Sixteen Prefectures
The Sixteen Prefectures, more precisely known as the Sixteen Prefectures of Yan-Yun (traditional Chinese: 燕雲十六州; simplified Chinese: 燕云十六州; pinyin: Yānyún Shíliù Zhōu) or the Sixteen Prefectures of You-Ji (Chinese: 幽薊十六州; pinyin: Yōujì Shíliù Zhōu), comprise a historical region in North China along the Great Wall in present-day Beijing, Tianjin, and part of northern Hebei and Shanxi.
After the Tang dynasty collapsed, they became a site of contention between various ethnicities of North China, including Han, Khitan, Jurchen, and Mongol.
In 1368, Hongwu Emperor of the Ming dynasty ordered general Xu Da and Chang Yuchun to call for the restoration of Han rule.
The Sixteen Prefectures stretched from Ji County in modern-day Tianjin Municipality to Datong in Shanxi Province, extending contiguously along the mountains that divide the agrarian plains of central China from the pastoralist steppes to the north.
[1][3] Yizhou (易州; modern Yi County, Hebei), which fell to the Liao after the cession, is also excluded from the count of 16.
[5] Abaoji coveted the plains of North China, a rich source of plunder that was guarded by a line of passes and fortifications stretching from mountainous northern Shanxi to the Bo Sea.
[2] He had been a staunch ally (some say a puppet) of the Khitan, but his successor Shi Chonggui refused to recognize the Emperor Taizong of Liao as his superior.
[12] After a year of tense diplomatic exchanges, in 943 the Liao dynasty finally resolved to punish Shi for his insubordination.
[13] For two years the engagements were indecisive, until in 945, the Emperor Taizong of Liao, who was leading his troops in battle, was almost killed in a rout of his forces in southern Hebei; he had to flee the battlefield on a camel.
[14] The following year, however, the Liao emperor launched a new campaign from his Southern Capital (within the Sixteen prefectures), triggering the collapse of the Later Jin.
[15] Having seized the Later Jin capital of Kaifeng in early 947, later that year he declared the name of his dynasty as "Great Liao" (大遼) and proclaimed himself Emperor of China.
[16] Heavy resistance on the retreat route and Taizong's death in 947 provoked a succession crisis in the Liao government, and an opportunity for a new dynasty in northern China.
Emperor Taizong of Song led his weary and ill-supplied troops toward the Liao Southern Capital (present-day Beijing).
The ensuing Battle of Gaoliang River on August 1 near the Southern Capital resulted in a complete rout of Song forces, who had to retreat back to Kaifeng.
She then ordered the castration of around 100 ethnic Chinese boys she had captured in China, supplementing the Khitan's supply of eunuchs to serve at her court, among them was Wang Ji'en.
[22][23][24] The History of Liao (遼史) described and praised Empress Chengtian's capture and mass castration of Chinese boys in a biography on the eunuch Wang Ji'en.
When the Song dynasty reclaimed the Sixteen Prefectures, they were "fiercely resisted" by the Han population there who had previously been under Liao rule, while when the Jin dynasty invaded that area, the Han population did not oppose them at all and handed over the Southern Capital (present-day Beijing, then known as Yanjing) to them.
