Mavericks › Uprising Leaders
Song Jiang
Leader of a band of thirty-six who raided across Huainan and Jingdong in 1121 before surrendering to Zhang Shuye at Haizhou; the historical root of the Water Margin
A mountain camp at night, with a beacon fire burning on a wooden platform at the upper left, several white tents on the slope and a red cloth tied to a rope; a wooden palisade with a gate stands at the right beyond a timber bridge over a rough river, under a clouded moon.
Also known as Hu Baoyi
- Roles
- Uprising Leaders
Song Jiang led a rising in Emperor Huizong's Xuanhe years and is known only from scattered records. The *History of Song* (*Songshi*) annals say that in the second month of 1121 the Huainan bandit Song Jiang attacked Huaiyang, and that when troops were sent he moved on into Jingdong and Hebei. The biography of Hou Meng says he roamed the old lands of Qi and Wei with thirty-six men, and Hou proposed pardoning him and using him against Fang La. According to the biography of Zhang Shuye, when the band seized a dozen large boats near Haizhou, Zhang set an ambush with a thousand volunteers, burned the boats and captured Song's lieutenant, and Song surrendered. Whether he then fought Fang La is disputed, and the epitaph of Zhe Kecun, found in modern times, speaks of his capture. Gong Kai's Southern Song verses on the thirty-six men carried the story on toward the novel *Water Margin* (*Shuihu zhuan*).
Life and times
Dates Dates unknown; surrendered to the Song in 1121