After Emperor Gaozong of Song, Zhao Gou, ascended the throne, he executed Zhang Bangchang, the emperor of "Great Chu" supported by the Jin state.
Just one year later, the Jin army launched another large-scale invasion of the Southern Song Dynasty. Liu Yu, a Southern Song court official, killed a Song general and surrendered to the Jin. The Jin then installed him as emperor in Daming, Hebei, with the state name "Great Qi," historically known as the "Puppet Qi." The Jin manipulated this puppet regime to control the region south of the Yellow River.
Emperor Gaozong of Song sent several generals north to fight the Jin army; Han Shizhong, a famous anti-Jin general, was one of them.
Han Shizhong came from a poor background, was free-spirited in nature, and exceptionally brave. At eighteen, he joined the Northern Song army, beginning a lifelong military career. During the Northern and Southern Song dynasties, repeated internal uprisings broke out, and Han Shizhong led his troops to suppress several rebellions, including those led by Fang La and Fan Ruwei. In battles against the Western Xia and Jin dynasties, he also achieved remarkable military exploits. The Han Family Army under his command was as renowned as Yue Fei's Yue Family Army during the Song period.
During the reign of Emperor Huizong, Han Shizhong followed General Liu Yanqing to Yanshan to resist the Jin army, aiming to recover lost territory. Previously, the Jin army had swept through battles against the Song forces with unstoppable momentum, but they stumbled badly when facing the Song troops led by Han Shizhong. At that time, Han Shizhong led over fifty cavalrymen to ambush the Jin army at the Hutuo River, causing a major defeat for the Jin forces. As a result, Han Shizhong was promoted to the rank of Wujie Lang.
During the reign of Emperor Qinzong, the Jin army invaded and occupied Zhending in Hebei. Han Shizhong, then serving as the Military Training Commissioner of Danzhou, rushed to reinforce the defense. In the fierce battle against the Jin forces, his troops ran out of arrows and supplies. At this critical moment, some subordinates urged him to break through the encirclement, but Han Shizhong insisted on standing with all the Song soldiers to the end. Soon after, he devised a plan: on a snowy night, he led three hundred death-defying soldiers to launch a surprise attack on the Jin camp. Caught off guard, the Jin troops fell into chaos, and in the confusion, the Jin commander was mistakenly killed by his own men. Leaderless, the Jin army hastily retreated. Han Shizhong achieved a great victory and was promoted to the Defense Commissioner of Jiazhou.
After Emperor Gaozong ascended the throne, the Jin general Wuzhu led a massive invasion of the Southern Song dynasty. Gaozong was terrified and wanted to flee to another region to avoid the disaster. Court generals like Zhang Jun suggested that Gaozong take refuge in Changsha, Hunan. However, Han Shizhong said, "Right now, the Hebei and Shandong regions have already been occupied by the Jin. If we can't even hold onto the Jianghuai area, how much territory will be left for the Great Song?"
Emperor Gaozong agreed with Han Shizhong's reasoning, abandoned the idea of fleeing, and sent Han Shizhong to guard Zhenjiang in Jiangsu. Subsequently, Wuzhu led his army across the Yangtze River, breached Lin'an, the capital of the Southern Song Dynasty, and successively captured Yuezhou, Mingzhou, and other areas. Fortunately, by then Gaozong had already fled to the eastern coast of Zhejiang, thus avoiding the fate of his father and brother, Emperors Huizong and Qinzong, who were taken captive by the Jin state.
During their northward retreat, the Jin army was ambushed at Huangtiandang in the lower Yangtze River by 8,000 soldiers led by Han Shizhong, with the two sides locked in battle for forty-eight days. Despite having a massive force of 100,000 troops, the Jin army could not break through the encirclement.
On the northern bank of the Yangtze River, the Jin army dispatched a fleet to the opposite shore to rescue Jin Wuzhu. Han Shizhong ordered his troops to use massive iron hooks to overturn all of the Jin ships. With no way out, Wuzhu offered to trade all the loot he had plundered during his southern campaign for safe passage. Han Shizhong sternly replied, "If you want to retreat unscathed, return the two Song emperors you have captured and give back all the Song territory you have annexed!"
Wuzhu realized that begging for mercy was not an option, so he turned to other methods. He ordered his men to dig a thirty-mile canal, then escaped by small boat. When Song troops pursued, he used fire to repel them. Through this strategy, Wuzhu finally managed to break through the Song army's encirclement with his forces.
The Battle of Huangtiandang was a historically famous battle where the outnumbered defeated the many. Prior to this, the Jin army had consistently held the upper hand in their campaigns against the Song, but afterward, they began to realize that the Song forces were not as weak and easily bullied as they had imagined. This battle marked a major turning point for the Southern Song government in its war of resistance against the Jin, and it also reignited hope among the Southern Song military and civilians for national revival.
