns of Weikou, Zhenhua and Laiyuan were built and garrisoned; in 994 the three Xi tribes of Aoli, Duokui and Meizhi were merged into one with two subdivisions re-divided to make up the six (a reform of the Xi tribal organization); in 995 Guangling county was established; in 1021 Laizhou; and in 1028 Xuande county in Yunzhou, the city of Haoli Taibao in the eastern circuit was made Xianzhou with a military commission, and Bohai households of Ningzhou were moved to the region between the Liao and Tu rivers; in 1013 eight counties were created at once out of valleys, fords and stockades. In garrison matters: in 995 the Longwei and Weisheng armies of Weizhou and Shuozhou were ordered to rotate their tours, in 994 the military inspectorate of the southern capital was restored, and in 1026 Huanglong prefecture asked to build three fortresses and ten beacon towers and was ordered to do the work in the agricultural slack season, so as not to hinder farming. In remissions: in 991 the land tax of the three capitals and all circuits was remitted and the registering of fields stopped; in 994 the tax on land within fifty li of the camp was remitted and Yizhou's levy cancelled; in 997 taxes on vagrants were remitted, the annual tribute of the five Xi tribes abolished and the fishing ban on the eastern circuit's lakes relaxed; and in 1004 the tribal congratulations on the Thousand-Year Festival, the winter solstice and the Double Fifth were abolished. Read together with the prohibition of vagrancy, the orders for prompt and for long-pending decisions in the southern capital's suits, these show the ordinary rhythm of his local government: measures devised as occasion required and adjusted at any time, under the name of remission and convenience, and limited by the farming seasons and the frontier.

Its limits are equally clear: these remissions were one-off edicts which seldom became fixed quotas open to long-term accounting, and matters like the inspection of prisons and the general registering of households were handled by ad hoc commissions without standing offices. What the reign left, therefore, was custom rather than statute. This corresponds to the politics of what followed: the abuses of the Xingzong and Daozong reigns were largely the result of such one-off favors and temporary commissions failing once a strong ruler was gone, and the verdict that among the Liao emperors for length of reign and lasting name it is Shengzong alone itself shows that later ages regarded his forty-nine years of quiet as a time not to be recovered.

Three things in the institutional legacy proved most lasting. First, the examinations became regular: two men passed in 989, nineteen in 1012, forty-eight in 1015, thirty-seven in 1018 and forty-five in 1020, and in the Taiping years seventy-two graduates were sought out and set to compose poems and graded — a marked expansion by which Chinese scholars entered the center, which Li Xihou holds gave important impetus to sinicization. Second, the dual administration, governing the Qidan by Qidan custom and the Chinese by Chinese institutions, reached maturity in his reign, with the northern offices handling the camps, tribes and military affairs and the southern offices the prefectures, taxes and learning, the emperor the pivot of both. Third, the local institutions of finance and justice — the equalized tax law, the charity granaries, the general registering of households, the inspections of prisons and the standard of empty gaols — though mostly devised case by case, became the ordinary means by which Liao governed its localities down to Daozong's time. Later judgment of him runs in two channels: the Liao History's praise, that among the Liao emperors for length of reign and lasting name it is Shengzong alone; Wang Qi's Continuation of the Comprehensive Examination of Documents in the Ming, that his reign was long and his achievements considerable; and Li E's gleanings in the Qing, that he was among the more effective rulers of Liao's middle period. Modern scholars stress rather the turning point: that the early years under Xiao Chuo were strong and the last years, through devotion to Buddhism and extravagance, saw the state decline, the rising of Da Yanlin in Liaodong exposing its internal strains.

Military Campaigns and the Chanyuan Treaty

The Liao repelled the Northern Song Yongxi Northern Expedition in 986, strengthening its southern defense. In 1004 Yelü Longxu and Xiao Chuo led a southern campaign and concluded the Chanyuan Treaty, establishing the long Liao-Song peace. Liao armies later campaigned repeatedly against the Ganzhou Uyghurs and Goryeo and expanded the dynasty's reach.

