Biography
Rise from the Ranks and the Ordeal of Yuci Zhang Jun hailed from a family of archer colonists in Chengji County, Fengxiang Prefecture. In 1101, at the age of sixteen, he enlisted as a local militia archer at Sanyangzhai. Renowned for his formidable physical strength and archery prowess, he repeatedly distinguished himself during regional counter-bandit operations in the northwest. In 1116, during the Western Song campaign against the Western Xia kingdom, Zhang Jun participated in the siege of Renduoquan fortress. Armed with a broad blade, he led the scaling ladders, leaped over the ramparts, and slaughtered defenders, earning an appointment as Gentleman of Trustworthy Sincerity. He subsequently fought in Jiangnan against Fang La's rebellion and cleared insurgent factions across Shandong and Hebei. In May 1126, during the initial Jin invasion, Jurchen cavalry surrounded the Song relief army at Yuci in Shanxi. After supreme commander Zhong Shizhong fell in combat, the imperial army disintegrated. Zhang Jun alone gathered several hundred resolute shock troops, forming a defensive square and breaking through dense cavalry lines. Killing over five hundred enemy pursuers, he extracted his unit intact, earning instant fame across northern China. ### Loyalty to Prince Kang and the Miracle of Mingzhou In late 1126, as Kaifeng was besieged, Zhang Jun led three thousand battle-hardened troops to Daming to join Zhao Gou, Prince of Kang. His strategic evaluations of current affairs struck Zhao Gou as exceptionally astute, earning him appointment as Rear Army Commander. In May 1127, following the capture of Emperors Huizong and Qinzong, Zhang Jun urged Zhao Gou to ascend the throne at Yingtian to preserve the dynastic altars. Upon Gaozong's coronation, Zhang Jun was named Vanguard Commander of the Imperial Camp. In March 1129, commanders Miao Fu and Liu Zhengyan mounted a military mutiny in Hangzhou, forcing Emperor Gaozong to abdicate in favor of his infant son. Garrisoned at Wujiang, Zhang Jun immediately formed a coalition with Minister Zhang Jun and Han Shizhong. Mobilizing eight thousand veteran troops from Pingjiang, Zhang Jun spearheaded the assault against the mutineers, retaking the capital and restoring Gaozong. This rescue cemented him as the Emperor's most indispensable military confidant. In winter 1129, Jurchen commander Wanyan Zongbi launched an amphibious pursuit across the Yangtze River, chasing Gaozong onto the coastal seas. Tasked with covering the rear at Mingzhou (modern Ningbo), Zhang Jun swore to fight to the death. When elite Jurchen cavalry assaulted Gaocheng bridge, Zhang Jun, together with his subordinates Yang Yizhong and Liu Bao, fought fiercely for three days in blinding blizzards. Song archers and heavy infantry cut down thousands of Jurchen troops, forcing Wanyan Zongbi to pull back. The victory at Mingzhou became celebrated as the crowning achievement of the "Thirteen Restoration Victories." ### Defense of Jianghuai and the Outang Triumph Throughout the early Shaoxing era, Zhang Jun anchored the central Jianghuai perimeter, while Han Shizhong defended the eastern flanks. In 1131, appointed Pacification Commissioner of Jiangnan and Huainan, Zhang Jun directed generals including Yue Fei to eradicate rampant peasant bandit forces across Hunan, Jiangxi, and Hubei, pacifying interior supply lines. In 1136, Liu Yu, Emperor of the Jin puppet state of Da Qi, launched a nationwide invasion of Southern Song with 300,000 troops. Acting as Commander-in-Chief, Zhang Jun orchestrated a decisive ambush at Outang in Dingyuan. His subordinate Yang Yizhong unleashed volleys of divine-arm crossbow bolts, routing the puppet cavalry and capturing tens of thousands of prisoners. For this triumph, Zhang Jun was ennobled as Military Commissioner of Three Garrisons. Later, at the Battle of Zhegao in 1141, Zhang Jun coordinated with Liu Qi and Yang Yizhong to deal another punishing defeat to Wanyan Zongbi's elite heavy cavalry. ### Surrender of Arms and Complicity in Yue Fei's Murder Following the victory at Zhegao, Emperor Gaozong and Prime Minister Qin Hui resolved to conclude the Shaoxing Peace Accord, which necessitated dismantling the independent command structures of the "Three Great Generals" (Han Shizhong, Zhang Jun, and Yue Fei). Aware of Gaozong's morbid fear of military coups, Zhang Jun chose total political subservience. In April 1141, the three commanders were summoned to Lin'an. Zhang Jun was the first to volunteer the surrender of his command tallies, being rewarded with the office of Commissioner of the Bureau of Military Affairs. Subsequently, Qin Hui tasked Zhang Jun with inspecting Han Shizhong's armies at Chuzhou, where Zhang Jun attempted to fabricate treasonous charges against Han Shizhong. The conspiracy was unmasked when Yue Fei alerted Han Shizhong in secret, enabling Han to plead his case before the Emperor. Zhang Jun harbored vicious resentment against Yue Fei ever after. To consummate peace with the Jin, Qin Hui and Gaozong demanded Yue Fei's death. Zhang Jun eagerly served as Qin Hui's principal accomplice. He suborned Yue Fei's subordinate generals Wang Gui and Wang Jun, coercing them into falsely accusing Yue Fei's chief lieutenant Zhang Xian of attempting a military coup. When judicial officers found no evidence of sedition, Zhang Jun intervened in the Court of Judicature, forcing false confessions. In December 1141, Yue Fei and his son Yue Yun were executed in Fengbo Pavilion. For his complicity, Zhang