The Wu Dynasty is a famous example in Chinese history in which few victories are won more, and it is also one of the few decisive battles in history to complete the rise and fall of the dynasty in just one night.
As for the strength of the shang and zhou warring forces, the clearest record comes from the "History of Zhou Benji": "The King of Wu has 300 soldiers, 3,000 Tiger Ben, and 45,000 Jiashi, and the King of Yin, Wen Wu, also sent 700,000 troops to the King of Wu." ”
But this record is very watery.
Because it was not until the Warring States period that China had a battle scale of hundreds of thousands of troops in a campaign, and before that, in the Period of Yin Shang, both the population and the mobilization capacity were far from the possibility of dispatching 700,000 troops.
Therefore, later generations speculate that the history books may have mistakenly copied seventeen to seventy. However, as to whether king Huan has 170,000 troops, we will not press the table for the time being, and first discuss the attacking side, that is, the strength of king Wu of Zhou.
In addition to the "Records of History", other pre-Qin history books do not mention that King Wu of Zhou had forty-five thousand soldiers, such as the "Shangshu Mu Oath" says that "the King of Wu has three hundred chariots and three hundred tigers", the Yi Zhou Shu says "Zhou Che is three hundred and fifty times", and the Lü Shi Chunqiu, Mencius, and the Warring States Policy all say that the wu king's strength is "three hundred chariots, three thousand tigers".
It can be seen that the lower limit of King Wu's military strength is three hundred chariots plus three hundred tigers, and the upper limit is three hundred chariots plus three thousand tigers, and there is no so-called forty-five thousand soldiers.
According to the Western Zhou military system, a chariot will be equipped with seventy-two infantry, but this scale is only available in the middle and late Western Zhou, in the late Yin Zhou period, the chariot personnel allocation was only 10 people, of which there were 3 people on the car, that is: the middle one was the royal, the left one was shooting, and the right one was attacking. Archaeological discoveries of the Yin Ruins and the early Western Zhou Chema Pit also confirm that before and after the Wu King's cutting, the chariot formation was ten people per passenger.
According to this view, the number of troops used by King Wu of Zhou for logging was at best 6,000 people.
Where did Sima Qian's information that King Wu of Zhou and 45,000 jiashi came from?
The Shang Dynasty military system was based on divisions and brigades, and in the early days there were three divisions (Wang Clan Army) of left, middle and right, each division of about 3,000 or 4,000 people, and by the time of Wu Yiwending's reign, it was expanded to six divisions, plus the sub-ethnic, multi-sub-ethnic, and five-ethnic armies within Wang Qi, with a total strength of about 50,000 or so.
As a subordinate of Yin Shang, the State of Zhou also followed the example of the Shang Dynasty, with divisions as the system, and by the time of King Wu of Zhou, in order to complete the great cause of cutting, the "Usurpation" formed six divisions, and after the destruction of the Shang Dynasty, the Western Zhou Dynasty formed the Yin Eighth Division, and the total strength of these fourteen divisions was about 50,000 people.
Therefore, when king Wu was cutting down the silk, the sixth division plus eight servant states such as Yong, Shu, and Qiang, and mobilized 30,000 or 40,000 soldiers was also in line with the reality at that time. In fact, the Chinese does record the "Li Sixth Division" before King Wu of Zhou launched the Battle of Muye, which is also the basis for Sima Qian's statement that King Wu still had 45,000 soldiers.
However, these more than 40,000 soldiers did not participate in the Battle of Makino, because the "Spring and Autumn of the Lü Clan" clearly mentioned: "The King of Wu took the throne, with the sixth division cutting Yin, the sixth division did not arrive, and the sharp soldiers conquered Makino." That is to say, before the Saturday Division arrived, the Battle of Makino was completed, and the Sixth Division was only responsible for the follow-up tail sweeping work, and Lü Ta ordered the Yue Opera Fang; Hou Lai ordered the Cutting Of the Yue Dynasty; and the Hundred Orders ordered the Tiger Ben Oath and ordered the Guards...
In this way, the King of Wu did bring only 6,000 people before destroying Yin Shang.
So what were the troops used for defense on the Shang side?
Except for the "Records of History", other historical materials do not specify the strength of the King of Qi, but one thing is certain, the strength of the King of Qi is more than that of King Wu of Zhou, otherwise it cannot be called a battle of "winning more with less".
During the reign of King Huan, Dongyi repeatedly launched rebellions, pinning down a large number of Yin Shang troops. However, this does not mean that the main force of the Shang Dynasty has been exhausted. Oracle's bones revealed that the Shang Dynasty's foreign conquests have always adopted the mode of the central army plus the local army of the princes, such as the composition of the troops of the women and the Qiang, that is, the central army plus 10,000 plus the local army of 10,000, and the conquest of Dongyi by the King of Sui was also the requisition of Youhou Xi's troops.
Judging from the "Journey of Yin Shang, Its Journey like a Forest" described in the Book of Poetry, King Wu of Zhou was facing a regular army of Yin Shang who had been fighting for many years, and it was by no means a ragtag crowd of so-called slaves and prisoners that were rumored to be rumored in later generations, which was also the reason why King Huan dared to give up the city to wait for help and chose to fight with the Zhou army in the wilderness.
In fact, in China before the Spring and Autumn Period, wars were only served by the children of nobles, and slaves and prisoners could only engage in miscellaneous work, and it was impossible to drive a chariot to the battlefield.