What the treaty produced appears in the record as a regularized exchange. After it, embassies between Song and Liao became fixed practice: each year the Song sent envoys to congratulate the Thousand-Year Festival, the emperor's birthday, and the New Year, and Liao sent envoys for the Song emperor's birthday and New Year, as in 1011 when the Song sent Wang Sui and Wang Ru to condole on the death of the empress dowager Chengtian, in 1012 when they sent Zhao Xiang and Fu Chenghan with congratulations, and when Liao appointed Yelu Shishennu and Li Cao as envoys for the Song emperor's birthday and Xiao Nieguna and Qi Tai for the New Year — entries that recur year by year in the annals. Beyond the seasonal embassies the two sides exchanged condolences, attended funerals and sent gifts of the dead's belongings, as when after the dowager's death Liao sent the general Xiao Hezhuo to present her effects to the Song and Xiao Xulie and Zhang Chongji to thank them for their condolences, while Song and Koryo both sent envoys to the funeral. This traffic, keyed to the annual festivals and to deaths, turned the relation between the two states into something predictable and institutional.

Within Liao the gain from peace lay in the room it gave to finance and internal government: the annual payments and the border markets let the court go on holding examinations, inspecting prisons, relieving famine and opening waste land through the Kai Tai and Taiping years; and after Chanyuan the main weight of Liao arms shifted to the northeast and northwest — the campaigns against the Jurchen tribes, the Wugu, Diliede, Zubu and Tangut, and the repeated wars with Koryo all fall after the treaty. Chanyuan, that is, was not the end of Liao's military activity but the point at which confrontation in the south gave way to management of the northern and eastern frontiers. This is what lies behind the verdict in the Liao History that once his thoughts turned to extravagance and to war, misfortune followed — in the east the defeat at the Cha and Tuo rivers, in the west the loss in Ganzhou: with no worry in the south, the state campaigned year after year in the northeast and northwest with mixed fortune.

In the first month of 1011 the army returned, and the cities that had submitted revolted again; at the steep valley south of Guizhou days of heavy rain left horses and camels exhausted and much armor abandoned, and the river could be crossed only when it cleared; at the Yalu the empress and the emperor's brother Longyou met him at Laiyuan city and the armies were dismissed. In the second month he visited the Qian and Xian tombs and distributed the captured Koryo people among the tomb temples, giving the rest to kinsmen and ministers. In the third month the chancellor, the prince of Jin, Yelu Longyun, died and was given the directorship of the secretariat and the posthumous name Wenzhong — the death of Han Derang marked the end of the inner circle that had governed with the empress dowager, and thereafter the great offices changed hands much faster, Yelu Shilu, Huage, Liu Shenxing, Xing Baozhi and Xiao Hezhuo following one another. Two decrees of the same year deserve note: that matters already approved should be sent to the office concerned and entered in the daily record, so that government business should not go unrecorded; and that princes of the imperial camps convicted of crime should be tattooed as commoners of the tribes were, abolishing the penal privilege of the camp nobility. In the imperial examination of that year Gao Chengyan and one other passed.

Through the Kai Tai years, 1012 to 1021, the war with Koryo went on alongside domestic reform. In 1012 Koryo sent Cai Zhongshun asking to be a vassal as before, and Wang Xun was summoned to come in person; he pleaded illness, and the six prefectures were ordered retaken. In the same year nineteen men passed the examinations under Shi Jian, the rites of mountain worship and great willow-shooting were performed, and eight imperial daughters were made commandery princesses. In 1013 Yelu Zizhong was sent to Koryo for the six prefectures, twenty-five thousand four hundred households from the Yan and other prefectures were settled in ten new counties, and the revolt of the Wugu and Dilie was put down by Yanshou. In 1014 Liu Sheng was made commander, Yelu Shiliang his deputy and Xiao Qulie supervisor for the campaign against Koryo, the monks of the eastern capital were reduced in number, and fifty-five thousand picked troops were ordered from the upper and central capitals for the eastern campaign. In 1015 the campaign was carried out and Xiao Dielie returned from Koryo; Yelu Shiliang defeated the Wugu and then the Diliede — and here the record notes that when the Yujue were pacified and the court proposed to move them inland, they clung to their homes and rebelled, so that Shiliang, having broken the Diliede, killed all their able-bodied men, crossed the Hela river against the remnant, and through careless scouting had his camp surprised in thick forest by their chief Bogua; falling back and forming up by the river bend, he was raided again that night, and though his rearguard came up the next day and Bogua led the Yujue away in flight, Shiliang failed to attack him promptly at the defile and Bogua escaped with light cavalry, leaving only his baggage and the tribesmen he had enticed, who were moved with the Xiamaili people to a walled town on the Luqu river. In 1016 Yelu Shiliang and Xiao Qulie beat the Koryo at the west of Guozhou, taking tens of thousands of heads and all their baggage, and Shiliang died in the camp; in the same year the emperor's son Zongzhen was born. In 1017 Xiao Hezhuo failed to take Koryo's Xinghua army and returned. In 1018 Xiao Paiya was made commander, Xiao Xulie his deputy and Yelu Bage supervisor against Koryo, and at the Cha and Tuo rivers the Liao were defeated, with heavy losses by drowning in the Tianyun and right Pishi armies and the deaths of the supervisors Agoda, Zhuogu, Gao Qingming of the Bohai and Haili of the Tianyun army.

