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The Turks were the first of the nomad organizations who made their power felt throughout the civilized world. On the eastern steppes other tribes came into prominence. The Khitans were supreme in this region from 900 to 1100 A.D., and made serious inroads into China.
For two and a half centuries the Khitans, under the style of the Liao or Iron dynasty, maintained their position by the use of the sword, and then succumbing to the sapping influence of Chinese civilisation, they in turn were unable to resist a second Manchu-Mongol horde, the Kins.
The Golden Tatars responded to the invitation by not only expelling the Khitans but also taking their place in Manchuria and subsequently overrunning China, where they established a dynasty of their own from 1115 to 1234. These struggles and dynastic changes did not sensibly affect Japan.
Among other fallacies, Hoeitsong cherished the belief that he was a great soldier, and he aspired to rank as the conqueror of the old successful enemy of China, the Khitans of Leaoutung.
But defeats at the hands of the Khitans and Tibetans imbittered his life and diminished his authority. A soldier of fortune named Ganlochan revolted and met with a rapid and unexpected success owing to "the people being unaccustomed, from the long peace, to the use of arms."
"The Khitans," he said, "had in the earlier days of their success taken the name of Pintiei, meaning the iron of Pinchow, but although that iron may be excellent, it is liable to rust and can be eaten away. There is nothing save gold which is unchangeable and which does not destroy itself.
It was compelled to beat a hasty and disastrous retreat, and the peasants of Leaoutung sang ballads about its cowardice and insufficiency. But if it fared badly with the Chinese, the armies of Akouta continued to be victorious, and the Khitans fled not less precipitately before him than the Chinese did before them. Their best generals were unable to make the least stand against the Kin forces.
The reputation of the Golden dynasty, although not as great as it once was, still stood sufficiently high to make the most adventurous of desert chiefs wary in attacking it. Genghis had already secured the co- operation of the ruler of Hia in his enterprise, and he next concluded an alliance with Yeliu Liuko, chief of the Khitans, who were again manifesting discontent with the Kins.
Her independent rule was marked by as much vigor and success as during the life of Kaotsong. She vanquished the Tibetans and a new Tartar race known as the Khitans, who appeared on the northern borders of Shensi. She placed her son in confinement and wore the robes assigned for an emperor.
Everybody is always quoting this saying. I have heard it twice to-day. It was not until the tenth century that the Tartars finally broke through and established themselves definitively on Chinese soil. The Khitans, a Manchu-Tartar people, springing from Central Manchuria, then captured Peking and made it their capital.
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