Western Zhou Dynasty

The Chinese civilization is a country with a bright history of 5,000 years, in the process also flourished in the summer, Shang, Zhou, Qin and Han, Tang, Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties and so on. Among them, the Zhou reign was the longest, lasting 791 years. But in history it is divided into two weeks, the Western and Eastern Zhou. And we are going to talk about how the Western Zhou became the Eastern Zhou today.

I believe that you've all heard the story about the king You of Zhou , the last monarch of the Western Zhou Dynasty, who teased the lords with a beacon of fire. In the legendary version of the story, in order to make his favorite concubine Bao si happy, King You played with the lords several times with a beacon, so that when the Rong Di really hit, he lit the beacon, and the lords also thought it was a trick to come to the rescue, and eventually died and the country was destroyed.

But in fact, this story is actually implausible. And in fact, due to the infrastructure of that era, summons between vassals did not rely on beacons, but rather on fast horses that reported messages. So this story is not scientific at all, and even less credible. So why would there be such a story?

We all know that history is written by the victor, that is to say, the victor wants to prove the stupidity of (King You of Zhou) with this incident. At this time, you have to think, what caused the failure of king you of Zhou?

This must start from King Zhou You's grandfather, King Zhou Li. In history, King Zhou Li was a famous tyrant , but how many people who actually made it to the top of the throne were really stupid? In fact, he was an ambitious king, but he just ended up playing the game badly.

At that time, the greatest threat to the Zhou Dynasty was the northwest of the Rongdi, threatening every monarch to deal with it as a top priority. However, it was already at the point where no one was able to completely control anyone, and no one could win or lose. At this time, King Li of Zhou's method was to conquer Jing and Chu in the south, which was reasonable in terms of strategy, because the economic output in the south was better. Once it was defeated, it would greatly enhance the national strength. However, this is also a very risky move, after all, to guard against the northwest's rongdi, which was already very strenuous.

In the end, unsurprisingly, he played it wrong. King Zhou Li's southern expedition to Jingchu made some of the tribes/nations next to the Zhou dynasty very nervous, and who knows if they would eat themselves up as well? They have strengthened their military precautions against the Zhou dynasty. At the same time Rong Di was the enemy of Zhou Dynasty, not so obedient, Zhou Dynasty used its power to attack others, of course Rong Di would take this opportunity to attack Zhou Dynasty.

As the saying goes, when a cannon goes off, it's worth ten thousand taels of gold. Warfare is all about the economy. Under a four-sided war, it requires a great source of wealth to support it. That is, King Li of Zhou needs to increase the tax, increase the tax. And we should know, Xia, Shang and Zhou are all slave societies. Slaves do not have property, the life of the slaves are noble. In other words, King Li of Zhou was taxing the nobles, stealing food from the nobles. This was met with a huge backlash from the nobles, and finally in 841 B.C., there was a riot that surrounded the palace, and King Li fled in a panic. But we all think about it, the Zhou Dynasty was a slave society, the riot is really the common people?

At that time, the road of Zhou Dynasty was very difficult. Even in the Tang, song, yuan, Ming and Qing Dynasties, it was extremely difficult for an ordinary people to go to the capital. In the Zhou Dynasty, it was very difficult for ordinary people to go from their hometown to the capital of Zhou Dynasty. If you have this kind of skill, you might as well refuse to pay taxes or escape to the mountains. Eventually King Li of Zhou died in 828 BC ,at the site of the pig iron (now Huo County, Shanxi). which was a play in which all the vassals of the Zhou dynasty joined forces to kill the king. As long as King Li of Zhou was the king, he had to pay taxes according to the decree issued by him. And only if King Li of Zhou is gone will the tax on their heads be gone.

