Emperor Qinzong

Zhao Huan (趙桓), known by his temple name Qinzong, was the ninth emperor of the Song Dynasty and the last of the Northern Song. He reigned for little more than a year under the era name Jingkang (靖康), from 1126 to 1127.

He was the eldest son and heir of the Huizong Emperor, and his mother was Huizong's first empress, Empress Wang.

Qinzong took the throne unwillingly, in the middle of a Jurchen invasion. His indecision in the months that followed contributed to the disaster known as the Jingkang Incident, in which the Song lost their capital and all of northern China, and he spent the rest of his life as a prisoner of the Jin.

Enthronement of Qinzong

Zhao Huan was born in 1100, the first son of Emperor Huizong, and was named crown prince in 1115, at about fifteen.

Ten years later, in the winter of 1125, the Jurchen Jin Dynasty invaded the Song and advanced rapidly on the capital.

Rather than face the crisis himself, Huizong abdicated early in 1126 and pressed the throne on his son. Zhao Huan accepted it with great reluctance, and his father left the capital for the south soon afterwards.

One of the new emperor's first acts was to dismiss and punish the ministers blamed for his father's disastrous policies, remembered as the "Six Villains", among them Cai Jing and the eunuch general Tong Guan.

The Jingkang Incident

The Jingkang Incident, named after Qinzong's era, is the name given to the Jin conquest of the Song capital, Bianjing (modern Kaifeng), during the Jin–Song wars of 1125 to 1127.

The First Siege of Bianjing

The Jin attacked in two armies. The western army besieged Taiyuan in Shanxi, while the eastern army swept south from the Yan region around modern Beijing, crossed the Yellow River early in 1126 and laid siege to Bianjing.

Qinzong gave command of the city's defence to the minister Li Gang, who held the walls. But the emperor wavered between resistance and negotiation, and he dismissed Li Gang in the hope of peace, recalling him only after protests in the capital.

The siege was lifted when the Song agreed to a huge indemnity in gold, silver and silk and promised to cede three strategic prefectures in the north: Taiyuan, Zhongshan and Hejian.

The Second Siege

Once the Jin armies had withdrawn, the court relaxed and Huizong returned to the capital. Some generals urged that strong forces be kept on the Yellow River, but the advice was not followed.

The Song failed to hand over the promised prefectures, and in the autumn of 1126 the Jin invaded again. Taiyuan fell after a long siege, the two Jin armies crossed the Yellow River and advanced on Bianjing, and the cities in their path gave little resistance.

The capital fell in January 1127. In the spring the Jin carried off Qinzong, his father Huizong, the empresses, thousands of members of the imperial clan and many officials of the court, together with the palace treasures and the imperial library.

One of Huizong's sons, Zhao Gou, escaped capture. He was proclaimed emperor later in 1127 and, as Emperor Gaozong, founded the Southern Song.

Emperor Qinzong in Captivity

In 1127 Qinzong and his father were reduced to the status of commoners and taken north. In 1128 they reached the Jin capital at Huining, where they were made to wear plain mourning clothes and pay homage at the ancestral temple of the Jin emperors.

The Jin emperor Taizong then gave them mocking titles. Huizong became "Duke of Muddled Virtue" (Hunde gong) and Qinzong "Marquis of Double Muddle" (Chonghun hou). The two were later moved further north-east, where Huizong died in 1135.

Qinzong outlived his father by two decades. He died in captivity in 1156, having spent almost thirty years as a prisoner; some Song accounts give the year of his death as 1161.

For collectors, the fall of Kaifeng marks a turning point. It ended the court patronage of northern kilns such as Ru, which had supplied Huizong's palace, and in the south the Southern Song set up new official kilns near Hangzhou. Our page on the Song Dynasty follows the story.