The Reign Of Oukimai Marks The Pinnacle Of
Kin Power, Which Under His Cousin And Successor Hola Began Steadily To
Decline.
The possession of Honan formed the principal bone of contention between
the Kins and Sungs, but after considerable negotiation and some fighting,
Kaotsong agreed to leave it in the hands of the Kins, and also to pay them
a large annual subsidy in silk and money.
He also agreed to hold the
remainder of his states as a gift at the hands of his northern neighbor.
Thus, notwithstanding the very considerable successes gained by several of
the Sung generals, Kaotsong had to undergo the mortification of signing a
humiliating peace and retaining his authority only on sufferance.
Fortunately for the independence of the Sungs, Hola was murdered by
Ticounai, a grandson of Akouta, whose ferocious character and ill-formed
projects for the subjugation of the whole of China furnished the Emperor
Kaotsong with the opportunity of shaking off the control asserted over his
actions and recovering his dignity. The extensive preparations of the Kin
government for war warned the Sungs to lose no time in placing every man
they could in the field, and when Ticounai rushed into the war, which was
all of his own making, he found that the Sungs were quite ready to receive
him and offer a strenuous resistance to his attack. A peace of twenty
years' duration had allowed of their organizing their forces and
recovering from an unreasoning terror of the Kins. Moreover, there was a
very general feeling among the inhabitants of both the north and the south
that the war was an unjust one, and that Ticounai had embarked upon a
course of lawless aggression which his tyrannical and cruel proceedings
toward his own subjects served to inflame.
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