Jia Sidao misled the country

After Mongolia and the Southern Song Dynasty jointly destroyed the Jin Dynasty, the Southern Song Dynasty took the opportunity to send troops to recover the land around Kaifeng and Henan. On the pretext that the Southern Song had broken the agreement, Voguatai attacked the Southern Song.

After this, the Mongolian and Song dynasties were constantly at war.

When Voguatai's nephew, Mongol, came to the throne, he sent his brother Kublai and the general Uliang Hetai to march into Yunnan and take control of the southwestern region. In 1258 A.D., Mongols divided their forces into three lines to attack the Southern Song. He led the main force to attack Hechu (present-day Hechuan, Sichuan), Kublai attacked Ezhou (present-day Wuchang, Hubei), and the other way was led by Uliang Hetai, who attacked Tanzhou (present-day Changsha, Hunan) from Yunnan to the north, preparing to take Lin'an directly after the meeting of the three ways.

When Mongol troops attacked Hechu, Song general Wang Jian and all the people of Hechu rose to resist and defended the Diaoyu Castle to the east of Hechu. The Mongol army surrounded the city for five months and failed to take it down, but Meng was hit by a cannon and was seriously wounded during the attack, and died soon after returning to the camp.

Kublai was advancing to Ezhou and had not yet crossed the river when he received the news of the Mongol's death and was advised to return to the north to fight for the throne. Kublai said, "I have been ordered to attack the Song Dynasty, how can I go back empty-handed?"

After observing the situation along the river, Kublai sent a few hundred men to be the vanguard and crossed the Yangtze River by force, but the Song soldiers were defenseless and defeated. The Mongol soldiers then crossed the river in force and surrounded Ezhou.

One by one, the warnings were sent to Lin'an, which shook the Southern Song dynasty. Song Rizong ordered all the Song troops to rescue Ezhou, and appointed Jia Sidao as the right prime minister and Privy Counsellor to supervise the war in Hanyang.

The new prime minister, Jia Sidao, was an uneducated wanderer who got his official position because his sister was the favorite concubine of Emperor Li of Song. After he became an official, he did not do anything and often took a group of singers and girls to drink and have fun on the West Lake. One night, when the emperor was looking up at the palace, he saw a bright light on the West Lake and said to his servants, "This must be the boy Sidao."

Knowing that the emperor favored Jia Sidao, the minister said, "Don't look at him as a young man who likes to have fun, but he has a lot of talent."This time, Song Rizong wanted him to go to the front line of Hanyang to supervise the war, but he had to go with his head. Once he heard that there was a group of Mongolian soldiers in front of him, he was scared and shivered, and his mouth shouted: "What to do? What to do?" Later, when the Mongolian soldiers robbed some belongings and left, Jia Sidao patted his chest and breathed a sigh of relief.

Kublai attacked the city more and more fiercely. Seeing that the situation was tense, Jia Sidao secretly sent a crony to the Mongolian camp to beg for peace, saying that if the Mongols retreated, the Song Dynasty would be willing to pay tribute in silver and silk. Kublai attacked with great vigor and refused to stop there. At this time, Kublai received a secret message from his wife from the north that some Mongolian nobles were preparing to make his brother Ali Buge the Great Khan. Kublai was anxious to go back and fight for the khanate, so he agreed to Jia Sidao's request and made a secret agreement. Jia Sidao promised to cede the land north of the river to Mongolia and to pay 200,000 silver and silk tributes to Mongolia every year. When Kublai got Jia Sidao's wish, he hastily withdrew his troops and went back to the north.

When Jia Sidao returned to Lin'an, he hid the private peace treaty from the Mongols, but took some Mongol prisoners and boasted that the Song army had won a great victory, not only driving away the Mongol soldiers in Ezhou but also purging all the enemy forces along the Yangtze River.

When Emperor Li Zong heard Jia Sidao's big lie, he thought that Jia Sidao had made a great achievement and issued a special edict to praise him for his bravery and good command, and immediately gave him a ranking.

Kublai returned to the north and received the support of most of the Mongolian nobles, i.e., the throne of the Great Khan. Remembering the peace agreement he had made with Jia Sidao in Ezhou, he sent an emissary Hao Jing to the Southern Song Dynasty to demand the fulfillment of the terms of the peace agreement.