After these reverses the enfeebled Tsin rulers removed their capital to
Nankin, but this step alone would not have sufficed to prolong their
existence had not the Lin princes themselves suffered from the evils of
disunion and been compelled to remove their capital from Pingyang to
Singan. Here they changed their name from Han to Chow, but the work of
disintegration once begun proceeded rapidly, and in the course of a few
years the Lin power crumbled completely away. Released from their most
pressing danger by the fall of this family, the Tsin dynasty took a new
lease of life, but it was unable to derive any permanent advantage from
this fact. The last emperors of this family were weak and incompetent
princes, whose names need not be given outside a chronological table.
There would be nothing to say about them but that a humble individual
named Linyu, who owed everything to himself, found in the weakness of the
government and the confusion in the country the opportunity of
distinction. He proved himself a good soldier and able leader against the
successors of the Lin family on one side, and a formidable pirate named
Sunghen on the other. Dissatisfied with his position, Linyu murdered one
emperor and placed another on the throne, and in two years he compelled
his puppet, the last of the Later Tsins, to make a formal abdication in
his favor. For a considerable portion of their rule they governed the
whole of China, and it is absolutely true to say that they were the least
worthy family ever intrusted with so great a charge. Of the fifteen
emperors who ruled for one hundred and fifty-five years there is not more
than the founder whose name calls for preservation on his own merits.

Although Linyu's success was complete as far as it went, his dynasty, to
which he gave the name of Song, never possessed exclusive power among the
Chinese. It was only one administration among many others, and during his
brief reign of three years he could do nothing toward extending his power