The rebellion of Da Yanlin in Liaodong in 1029 was the greatest internal disturbance of the reign, and both its causes and its course are recorded in detail. In the eighth month the supervisor of the eastern capital's Shili army, Da Yanlin, imprisoned the keeper of the capital, the consort Xiao Xiaoxian, and the princess of Nanyang, killed the revenue commissioner Han Shaoxun, his deputy Wang Jia and the commander of the fourth swift army Xiao Pode, and then usurped the throne, calling his state Xing Liao and his era Tianqing. As the annals give the causes: the lands of eastern Liao had since their submission under Shence had no tax on wine, salt and yeast, and the duties of the markets were very light; but Feng Yanxiu and Han Shaoxun in succession applied the severe methods of Pingshan in Yan to them, so that the people could not bear it; and Yan having suffered famine year after year, the revenue vice commissioner Wang Jia proposed building boats and having those of the people who knew the sea carry grain to relieve Yan, but the waterways were so perilous that many were lost, their words were not believed, and they were flogged and tortured, so that resentment bred disorder and Da Yanlin, seizing the moment, killed Han Shaoxun and Wang Jia first to please the crowd. Before the rising Da Yanlin had plotted with the vice keeper Wang Daoping, who abandoned his household by night, climbed over the wall and fled, reaching the imperial camp with the man sent to summon Huang Pian from Huanglong to report the plot, whereupon the court levied troops from all circuits against them.

Xiao Pidi, supervisor of the dowager's clan, being stationed near Da Yanlin, first moved his own troops and household retainers to hold the vital points and cut off any westward crossing; and the Bohai grand guardian Xia Xingmei, who commanded troops at Baozhou, received a secret letter from Da Yanlin to turn on his commander Yelu Pugu, but told him the truth, so that Pugu killed eight hundred Bohai soldiers and cut his eastern road. Da Yanlin, knowing that Huanglong and Baozhou would not join him, sent troops west against Shenzhou; its commissioner Xiao Wangliu had just arrived and his deputy Zhang Jie declared his intention to surrender, so that the attack was not pressed, and when the deception was discovered the city was already prepared and the assault failed. At that time the northern and southern Jurchen both followed Da Yanlin and Koryo delayed its tribute. In the tenth month the court made the keeper of the southern capital, the prince of Yan Xiao Xiaomu, commander, with Xiao Pidi as his deputy and the grand chief of the six Xi tribes Xiao Punu as supervisor, against him; in the eleventh month Zhang Jie was made commissioner of Shenzhou, and twenty-two men of the Bohai capital, Zhang Renji and Zhao Mu among them, came to court, were examined in poetry and prose, all granted degrees, and the defender of Baozhou, Xia Xingmei, promoted out of course to chancellor — with the war still on, the court still courted the Bohai literati by examination. In the third month of 1030 Xiao Pidi returned from Liaodong and reported that Xiao Xiaomu was building walled posts about five li from the city on every side to invest Da Yanlin; the consort Yanning and his brother-in-law dug their way out, only the princess Cui Ba being discovered by the guards. On the twenty-fifth day of the eighth month the rebel officer of the eastern capital, Yang Xiangshi, secretly went over and opened a gate by night to let the Liao army in, and Da Yanlin was taken alive, ending the Bohai rising. The rebellion was put down within a year, yet it exposed the strains within Liao: the taxes on wine and salt in the eastern capital circuit had turned from laxity to exaction, and with the burden of grain transport the old grievances of the Bohai were kindled, nor did the government of the circuit afterwards return to what it had been before Shence.

