ABSTRACT
EARLY in the eleventh century when the incursion of Ruzhen tribes was being resisted, a band of them had been captured and brought to the capital. Ch'oe Ch'ung had advised the King that though they had faces like men, they were beasts at heart and would never be corrected by punishment nor improved by captivity - 'They will only fret and pine for their native lairs, so let us return them to the woods and let them go.' By the end of the twelfth century, however, settled in Kaifeng under their dynastic title of 'Jin', the Ruzhen aristocracy had themselves become silk-clad aesthetes, thereby estranging themselves from those who still remained in the tribal homelands as well as being resented by the Qidan minority and the Chinese peasants over whom they ruled. Even so, they seemed safe enough, for beyond their own city walls they had Beijing and the Great Wall and beyond this again they had an outer ring defended by tributary tribesmen whom they subsidized. It is not surprising if they underestimated the threat posed by Genghis Khan and his new-grown federation for they had an army ten times the size of his and had often beaten off Mongol attacks in the past.