In the 14 years since King li of Zhou was expelled from the palace to his death, these princes elected Duke Zhao (to call Mu Gonghu), Duke Zhou (Duke Ding of Zhou) and gongbohe, etc., temporarily acting as the government of the Zhou Dynasty and performing the duties of the king of Zhou. After the death of King li of Zhou, the crown prince Jing, who had been raised by Duke Shoumu, ascended the throne. This was the King Xuan of Zhou in the history books.

King Xuan of Zhou reigned for 46 years, because his rise to the throne depended on the election of all the vassals. It is also because of this kind of inaction and not tossing, everyone has a good evaluation of it, and also called that period of history "King Xuan Zhongxing". However, it's normal to think about it. The standard of a prosperous farming society is that there are more people and more food. As long as we don't fight and toss and put the most manpower into farming production, we will naturally produce more food and more people will be able to support.

But what king wants to be a salty fish and has no dreams? With being a king for longer and longer, and gradually becoming more and more in control of the dynasty, the Zhou dynasty became more and more powerful. The more clear King Xuan Zhou became about where the threat to his dynasty came from, Rongdi and Jingchu, that both needed to be engaged to convince. If left unchecked, those were two existences that could have annexed the Zhou capital. Unlike those vassals who could submit to a new ruler, for the Zhou Dynasty's royal family, the only outcome that was waiting for them was death. It was under these circumstances that King Xuan of the Zhou Dynasty, just like his father, King Li of the Zhou Dynasty, began to go on a campaign of war. In the beginning, with the foundation of ""King Xuan Zhongxing", and won many battles and increased the ruling territory of the Zhou Dynasty. However, as the "King Xuan Zhongxing"'s foundation was exhausted, King Xuan of the Zhou Dynasty lost many battles. In particular, he was defeated by Jiang Rong in the Battle of Thousand Mu and wiped out the entire Southern Division.

It was in this context that the rhyme of "several lost Zhou states" was spread throughout the country. In the capital city of the Zhou Dynasty, there were stories of rabbits jumping and dancing, horses turning into humans, and foxes turning into horses. Now that we are all scientifically literate, we know that in those days, it was impossible for a horse to become a man or a fox to become a horse. Later, it is recorded that King Xuan of Zhou was shot with an arrow by the ghost of a minister who had been unjustly killed, and that he fell ill and died.

Where in the world are there any ghosts? And it was a ghost that could shoot arrows and kill people in broad daylight in full view of the public. To put it bluntly, this was actually another operation launched by the nobles similar to the one that had forced King Li of Zhou to die last time.

In this situation, what would you do as the succeeding King You of Zhou? At this point I believe we should all understand what the real problem was with the entire Zhou Dynasty. It was that the vassals were not on the same page as the Zhou royal family, and the vassals were moving to force the Zhou royal family to death for their own benefit.

What did King You of Zhou, aware of the problem? First of all, he drove out the old vassals of the court who had called Mu Gong, and reused his own people, the Marquis of Shen/Marquis of Guo/Marquis of Praise/Marquis of Zheng Huan Gong. The historians took this as evidence that King You of Zhou was pro-villain and far from being a wise minister. This is not what actually happened.

These were very important people. The Marquis of Shen was stationed at the border gate of Zhou, and outside was the Rongdi. The Marquis of Guo feudal land was the one at Hakguguan Pass, which was the gateway to the Guanzhong. And the Marquis of Panther was at what is now Wuguan Pass, which was the gateway to the southeast of Guanzhong. Duke Zheng Huan was the real uncle of King You of Zhou, which means he was the brother of his father, King Xuan of Zhou. Under the protection of Marquis of Shen, Marquis of Guo and Marquis of Baobao, he was able to stop the armies of other vassals and foreign enemies from entering the Zhou Dynasty capital. Do you think that these people were not important under the forced death of King Li and King Xuan of Zhou? Also this is a bummer when you choose to trust your own uncle who is related to you by blood.

