Song defeat at the Gaoliang River
The Song History records that the emperor's forces suffered defeat in a major battle against the Khitan at the Gaoliang River.
What this does and does not establish
宋史/卷004, Wikisource raw revision 2448003. The sixth-month passage describes the advance and siege; the seventh-month passage explicitly says '敗績' and next records withdrawal. This record treats the battle as one event and does not separately count its campaign stages.
- Read through an AI working translation.
- Region
- East Asia
- Theme
- Politics and institutions
- Kind of record
- Placed in a year. A source places this in one year. It is listed under that year; no day precision is invented.
How it is dated
- Date reference
- 太平興國四年七月癸未
- How we use it
- Year-level placement is limited to the dated source entry.
The date reference is this project’s reading of the source’s date. It may give an era name, a reign or a calendar in a normalised form rather than in the source’s own words; the dating notes say what the source prints.
Dating notes from the research record
Read song4.wikitext lines 71–95, including the preceding campaign and subsequent withdrawal: heading line 71 '==太平興國四年=='; month line 85 '秋七月庚辰', followed by the event's '癸未'. calendar_headers and direct reads of sinica-978-12-31.html and sinica-979-12-31.html lines 31–32 give '西元978年12月31日' / '宋太宗太平興國3年(歲次戊寅)11月29日' and '西元979年12月31日' / '宋太宗太平興國4年(歲次己卯)12月10日'. The fourth regnal year's seventh lunar month lies within Julian AD 979. Original quotation begins at line 85, character 5133.
File names and line numbers in these notes, and in the limits above, refer to the project’s retained copies of the cited sources. Names such as calendar_headers are the project’s calendar look-ups, and “the investigator” is the research step that prepared the record.
Sources and quoted text
Line and character numbers under “Location” refer to the project’s retained copy of the source. For database rows, “Edition” names the batch of rows that was fetched together.
Source 1 · Supports the statement
Song shi (History of Song), basic annals
Toghto (脫脫) et al., Yuan court historiographers
Quoted text (Classical Chinese)
癸未，帝督諸軍及契丹大戰于高梁河，敗績。AI working translation into English; not official or authoritative
On guiwei, the emperor directed the armies in a major battle against the Khitan at the Gaoliang River and suffered defeat.
Source credit and reuse conditions recorded for this source: 宋史/卷004 https://zh.wikisource.org/w/index.php?oldid=2448003 Public-domain historical original. Wikisource contributors, CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). Attribute the fixed transcription and share adapted excerpts alike. Project working translation.
Exact source version
254aef00d773b8b93906425aa3a409d2e76d3b8d7d8fa23502339c8533480250Checks and changes
Source checked 2026-11-06. An independent AI evidence review supports this bounded, attributed wording. That review does not guarantee historical truth. How records are checked
No correction has been made to this record’s statement or limits.
Revision s901_east_978_979_2
Exact revision fingerprint
81bceb283f77252da923bf2cbf299d62d62d28746174ff04b85da4b9884ccddc