In addition, according to the excavated oracle bones, Emperor Xin of The King of Sui fought countless battles in his lifetime, had extremely rich combat experience, and he himself was also "very sensitive to smell, superior in material strength, and fierce in hand", and his courage and martial prowess were abnormal. On the other hand, King Wu of Zhou, in addition to the Battle of Makino, there is no other record of King Wu of Zhou in the history books.
Whether it was command ability or military strength, King Wu of Zhou was inferior to King Huan, so why did King Wu of Zhou dare to launch a great war to destroy the Shang with only 6,000 people?
This has to start with a few abnormal actions of King Wu of Zhou.
When King Wu of Zhou sent his troops to arrive at Shuishui, heavy rain poured down, the river flooded, and when he reached Huaicheng, the city wall collapsed, and when he reached Gongtou Mountain, the mountain collapsed, and a large number of soldiers fell ill, and even Zhou Gong and Uncle Huo felt panicked and advised "Death, please rest", but King Wu of Zhou and Lü Shang were unusual, insisting on arriving at Muye on Jiazi Day without the arrival of the sixth division of the main force.
After that, the Zhou army marched forty miles a day, and after 6 days of forced marching, it arrived at the Yin suburb of Muye. During the pre-war mobilization, King Wu of Zhou confidently informed the Zhou army that "it is not allowed to violently kill the runners of the Division, and it should be thought that the Battle of Zhou is also", as if it had anticipated in advance that the Shang army would have "runners".
Regarding the abnormality of King Wu of Zhou, the "Spring and Autumn of the Lü Dynasty" once revealed that before the Battle of Muye, King Wu of Zhou secretly met with Yin Shang's courtiers Jiaohai, and after that, when he arrived at Kunshui, Jiaohai came again, and the two sides finalized that "Jiazi Day would go outside Yin City".
Behind the rubber mane is the aristocratic forces within the Yin merchants who oppose the King of Sui, and the "sub-clan" army controlled by these nobles is the main target of the former defection of the Shang army, but the King of The Shang knows nothing about it.
The appearance of Neiying disrupted the position of the Yin Shang army, so that the main chariot led by Lü Shang could smoothly "rush through the Emperor's Division", but what really changed the situation of the war was the death of the King of Yin.
Regarding the ending of the King of Lu, the most influential record at present also comes from the "Records of History", "The soldiers of the Lu dynasty all collapsed and walked away, and instead, they entered the deer platform, dressed in their special jade, and burned themselves to the fire and died."
In fact, before Sima Qian compiled the "Records of History", there were always two theories about the final outcome of the King of Lu, one was that the "Book of Yi zhou" said that he went to Lutai and set himself on fire after defeat; the other was that the "Lü Shi Chunqiu", "Wei Miaozi", "Han Feizi", and "Bamboo Book Chronicle" said that the king of Lu was captured in the Pastoral Field Battle. ("Birds in Makino", "Birds in Makino", "King Wu captures In Makino")
Among them, the statement of the Book of Yi zhou belongs to the isolated evidence, but Sima Qian accepted this statement.
However, the claim that Meng Yu set himself on fire after the defeat of King Huan was full of doubts.
First of all, the archaeological excavations of the Tomb of Yin Ruins confirmed that the Yin merchants did have the practice of placing jade next to their heads and waists, but there was no funeral custom of having a large amount of jade on their bodies, and using jade as clothing was a custom that appeared after the Warring States, and the actual object was not discovered until the Han tomb.
Secondly, after the Battle of Makino, King Wu of Zhou had a move to behead the Jade Gate and hang it in Taibai. It is not known where the Jade Gate is now, but one thing is clear: the King was beheaded outside the city gates.
If King Huan had already set himself on fire in Lutai, how could King Wu of Zhou be sure that King Huan was dead before he entered the city? The Book of Yi Zhou says that the fire was so great that "four thousand jade jade was sold", and since the fire had even burned the jade, how could the body of the king of Lu be taken to the city gate to behead the flag after the fire was burned?
Compared with the isolated evidence of the Book of Yi Zhou, various historical records of the Warring States period record that the King of Lu was captured in battle and beheaded, and the King of Wu hung the head of the King of Yi on a large white flag.
What is true and what is false? Archaeological findings support the latter possibility.
In the Han tomb of Yinqueshan in Shandong, archaeologists found the pre-Qin version of Liutao. "Liutao", also known as "Taigong Liutao", the author is Lü Shang (Jiang Ziya), a witness to the Battle of Makino, although the bamboo jane is seriously corroded, but the 736th and 737th Janes on the record of the Battle of Makino are well preserved, "The day of the koshi, to the makino." Birds are subjected to their heads in white".
Obviously, the king was captured on the battlefield, which not only explained the rationality of his being beheaded by King Wu of Zhou and hung the flag, but also explained the fact that the Zhou army captured a large number of Merchant troops after the Muye War.
The Book of Yi Zhou records that "there are 17,770,700 million for 100,000,000 people, and 230 for 300 million prisoners." This record, which was originally used to exaggerate the achievements of the Zhou army, reflects the so-called rebellion of the Shang army, and the victory of the King of Zhou Wu without a fight is an exaggeration of fiction, and the truth of the fact is that after the King of Zhou was captured and killed on the battlefield, the Shang army was leaderless, which triggered a great collapse. As for the reason for the capture of King Huan, or related to the sudden reaction of Yin Shang Neiying, I will not repeat it here.