were defenceless against them. All
the buffer states had gone. The Sung were quite without adequate
military defence. They hoped to stave off the Mongols in the same way as
they had met the Kitan and the Juchen. This time, however, they
misjudged the situation. In the great operations begun by the Mongols in
1273 the Sung were defeated over and over again. In 1276 their capital
was taken by the Mongols and the emperor was made prisoner. For three
years longer there was a Sung emperor, in flight from the Mongols, until
the last emperor perished near Macao in South China.

3 _Cultural situation; reasons for the collapse_

The Southern Sung period was again one of flourishing culture. The
imperial court was entirely in the power of the greater gentry; several
times the emperors, who personally do not deserve individual mention,
were compelled to abdicate. They then lived on with a court of their
own, devoting themselves to pleasure in much the same way as the
"reigning" emperor. Round them was a countless swarm of poets and
artists. Never was there a time so rich in poets, though hardly one of
them was in any way outstanding. The poets, unlike those of earlier
times, belonged to the lesser gentry who were suffering from the
prevailing inflation. Salaries bore no relation to prices. Food was not
dear, but the things which a man of the upper class ought to have were
far out of reach: a big house cost 2,000 strings of cash, a concubine
800 strings. Thus the lesser gentry and the intelligentsia all lived on
their patrons among the greater gentry--with the result that they were
entirely shut out of politics. This explains why the literature of the
time is so unpolitical, and also why scarcely any philosophical works
appeared. The writers took refuge more and more in romanticism and
flight from realities.

The greater gentry, on the other hand, led a very elegant life, building
themselves magnificent palaces in the capital. They also speculated in
every direction. They speculated in land, in money, and above all in
the paper money that was coming more and more into use. In 1166 the
paper circulation exceeded the value of 10,000,000 strings!

It seems that after 1127 a good number of farmers had left Honan and the
Yellow River plains when the Juchen conquered these places and showed
little interest in fostering agriculture; more left the border areas of
Southern Sung because of permanent war threat. Many of these lived
mis