Frontier trade and the border markets were the economically most significant part of Liao-Song relations after Chanyuan. In the second month of 989 the keeper of the southern capital reported that autumn rains had damaged the crops and asked that the pass duties be suspended so that trade in grain with Shanxi might flow, which was granted; in the fourth month the Qifeng road was opened for the Yizhou market; and in 997 the separate Tuyuhun tribes were forbidden to sell horses to the Song — the horse trade being a point both sides contested. What these entries have in common is the treatment of the border passes as adjustable instruments: opened in famine, closed against espionage and against supplying an enemy. With this went the pursuit of spies: in 983 Yingzhou reported the capture of Song agents who said the Song were clearing a road at Mount Wutai to enter the Lingqiu district, and the agents and those who had harbored them were executed in the market; in the intercalary ninth month of 1004 captured agents were shot with ghost arrows; and in the same month the consort Xiao Jiyuan, the linya Mou Luggu and the grand commandant Lin Ba were ordered to hold the frontier strictly and let no spies through. Open passes and hunted spies together show that the peace after the treaty was a managed peace: envoys, merchants and markets moving without cease, while frontier defense and counter-espionage were never relaxed.

This peace with vigilance also explains where the resources came from for the great campaigns of the later reign: the annual payments and the market revenues, with the household registrations and equalized taxes, supported the campaigns from Kai Tai to Taiping against Koryo, the Wugu, the Diliede, the Zubu and the Ganzhou Uyghurs. Stability in the south and war in the northeast and northwest were, that is, two ends of one arrangement of finance and personnel; and when the northeast, with the rising of Da Yanlin, and the northwest, with the failure at Ganzhou and the revolt of all the Zubu, became pressing at the same time, the strength of the reign had come to the end of its forty-nine quiet years.

Travels

Yelü Longxu made frequent imperial tours. In 983 he traveled west and visited the ancestral tombs and Huailing; in 984 he went to Changluo; in 985 he traveled east, visited the Ningshen Hall at Xianzhou, and inspected a new palace at Qianzhou. In his later years he stayed at the Dafu River traveling palace, where he eventually died.

His progresses and his building of capitals are an easily overlooked side of the reign. The annals record him in the upper, central, southern and eastern capitals and at the seasonal camps: in the eighth month of 983 on a western progress visiting the ancestral tombs and, with the empress dowager, the Huai tomb and Huaizhou; in 984 at Changluo in spring and the Yanliu lake in summer; in 985 east to Xianzhou, where he visited the Ning Shen hall, and to Qianzhou to see the new palace, then the Qian tomb and westward; and thereafter year after year the entries "went to Changluo," "took the summer heat at Tanshan," "camped at the Tu river," "went to Yanfangdian," "visited the Changchun palace," "went to Yuanyang lake," "went to the Huntong river," "took the summer heat at Yong'an mountain," until in his last years he camped at the Dafu river travelling palace and died there. This seasonal movement is the Qidan institution of the naibao, and his reign ran it alongside a Chinese-style system of capitals: he governed from the upper capital at Linhuang and, from about 997, made the central capital at Dading his frequent seat, seeing the spectacle at the Tongtian abbey in 1021, naming two new halls of the central capital Yanqing and Yong'an in 1027, building Jingzong's temple there in 1028, ordering in 1029 that Taizu's temple be built at the central capital with its regulations and sacrificial vessels following the ancient system, and moving the stone images of the former emperors to the Guan De hall there — so that the palaces and ancestral temples of the central capital took shape and were built "after the ancient system" within his reign.

This double arrangement of seasonal camp and five capitals is the spatial expression of the northern and southern offices by which Liao governed the Qidan by Qidan custom and the Chinese by Chinese institutions: the emperor's tents, moving with grass and water, dealt with Qidan and tribal affairs, while the Chinese-style offices in the capitals managed the prefectures, counties and taxes. In his reign the examinations became regular, and Chinese ministers such as Zhang Jian, Xing Baopu, Liu Jing and Ma Dechen long held the privy council, the assistant administration and the Hanlin; Han Kuangsi and his son Han Derang, as at once consort kin and Chinese ministers, rose to grand chancellorship — all marks of a mature dual administration. The modern scholar Li Xihou notes that Shengzong's promotion of the examinations and reform of institutions gave important impetus to the sinicization of Liao.

