in the diplomatic game. Delegations were continually going from one to
another of the three realms, and they were joined by trade missions.
Agreement was soon reached on frontier questions, on armament, on
questions of demobilization, on the demilitarization of particular
regions, and so on, for the last thing anyone wanted was to fight.

Then came the rising of the tribes of the north. They had remained
military tribes; of all the wealth nothing reached them, and they were
given no military employment, so that they had no hope of improving
their position. The leadership was assumed by the tribe of the Juchên
(1114). In a campaign of unprecedented rapidity they captured Peking,
and the Liao dynasty was ended (1125), a year earlier, as we know, than
the end of the Sung.


2 _The State of the Kara-Kitai_

A small troop of Liao, under the command of a member of the ruling
family, fled into the west. They were pursued without cessation, but
they succeeded in fighting their way through. After a few years of
nomad life in the mountains of northern Turkestan, they were able to
gain the collaboration of a few more tribes, and with them they then
invaded western Turkestan. There they founded the "Western Liao" state,
or, as the western sources call it, the "Kara-Kitai" state, with its
capital at Balasagun. This state must not be regarded as a purely Kitan
state. The Kitan formed only a very thin stratum, and the real power was
in the hands of autochthonous Turkish tribes, to whom the Kitan soon
became entirely assimilated in culture. Thus the history of this state
belongs to that of western Asia, especially as the relations of the
Kara-Kitai with the Far East were entirely broken off. In 1211 the state