bellicose at first and would not negotiate. There were therefore several
battles at the outset (in 1131 and 1134), in which the Chinese were
actually the more successful, but not decisively. The Sung military
group was faced as early as in 1131 with furious opposition from the
greater gentry, led by Ch'in K'ui, one of the largest landowners of all.
His estates were around Nanking, and so in the deployment region and the
region from which most of the soldiers had to be drawn for the defensive
struggle. Ch'in K'ui secured the assassination of the leader of the
military party, General Yo Fei, in 1141, and was able to conclude peace
with the Juchên. The Sung had to accept the status of vassals and to pay
annual tribute to the Juchên. This was the situation that best pleased
the greater gentry. They paid hardly any taxes (in many districts the
greater gentry directly owned more than 30 per cent of the land, in
addition to which they had indirect interests in the soil), and they
were now free from the war peril that ate into their revenues. The
tribute amounted only to 500,000 strings of cash. Popular literature,
however, to this day represents Ch'in K'ui as a traitor and Yo Fei as a
national hero.

In 1165 it was agreed between the Sung and the Juchên to regard each
other as states with equal rights. It is interesting to note here that
in the treaties during the Han time with the Hsiung-nu, the two
countries called one another brothers--with the Chinese ruler as the
older and thus privileged brother; but the treaties since the T'ang time
with northern powers and with Tibetans used the terms father-in-law and
son-in-law. The foreign power was the "father-in-law", i.e. the older
and, therefore, in a certain way the more privileged; the Chinese were
the "son-in-law", the representative of the paternal lineage and,
therefore, in another respect also the more privileged! In spite of such
agreements with the Juchên, fighting continued, but it was mainly of the