Relations with Contemporaries

In 983 Yelü Longxu pledged friendship with Yelü Xiezhen and relied heavily on him. He also employed Han Derang as a leading minister in government. Through the Chanyuan Treaty he established a fraternal interstate relationship with Emperor Zhenzong, Zhao Heng, of Northern Song; the two courts thereafter exchanged envoys and maintained long-term peace.

The ministers of the reign were the key to its government. Han Derang, given the surname Yelu and the name Longyun, was the most singular of them: at once consort kin and Chinese minister he rose to grand chancellor, was made prince of Chu in 1004 and later prince of Jin, received in 1010 a mansion and a place at the imperial tomb, had his private town made a prefecture, and at his death was given the directorship of the secretariat and the posthumous name Wenzhong — the only Chinese minister in Liao to receive such honor. Yelu Xiezhen stands for the Qidan commanders: in 983 he exchanged bows, arrows and saddled horses with the emperor before the empress dowager and swore friendship, in 986 he commanded all the armies and took the Song general Yang Ye, and was afterwards made acting grand guardian. Yuye Xiuge long directed the frontier south of Yan and was made prince of Song for his services in 986. Of the Chinese ministers in office, Shi Fang was privy councillor and chancellor, presented the Veritable Records and ended as keeper of the upper capital with the title of venerable father; Xing Baopu was assistant administrator, was recalled to office after mourning his mother, and repeatedly decided long-pending cases and conducted examinations; Ma Dechen is remembered for his remonstrance against ball games and was posthumously made junior guardian with a hundred thousand cash and a hundred piculs of grain; Zhang Jian rose through the chancellorship of the left and the northern privy council to be the foremost minister of the Taiping years. Xiao Paiya stands for the Qidan generals, his name attached both to the defeat at the Cha and Tuo rivers and to the investment of Da Yanlin.

Personal Relations

• Father: Emperor Jingzong of Liao, Yelü Xian
• Mother: Empress Dowager Chengtian, Xiao Chuo
• Empress: Xiao Pusage, Empress Rende, daughter of Xiao Weiyin, Xiao Chuo's younger brother
• Yuanfei: Xiao Noujin, Empress Qin'ai, mother of Emperor Xingzong Yelü Zongzhen
• Eldest son: Emperor Xingzong of Liao, Yelü Zongzhen
• Sons: Yelü Zongyuan, Yelü Zongjian, Yelü Zongxun, Yelü Zongwei, Yelü Zongyuan, and others
• Daughters: Yelü Yange, Yelü Yanmu, Yelü Shuogu, and others, fourteen in all
• Yelü Xiezhen: pledged friendship in 983 and served as a trusted senior commander
• Han Derang: heavily employed in government and appointed to high office
• Emperor Zhenzong of Song, Zhao Heng: the Chanyuan Treaty defined the two rulers as brothers
• King Hyeonjong of Goryeo, Wang Sun: sent tribute and acknowledged subordination
• Dayanlin: rebelled in Liaodong in 1029

Historical Assessment

Liao / Contemporary

The *History of Liao* praised Shengzong for succeeding as a child under his mother's regency, defeating the Song invasions, rectifying miscarriages of justice, promoting capable men, investigating corrupt officials, restraining extravagance, aiding the poor among the tribes, and punishing sycophancy. It also criticized his later appetite for warfare and reverses in the east and west, attributing them to overconfidence born of repeated victory, while concluding that among the long-reigning Liao emperors his reputation was especially enduring.

Song and Yuan Periods

The Yuan-commissioned *History of Liao* likewise regarded Shengzong as outstanding among the long-reigning Liao emperors. Song historical writings recorded the Chanyuan settlement extensively and treated the Liao of his reign as a powerful state that maintained a long peace with Song.

Ming and Qing Periods

Ming scholar Wang Qi, in *Xu Wenxian Tongkao*, regarded Shengzong's long reign as containing substantial achievements. Qing scholar Li E, in *Liaoshi Shiyi*, cited earlier assessments that treated Shengzong as one of the more effective rulers of the middle Liao period.

Modern and Contemporary

Modern scholarship commonly treats Shengzong's reign as both the height of Liao power and the beginning of a turn toward decline: the state was strong in the earlier period under Xiao Chuo's guidance, while late-reign Buddhist devotion and extravagance contributed to weakening. Li Xihou has emphasized the importance of examinations and institutional reform under Shengzong in the process of Liao sinicization.