This is the reason why the other vassals didn't come to the rescue when Rong Di came to attack later, this was the revenge of those vassals after being snubbed. But this was also the ill-considered place of king You of Zhou, who suddenly made such a big reform, it is true that it could prevent the crisis of being forced to die internally, but the emperor guarded the gates of the country, and the capital of Zhou Dynasty was near the border of Rong Di. In fact, from this moment onwards, the fate of the king You of Zhou was already doomed. Because relying on the power in hand alone, without the lords' diligent king's division, it was only a matter of time before the capital of the Zhou Dynasty fell. Baosi is, in the end, the one who took the blame.

So why is it that Baosi is taking the fall? King You of Zhou had a queen, called Shen Hou, yes the daughter of the Shen Hou family. She gave birth to the eldest son, the crown prince, for King You of Zhou. As for Baosi, she was the daughter of the Marquis of Baosi's family, who had entered the palace after Shen. At the same time, this Baosi was younger and more beautiful than the Empress Shen. As time went on, King You of the Zhou Dynasty disliked him and Empress Shen more and more, and liked Baosi more and more, as well as her second son. Because of the Zhou Dynasty ritual system, only the firstborn son has the right to inherit the reason, in order to let the son born of Baosi succeeded the throne, he wanted to turn Baosi into a queen, so that the son born of Baosi became a crown prince.

But you should know that Empress Shen is not an ordinary person, she is the daughter of Marquis Shen. In a fit of anger, Empress Shen took her son back to Marquis Shen's feudal land. Marquis Shen was so angry that his grandson lost the chance to be the King of Zhou all of a sudden. However, he was only a marquis with limited military power, not strong enough to fight against the King YOU of Zhou . But he was discontented, so he came up with a plan, which was to let Rong Di, the great enemy of Zhou, in to kill King You, and then unite all the discontented vassals to make his grandson the new King of Zhou. Then he really let the Rong Di in, because of the above-mentioned King YOU of Zhou had previously offended the old lords, and they all did not come to the rescue. Relying on the Marquis of Guo and the Marquis of Baoh, a group of loyal new lords in hand, they were eventually no match for Rong Di and died directly. That's why Marquis Shen's grandson, after obtaining the throne of heaven, had to write the Marquis of Guo and the Marquis of Berg as the bad guys. If they weren't bad, they were bad themselves.

And the vassals, knowing that King You of Zhou was dead, also immediately sent their troops. The dog Rong was not stupid, fought with the Zhou dynasty for so many years, knew that the vassals' army came, they had no good results to eat, had grabbed enough supplies, also withdrew. As for the vassals, they kept their promise and embraced Marquis Shen's grandson as the King of Zhou, known as the Ping King of Zhou.

King Ping of Zhou, for fear that others would play his game again, said that he was not willing to set the capital in Haojing anymore, and at his insistence, he moved to Luoyi in Guanzhong. In the history books, the Zhou Dynasty was divided into Western and Eastern Zhou by this dividing line, and because of the disobedience of King Ping of Zhou, the capital was moved to Luoyi in Guanzhong. At the same time, the prestige of the Zhou royal family was greatly diminished because King Ping of Zhou did not follow the Zhou rituals, killed his father and gained the throne. Since the king of Zhou took the lead in not following the Zhou rituals, all the vassals no longer followed the Zhou rituals. As the Zhou rituals were broken, so was the original system of Zhou control over the world. The original system of controlling the world by the Zhou dynasty was also broken, and everyone brought to the table what they dared to play under the table before, such as the riots of the countrymen and the shooting of unjust souls. This is also the reason why during the Spring and Autumn and Warring States Periods, where the Eastern Zhou Dynasty was located, it was basically the ambitious people who sang and played.

That's why we can't understand a lot of history we look at today. For example simply you go to look at the Rongdian capital of the Zhou dynasty, killing the Zhou emperor and capturing the Zhou king, the Zhou dynasty is so weak? You can't defend against this? The victors will then give you a reason for King You of Zhou to play the lords for the sake of Baosi's beacon, but come to think of it, how many people in that position are stupid enough to make such a mistake?