Afterwards, the Song and Jin dynasties entered a stalemate. Han Shizhong was busy quelling small-scale internal rebellions, during which he received continuous promotions. Five years later, the Jin army, allied with Liu Yu, launched another attack on the Southern Song. Han Shizhong led his troops to resist and routed the Jin forces, earning great praise from Emperor Gaozong. Over the next seven years, Han Shizhong persistently fought against the Jin army and achieved repeated victories. However, Emperor Gaozong, misled by treacherous ministers like Qin Hui, wavered in his resolve and sought to remove the long-standing threat of the Jin regime through peace negotiations. Han Shizhong repeatedly submitted memorials urging the emperor to steadfastly resist the Jin and to severely punish traitors like Qin Hui who were harming the state, but his words fell on deaf ears. The appeasement faction at court regarded Han Shizhong as a major threat and sought to eliminate him as soon as possible.
In 1141, Qin Hui invited three leading generals—Han Shizhong, Zhang Jun, and Yue Fei—back to the court, claiming that Emperor Gaozong intended to reward them for their achievements. As soon as the three arrived in Lin'an, they were stripped of their military command. When news of this reached the Jin Kingdom, Wuzhu immediately led his forces in a renewed invasion. Without the three generals to oversee the defense, the Song army suffered repeated defeats, and Wuzhu took the opportunity to threaten Emperor Gaozong into ceding territory and submitting to Jin. Encouraged by Qin Hui and his allies, the Southern Song ultimately signed the humiliating and sovereignty-compromising "Shaoxing Peace Treaty" with the Jin Kingdom. That same year, the renowned anti-Jin general Yue Fei was falsely accused by Qin Hui and died unjustly.
At that time, Qin Hui wielded immense power over the court, and no minister dared to speak out for Yue Fei's injustice. However, Han Shizhong confronted Qin Hui, demanding to know what crime Yue Fei had committed to deserve such punishment. Qin Hui replied, "The crime of 'perhaps having' (moxuyou)!" Han Shizhong, enraged, retorted, "If it's only a crime of 'perhaps having,' how can you justify this to the world?" Some well-meaning officials in the court advised him to stop opposing Qin Hui, warning that he might end up like Yue Fei. Unfazed, Han Shizhong declared, "If I swallow my anger out of fear of being implicated and punished, then after I die, how could I have the face to meet the late emperor?"
Han Shizhong's outspokenness ultimately cost him dearly; Emperor Gaozong dismissed him from his official post and only granted him the empty title of Duke of Fuguo. Deeply disillusioned with the Southern Song government, Han Shizhong withdrew from the court and lived a reclusive life. After his death, he was posthumously honored as Grand Preceptor and further enfeoffed as Prince of Tongyi. When Emperor Xiaozong ascended the throne, recalling Han's great contributions to the state, he posthumously conferred upon him the title of Prince of Qi and granted him the posthumous name Zhongwu.
Han Shizhong was an incorruptible official who regarded wealth as a mere worldly possession throughout his life. Despite his remarkable military achievements and the numerous rewards and land grants bestowed upon him by the emperor, he distributed all of them to his subordinates and the common people. Having spent his entire life fighting on battlefields, his body was covered with countless scars from wounds sustained in combat.
Han Shizhong, with his fervent patriotic passion and unwavering integrity, won the love of the people and became a hero remembered through the ages, while his wife, Lady Liang, under his influence, also became a renowned female hero in the resistance against the Jin Dynasty.
Lady Liang is better known as Liang Hongyu, though her given name does not appear in official historical records—"Hongyu" is a fictional name invented in unofficial histories. Born into poverty, she drifted into the military and became a camp prostitute. Later, Han Shizhong redeemed her and took her as his concubine. After Han Shizhong's wife, Bai, passed away, Liang Hongyu became his legal wife.
Liang Hongyu, a woman who proved herself equal to any man, often followed her husband into battle. During the Battle of Huangtiandang, to boost the morale of Song Dynasty soldiers, she personally took to the field and beat the war drums to encourage the troops. At the age of thirty-three, while fighting against the Jin army, she was surrounded and fought to the death. Her bravery so moved the Jin soldiers that they returned her body to the Song forces. After Han Shizhong died, the couple was buried together at the foot of Lingyan Mountain in Suzhou.
After Emperor Xiaozong of the Song Dynasty ascended the throne, he specially ordered the construction of a grand tomb for Han Shizhong on Lingyan Mountain and personally inscribed the ten-character epitaph "Stele of the Founding Minister Who Assisted in Restoration and Stabilized the Nation" on his tombstone. Additionally, the emperor instructed Prime Minister Zhao Xiong to compose a lengthy epitaph of over 13,000 characters for Han Shizhong, which was then written by the renowned literary figure Zhou Bida, expressing deep admiration for Han Shizhong. Han Shizhong's tomb in Suzhou and Yue Fei's tomb in Hangzhou stand in distant harmony, and together they have become two major cultural landmarks in the Wu-Yue region, attracting countless visitors who come to pay homage to these two heroes whose names will be remembered through the ages.