The author has traveled to Anyang Yinxu, Tangyin Yili City, Xinxiang Muye ancient battlefield, and other places, recalling the great battle more than 3,000 years ago, is still heart pounding, but that history is after all too distant, today’s people’s understanding of that history mostly from the novel “Feng Shen Yan Yi” and some TV series, for the real history know little, the war of King Wu to conquer the Zhou is really so righteous and noble, the author conducted I have made the following analysis.
First, is King Zhou really useless?
The founder of the Shang dynasty was Qi, whose mother was called Jandi, the daughter of Ancient State, the second concubine of the emperor, Di-Chau (one of the Five Emperors). When she went to bathe in the river, she saw a Xuan bird drop an egg, so she picked it up and ate it, which made her pregnant and gave birth to Che, so today there is a place called Xuan bird in Anyang, and there are sculptures of Xuan bird in many places. The Shang dynasty was founded by Tang, who was a tyrannical and despotic Xia Jie. However, due to the harsh natural conditions, the Shang dynasty moved its capital several times, and the twentieth king, Pan Geng, moved the capital to Yin (Xiaotun village, northwest of Anyang). –The Shang dynasty made great strides, inventing the earliest writing, the oracle bone script, creating a brilliant bronze civilization (including the world’s largest tripod, the Houmu Dangding), and the last emperor, Emperor Xin, who was disparaged by later generations and called King Zhou (Zhou means “cruelty”). King Zhou was a despotic and lascivious king who set up a wine pond and a meat forest, did not listen to advice, and set up torture to punish ministers who betrayed him. But was King Zhou really useless? The Book of History. In the Records of Yin, it is written that King Zhou was “quick in speech, quick in hearing, and quick in seeing; he was so talented that he could fight fierce beasts with his hands”. During his reign, King Zhou made many conquests and expanded the territory of the Shang Dynasty to its peak, especially when he conquered the southeastern barbarians and opened up Shandong, the lower reaches of the Huai River, and the Yangtze River Valley, greatly expanding the scope of the Chinese people’s activities from the Yellow River to the Yellow River Valley. The great leader Mao Zedong also considered King Zhou to be a very capable man who could write and fight.
Second. The justice of King Wu’s conquest of Zhou
The founder of Zhou, Houji, was named Abandon. His mother was the daughter of the Tai clan and her name was Jiang Yuan. Jiang Yuan was the main concubine of Di Cai. When Jiang Yuan was out in the countryside, she saw a giant’s footprint and was so pleased with it that she wanted to step on it. After he became an adult, he served as an agricultural teacher under Emperor Yao and taught the people how to grow crops and made great achievements. When Emperor Shun made him an official in Tai, he called him Houji and took Ji as his surname. After many generations, he passed on to Xi Bo Ji Chang, King Wen of Zhou, who accumulated good deeds and virtues, so that all the vassals came to him. According to the Historical Records, “King Wen was detained and developed the Zhou Yi”, which means that during his detention, King Wen developed the eight trigrams of Fuxi into the 64 trigrams and wrote the Zhou Yi (there are still many people studying the Zhou Yi in Anyang). Later, the Zhou people found many rare treasures and offered them to King Zhou, so they pardoned Xibo, then King Wen died and King Wu succeeded him. The novel and the movie drama not only emphasize the justice of King Wu’s conquest of Zhou, but also the plot that King Wen left a will before his death to forbid King Wu to rebel, which I think is very absurd. Firstly, King Wen did good deeds in secret after his release, why in secret, of course, in order to increase his prestige and build up his strength in secret, without alerting King Zhou; secondly, “The Records of History” also records several conquests by King Wen, the purpose of which was to strengthen his military power and open the road from the Zhou capital to the Shang capital; thirdly, King Wen built an observatory to observe the sky, and observing Third, King Wen built an astronomical observatory to observe celestial events, which only the Son of Heaven could do, and King Wen’s purpose was to get instructions from Heaven and find a grand reason to destroy the Shang; all these things fully illustrate that King Wen had been preparing for a rebellion and had been making all kinds of preparations to destroy the Shang; fourth, King Wu continued to build up his strength after he succeeded to the throne, and in the ninth year, he went to review his army at Mengjin, and more than 800 lords came to the alliance, and they all said. “Zhou is ready to crush!” King Wu said, “You don’t know the Mandate of Heaven, you can’t do it yet.” So he led his army back. If King Wu was not prepared to rebel, why did he go to a place not far from the Shang capital to review his army, just to test the reaction of the Shang dynasty and the lords of the world, to see how successful the rebellion would be.
Third, the Shang Dynasty is really unbeatable?
Some people thought that the Shang Dynasty was unbeatable, but it was not. At that time, the Shang army was already using chariots, equipped with bronze weapons, and had a maximum strength of 13,000 soldiers, which was enough to dominate China; King Zhou launched many wars during his reign, and his army was constantly baptized by war, maintaining a strong fighting force. The army of Zhou had no advantage over that of Shang in terms of combat power. At the time of the rise of Zhou, King Zhou already felt the serious threat posed by the Zhou people and decided to use his army against Zhou. However, the rebellion of the Dongyi tribe was a failure. In order to quell the rebellion, King Zhou mobilized his troops to attack the Eastern barbarians, resulting in a great void of troops on the western front. The Shang army at the battle of Muye was not the elite army of the Shang dynasty, but a temporarily armed group of slaves and prisoners, mainly from the eastern barbarians, who did not want to work for their enemies and turned against them in front of the battle. In addition, during the Xia and Shang dynasties, the Shang dynasty, with its capital city as the ruling center, consolidated its rule and expanded its tribute areas by conquering the surrounding tribal alliances. King Zhou was so proud of his power that he did not seriously consider fortifying his capital, relying on mere offense for his security. In the Cold War era, building a city was the main defensive measure, and with a certain number of defenders and sufficient food inside, the city could be defended and even defeated by attackers. The late Shang Dynasty built its capital in Chao Ge for more than 270 years, and the archaeological findings of the Yin ruins show that the city covered an area of 24 square kilometers, but there was no wall, only a trench connected to the Huan water. If the city was defeated in the field, the capital would be in danger, and it would not be possible to mobilize troops from far away. If the Shang capital has good defense and can hold on until the southeast army returns to help, the victory is still uncertain. The success of King Wu’s expedition against Zhou can be described as a classic example of effective use of the opponent’s overall military strategy mistakes, and grasp the favorable timing to attack the strong with weakness.
Fourth, the history of the lessons of fiction and television series can not be considered real history, but we even read history books should have their own thinking, all believe in books is better than no books! History is written by the victor, in order to beautify the Zhou dynasty itself, had to vilify the enemy King Zhou, King Wu’s invasion of Zhou is just a normal dynastic change, power alternation, full of blood and intrigue, the Zhou dynasty to show the justice of the invasion of Zhou and do a lot of distortion propaganda, coupled with later literary imagination to become the version of today.