Page:History of Corea, ancient and modern; with description of manners and customs, language and geography (1879).djvu/261

 NUJUN ACTIVITY. 287 soirender so much tenitoiy. Gaoli, awari^ of the coming storm, made timely friends with the Niijun, who sent south an army to its aid. The combined forces laid an ambush ; into which the liao men fell, an8 were utterly defeated. This was the commence- ment of Nujun activity. In 985, before this raid, the Sung dynasty had sent messengers to stir up Gaoli to join in a crusade against the liao, which had so often chastised the Chinesa And Gaoli agreed. The Sung had previously sent an embassage— certainly not empty handed — to Nujun, with the proposal for a combined attack on Liao ; after the destruction of which, Yowchow and the regions of south of CShihli would belong to Sung, and all beyond to Niijun. Hence the "tribute'^ sent to Sung, mentioned above. And this was the beginning of a connection between Nanking and Chang- baishan, pregnant with great events. Nujun would not be slow to take advantage of a ti*eaty promising her such fruits ; for Fooyti city, which used to be a capital of Bohai, was then Doongdanfoo, the capital of East Dan of liao ; and the Ntijun seemed but an insignificant tribe beside the powerful and extensive kingdom of Kitan, which ruled from the Tellow river to the Songari. During the eleventh century, Nujun had little to do with China proper ; whose history is too lofty to take any note of the petty warfare of *' savage '' tribes, except when for or against herself. During that period the Liao were constantly encroaching on Sung, and driving them out of the south of ChihlL The Sung dynasty enjoyed its only quiet by being in fact the tributary of Liao; though the large sums of money and the enormous quantities of silk sent north of the Yellow River were " gifts,'* and the few ftu'S sent south were '' tribute 'M But on more than one occasion, both by the Sung and their predecessors, the king of Liao received the title of *' Whangdi " Emperor ; which many Chinese scholars say can possibly be given to only one person on earth — ^the emperor of China — ^who is ex-offieio monarch of all the round globe. In the beginning of the twelfth century, two important events