Jun was ennobled as Prince of Qinghe Commandery. ### Lavish Retirement and Eternal Disgrace In November 1142, following the ratification of the Shaoxing Treaty, Gaozong retired Zhang Jun from executive military duties, granting him honorary titles of Grand Guardian and Prince of Qinghe. Emulating ancient general Wang Jian, Zhang Jun shielded himself from imperial suspicion by throwing himself into voracious land acquisition across Zhejiang and Jiangsu. He accumulated estates producing 600,000 bushels of grain annually, becoming the wealthiest landlord in Southern Song history. In October 1151, Emperor Gaozong paid a state visit to Zhang Jun's lavish residence in Lin'an. Zhang Jun orchestrated a banquet of unprecedented opulence, presenting hundreds of priceless jades, silks, and pearls, recorded in dynastic annals as the legendary "Shaoxing Imperial Banquet." On August 12, 1154, Zhang Jun died at his mansion at the age of sixty-nine. Gaozong suspended court audiences, posthumously conferred the office of Grand Preceptor, and bestowed the posthumous name Zhonglie ("Loyal and Ardent"). History, however, passed an unsparing verdict. While ancient chronicles recorded his battlefield heroism against the Jurchens, his betrayal and destruction of Yue Fei permanently tainted his memory. In 1594, during the Ming dynasty, an iron kneeling statue of Zhang Jun was cast and placed alongside those of Qin Hui, Lady Wang, and Moqi Xie before the Yue Fei Mausoleum in Hangzhou, forcing him to kneel in eternal shame before the hero he murdered.
Zhang Jun's wealth was remarkable even among the generals who crossed south. His household held over a million mu of good farmland and took more than six hundred thousand shi of rent grain a year, besides numbers of gardens and residences; the rents of his houses alone came to seventy-three thousand strings of cash annually. To keep his silver from thieves he had it cast into balls of a thousand taels each, called "no help for it" — too heavy for a thief to carry off. His descendants once presented a hundred thousand shi of rent grain to the court, the schedule listing fifteen estates in ten counties of six prefectures in Jiangdong and Liangzhe.
At a time when the other generals lacked horses, Zhang Jun alone had them in plenty and his troops made a notably imposing show, which owed much to his habit of leaving trade in the hands of others. An old soldier kept idle in his household once said he had some knowledge of overseas commerce. Zhang Jun offered him ten thousand strings; the man thought it too little, and fifty thousand still too little, so Zhang Jun gave him five hundred thousand strings to use as he pleased. A year later he returned with pearls, rhinoceros horn, spices, medicines and fine horses, making several dozen times his outlay, and Zhang Jun's cavalry was the better for it. Asked how he had done it, the old soldier described the voyage in detail; Zhang Jun praised him and rewarded him richly, and then asked whether he would go again. The man answered that it had been luck, that a second venture would fail, and that he would rather return to the back garden and spend his old age there.
In 1130 Zhang Jun was charged with bringing the bandits of Jiangsu and Zhejiang to heel; apart from the armies of Liu Guangshi and Han Shizhong, the other commanders all came under his direction, and he became the foremost general of the time. In 1137 Li Qiong, deputy commander of the Left Guard, deserted to the puppet Qi with forty thousand men; the next year the main body of Liu Guangshi's old command under Wang De, twenty thousand strong, was transferred to Zhang Jun as commissioner of the Huai West, and his forces were much strengthened.
The victory at Mingzhou held a special place in Southern Song accounts: it was said that since the Jin entered the Central Plains the commanders had all fled at the sight of them and none had dared stand, that the restoration's battle honours began with that one victory at Mingzhou, and that only then did the Song armies begin to recover their spirit. Zhang Jun afterward served as commissioner of Zhejiang West and Jiangdong, and when the Jin and Liu Lin of the puppet Qi invaded in 1134 he joined Yang Yizhong in holding them at Sizhou; his command was renamed the Central Guard Army of the travelling camp, and with Han Shizhong's it formed the two most important armies of the Southern Song, the emperor likening the two men to his own right and left hands.
Zhang Jun's early years were spent mostly in the northwest, where he learned the ways of cavalry warfare, and in later years he commanded great armies with a following of his own. Though he kept his honours to the end, his last years were spent in the service of the chief minister, and later judgments of the generals who crossed south have set him beside Han Shizhong and Yue Fei, to his clear disadvantage. After the peace of 1141, though dismissed from the bureau of military affairs, he kept his wealth; his family's estates in the two Zhe provinces lasted for generations, and traces of his extravagance recur in the notebooks of Southern Song men of letters.
After his death his estates still stood first in the two Zhe provinces, and his descendants lived for the most part about Lin'an. When men of letters at the end of the Southern Song weighed the merits of the generals who had crossed south, they set Zhang Jun's battlefield record beside his later conduct, so that praise and blame of him cannot be summed up in a word.