Liu-Sung dynasty_ (A.D. 420-478) _and the Southern Ch'i dynasty_
(479-501)

After his successes in 416-17 in Shensi, Liu Yue returned to the capital,
and shortly after he lost the chief fruits of his victory to Ho-lien
P'o-p'o, the Hun ruler in the north, while Liu Yue himself was occupied
with the killing of the emperor (419) and the installation of a puppet.
In 420 the puppet had to abdicate and Liu Yue became emperor. He called
his dynasty the Sung dynasty, but to distinguish it from another and
more famous Sung dynasty of later time his dynasty is also called the
Liu-Sung dynasty.

The struggles and intrigues of cliques against each other continued as
before. We shall pass quickly over this period after a glance at the
nature of these internal struggles.

Part of the old imperial family and its following fled northward from
Liu Yue and surrendered to the Toba. There they agitated for a campaign
of vengeance against South China, and they were supported at the court
of the Toba by many families of the gentry with landed interests in the
south. Thus long-continued fighting started between Sung and Toba,
concerned mainly with the domains of the deposed imperial family and
its following. This fighting brought little success to south China, and
about 450 it produced among the Toba an economic and social crisis that
brought the wars to a temporary close. In this pause the Sung turned to
the extreme south, and tried to gain influence there and in Annam. The
merchant class and the gentry families of the capital who were allied
with it were those chiefly interested in this expansion.

About 450 began the Toba policy of shifting the central government to
the region of the Yellow River, to Loyang; for this purpose the frontier
had to be pushed farther south. Their great campaign brought the Toba in
450 down to the Yangtze. The Sung suffered a heavy defeat; they had to
pay tribute, and the Toba annexed parts of their northern territory.

The Sung emperors who followed were as impotent as their predecessors
and personally much more repulsive. Nothing happened at court but
drinking, licentiousness, and continual murders.

From 460 onward there were a number of important risings of princes; in
some of them the Toba had a hand. They hoped by supporting one or
another of the pretenders to gain overlordship over the whole of the
southern empire. In these struggles in the south the Hsiao family,
thanks mainly to General Hsiao Ta