Emperor Gaozong

Emperor Gaozong, whose personal name was Zhao Gou (趙構), was born in 1107 and died in 1187. He was the tenth emperor of the Song dynasty and the first of the Southern Song, reigning from 1127 to 1162 under the era names Jianyan (1127–1130) and Shaoxing (1131–1162).

A son of the Huizong Emperor, he was the only prince to escape when the Jurchen Jin took the capital, Kaifeng, in 1127. He rebuilt the dynasty south of the Huai River, bought a lasting peace with the Jin at the price of the north, and settled his court at Lin'an, modern Hangzhou. He was also one of the finest calligraphers to occupy the throne, and his court founded the official Guan kilns, makers of some of the most admired ceramics of the Song.

The Fall of Kaifeng and a New Emperor

Zhao Gou was the ninth son of Huizong, by a lesser consort, Lady Wei, and held the title Prince of Kang. When the Jin first besieged Kaifeng early in 1126 he was sent to their camp as a hostage during the peace talks. Late that year he was sent north again on a mission to the Jin, and he was away from the capital when it fell in January 1127. His father, his half-brother Emperor Qinzong and thousands of the imperial clan were carried off into captivity.

The Jin did not try to rule the conquered capital directly. They set up a client state called Da Chu, with the former Song chancellor Zhang Bangchang as its emperor. It lasted only about a month. Once the Jin armies had withdrawn, Zhang gave up the title and brought forward Empress Meng, the deposed empress of Emperor Zhezong, who had escaped capture because she no longer lived in the palace. She acted briefly as regent and gave her backing to Zhao Gou, who was enthroned at Yingtian, modern Shangqiu in Henan, in the summer of 1127.

Zhang Bangchang submitted to the new emperor but was soon banished and made to take his own life. The Jin treated the end of their client state as a reason to renew the war. Between 1127 and 1129 the Song sent thirteen embassies to the Jin to seek peace and the release of Huizong and of Gaozong's mother, and the Jin court ignored them all.

Years of Flight, 1127–1132

Gaozong made no serious attempt to recover Kaifeng. The general Zong Ze held the old capital for the Song and repeatedly urged the emperor to return, but Gaozong never did, and Zong Ze died there in 1128. Later historians often criticised Gaozong for putting the survival of his court before the rescue of his family and the north.

Late in 1127 the court moved to Yangzhou. Early in 1129 a Jin raid on the city forced Gaozong to flee across the Yangtze, and that spring two officers of his guard, Miao Fu and Liu Zhengyan, mutinied at Hangzhou and forced him to abdicate in favour of his infant son. Loyal generals restored him within about a month.

At the end of 1129 the Jin general Wuzhu crossed the Yangtze, and Gaozong escaped only by taking to the sea off the Zhejiang coast. Wuzhu withdrew in 1130, and on his way north the general Han Shizhong trapped his fleet on the Yangtze for more than a month. The same year the Jin set up a second client state, Qi, under the former Song official Liu Yu, to rule the lands between the Yellow River and the Huai. From 1132 the court was based at Hangzhou, renamed Lin'an in 1129, and in 1138 the city was named the capital, officially only a temporary residence until the north was recovered.

Yue Fei and the Treaty of Shaoxing

Through the 1130s the Song armies grew stronger under generals such as Yue Fei, Han Shizhong and Wu Jie. Yue Fei recovered Xiangyang in 1134, and in 1140 he defeated Wuzhu at Yancheng and advanced towards Kaifeng. Gaozong, guided by his chancellor Qin Hui, chose peace instead. Yue Fei was recalled, imprisoned on charges now regarded as false and put to death early in 1142.

Traditional historians argued that Gaozong and Qin Hui did not want a full victory, because it might have brought Qinzong, still a captive of the Jin, back to claim the throne. The interpretation is still debated.

The Treaty of Shaoxing, which took effect in 1142, recognised the Jin conquests and fixed the border along the Huai River. The Song emperor accepted the status of a vassal of the Jin and agreed to send 250,000 taels of silver and 250,000 bolts of silk every year. In return the Jin sent back the coffin of Huizong, who had died in captivity in 1135, and released Gaozong's mother, Empress Dowager Wei.

Lin'an and the Southern Song Economy

Peace allowed the south to prosper. With the northern plains lost, the state relied on the rice lands of the Yangtze delta and on trade. War had drained the treasury, and Gaozong encouraged shipbuilding and overseas commerce through ports such as Guangzhou and Quanzhou. He is recorded as remarking that the profits of maritime trade, properly managed, could run to millions, and were a better source of revenue than taxing the people.

Lin'an grew into a great city of palaces, markets and gardens around the West Lake. Gaozong's own calligraphy was a model for the court. He wrote out the Confucian classics in his own hand, and the texts were carved on stone for the Imperial Academy; many of the stones survive in Hangzhou. One of his surviving works of calligraphy is the Quatrain on Heavenly Mountain.

The Invasion of 1161 and Abdication

The peace held for almost twenty years. In 1161 the Jin ruler Wanyan Liang, remembered as the Prince of Hailing, broke the treaty and invaded with a very large army. At Caishi on the Yangtze, late in 1161, the official Yu Yunwen rallied the Song troops, and the Song fleet, with its paddle-wheel warships and gunpowder weapons, beat back the crossing. Wanyan Liang was murdered by his own officers soon afterwards, and the invasion collapsed.

In the summer of 1162 Gaozong abdicated, saying he was weary of government. His only son, Zhao Fu, had died in 1129 at the age of two, and he had brought up Zhao Shen, a distant kinsman descended from the founder, Emperor Taizu, as his heir. Zhao Shen took the throne as Emperor Xiaozong.

Gaozong took the title Taishang Huang, retired emperor, and lived for twenty-five more years in the Deshou Palace in Lin'an, keeping considerable influence over his successor. He died in 1187 at the age of eighty.

The Guan Kilns of the Southern Song Court

For collectors, the most lasting legacy of Gaozong's reign is Guan ware, the official ware made for his court. The loss of the north had cut the palace off from the kilns that had supplied it, among them the Ru kilns of Henan. According to Southern Song writers, an official kiln was set up at Lin'an under the palace works office, the Xiuneisi, following the practice of the old capital, and a second was later built below the altar used for the state sacrifices to Heaven, the site known as Jiaotanxia.

Both kilns are now thought to have been found. Jiaotanxia was excavated in the 1980s, and a museum of Southern Song Guan ware now stands on the site. A second kiln at Laohudong, close to the old palace, came to light in 1996 and is generally identified with the Xiuneisi kiln.

Guan ware has a thin body, dark grey to almost black, under a thick glaze laid on in several coats, in tones from bluish grey to pale green and creamy beige. The glaze is usually crackled. Where it thins at the rim the dark body shows through, and the bare foot fired dark, a combination known as "purple mouth and iron foot". Many shapes copy ancient bronzes and jades, in keeping with the antiquarian taste of the court.

Ru ware was still treasured at Gaozong's court. A list preserved by the Song writer Zhou Mi records sixteen pieces of Ru ware among the gifts presented to the emperor in 1151, when he visited the house of his general Zhang Jun.

Song wares carry no reign marks, so no piece can be tied to Gaozong by an inscription, and genuine Southern Song Guan ware is very rarely found outside museums. Our guide to the five great kilns of the Song compares Guan with Ru, Ge, Jun and Ding. The Longquan celadons of the same period, some made in the Guan manner, are much more often seen, and Song celadons are represented in our Song dynasty porcelain collection.