After the Battle of Yashan, Prime Minister Lu Xiufu hugged the young lord of the Southern Song Dynasty and threw himself into the sea to martyr the country, and 100,000 soldiers and civilians were unwilling to be slaves to the country and committed suicide by throwing themselves into the sea. This scene is tragic, and in history, there was also this tragic scene when the Jin Dynasty fell.
In the last years of the Jin Dynasty, the country's strength was weakening, and it was difficult to cope with the offensive of the Mongol army. At the Battle of Sanfeng Mountain, the Jin Dynasty was defeated miserably, the main army was almost lost, and most of the most outstanding generals were killed. The Mongol army, like the invincible Jin army, surrounded Fenjing. Unlike the Second Emperor Huiqin, the Jin Dynasty soldiers and civilians put up resolute resistance and repelled the Mongol army.
However, the demise of the Jin Dynasty, which had lost its main army, had entered the countdown, and the victory in the defense of Beijing only gave the Jin Dynasty another life. Forced by the threat of the Mongol army, Jin Aizong did not dare to hold on to Fenjing, and led his army to flee to Caizhou, resulting in the loss of major cities such as Fenjing and Zhongjing.
The Mongols did not intend to spare Jin Aizong, and they mobilized a large army in September of the second year of Tianxing (1233) to besiege Caizhou. When the Jin Dynasty reached the point where there was no way to retreat, the Jin Dynasty performed the heavenly rituals, gave the soldiers wine, and prepared to fight the enemy to the death. At this time, the sentry said that the Mongol vanguard was ascending the city, and the Generals of the Jin Army were excited and competed for battle. The Mongols did not expect the Jin army to be so brave and defeated.
At this time, Mongolia and the Southern Song Dynasty reached an agreement to jointly extinguish gold. In this joint military battle, the performance of the Southern Song Dynasty was no longer as humiliating as the last time Tong Guan, because the general who represented the imperial court was the famous general Meng Jue, who later made the Mongols feared.
Meng Jue only led 20,000 Song soldiers and 300,000 stones of grain, and his main task was to assist the Mongol soldiers in attacking Caizhou, but in the actual battle, the Song army led by Meng Jue was not just a logistical role.
Since arriving on the battlefield, Meng Jue knew that the battle of attacking Caizhou was not easy, and after he learned from the enemy prisoners that the city had lost food, he urged his men to hold their positions and strictly prevent the Jin army from breaking through.
The Mongols first attacked the city strategically, capturing all the prefectures and counties around Caizhou, making Caizhou an isolated city, and then concentrated their forces to launch a siege on Caizhou.
The Jin army in Caizhou City had few troops and lacked military food, but they had strong combat effectiveness. In fact, the Jin people all knew that the demise of the Jin Dynasty was unstoppable, and those who wanted to betray the Jin Dynasty had long fled, and those who followed Jin Aizong to Caizhou to resist were all people who were loyal to the Jin Dynasty.
The dead and lifeless troops could burst out a powerful fighting force, and the Jin army not only resisted the Mongol attacking troops with a small number of people, but also almost beheaded the Mongol general Zhang Rou. At the critical moment, it was Meng Jue who fought hard to save Zhang Rou's life, and this battle also made the Mongols look at Meng Jue and Song Bing with disdain.
After the first defeat, Meng Jue personally went into battle and led the Song army to fight bravely, taking down the chaitan tower of Caizhou's moat and digging up the Chaitan dam, so that Caizhou lost its natural barrier. The Mongols, of course, did not want to follow the Song army, and they launched a fierce attack on Caizhou in the other direction.
Caizhou lost its moat and was attacked by the combined forces of Song and Mongolia, and was in danger. The Jin army defending the city first hit the enemy troops who had entered the city with bows and rolling stones, and after the arrows and rolling stones were used up, they used up the oil, and then the oil was also used up, and the golden army that killed the red eyes actually forced the old and weak children in the city into a cauldron, boiled into hot oil, and then poured down the soldiers of Song and Meng.
After the Song and Mongol forces had managed to break into the city tower, they found that the Jin army had already dug a deep wall in the city, so the two sides launched a bloody and cruel street battle. The soldiers and civilians in the city fought against each other, and some of the people took up swords, some of them took kitchen knives and flat shoulders, and resisted with the Jin army to the death. Life-and-death battles took place in every part of Caizhou City, and every time the Mongol army and the Song army took a step forward, they had to pay a huge price.
With the fall of the outskirts of Caizhou City, the sound of fighting was getting closer and closer to Jin Aizong and others. Jin Aizong knew that every step of this sound represented another second in the countdown to the demise of the Jin Dynasty. Jin Aizong looked at the courtiers and soldiers and said sadly, "I have not made any major mistakes in being emperor for ten years, and I have no regrets in death, the only thing I hate is that the century-old foundation died at my hands, making me the same kind as the tyrants who have fainted since ancient times." And I will never be a humiliated king of a kingdom, and the kings will do it for themselves!" When the golden people heard this, they all wept.
Jin Aizong may not have been an emperor of great ability, but as he said, he was the last emperor, not the king of the fallen kingdom. Jin Aizong fulfilled his vow not to be a humiliated king, personally supervised the battle, led an army to defend the city of Caizhou, and repeatedly repelled the attacks of Song and Mongol soldiers.
There was no food in Caizhou City for a long time, war horses, bark, leather, all that could be used to feed the stomach were eaten, and in the end, "the old and weak in the city ate each other", and the Jin army guarding the city took "human and animal bones and celery paste" as food. The defeated troops were often killed in their entirety, serving as food for the rest of the Golden Army. Inside Caizhou City, it became a purgatory on earth.
The Golden Army lasted a few more months in hell, and by this time there were hardly many living people in the city. Jin Aizong knew that the last moment was coming, he was too fat to ride a horse, he knew that there was no hope of escape, and passed the throne to Yan Chenglin, allowing him to inherit the fire of the Jin Dynasty.
In the first month of the third year of Tianxing (1234), the Song army attacked the south gate, and the Mongolian army broke through the west gate, and launched a final street battle with the Jin army in the city. When Emperor Aizong of Jin heard the news of the destruction of the city, he martyred himself. Hundreds of people in the city, from the political participation and the Yuan Division, down to the soldiers, all of them threw themselves into the water and martyred the country, and the rest of the Jin army was almost all killed in battle, and Yan Chenglin was also killed in the rebellion.
The Jin Dynasty perished, but as the last emperor, Emperor Aizong of Jin's integrity of "the death of the king" was admired, and even the prime minister of the Yuan Dynasty, Defa, commented in the "History of Jin": "The mere birth of Li, the attempt to survive in death, the unfinished is to die, but the mournful is also." Although, in the "Rites", 'the death of the monarch is the society', the mourning sect is not ashamed".
Under the remnant sun, the blood-stained warhorses roared in sorrow, and the Jin Dynasty came to an end, and the protracted war between the Southern Song Dynasty and Mongolia was about to begin.
Resources:
History of Jin