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- Source: Ancient Literary History
- Author/History of Ancient Style Literature
As we all know, the Zhou Dynasty was the third slave state in Chinese history, and the Western Zhou Dynasty established a system of separate seals, and the princely states guarded the dynasty, which experienced a period of prosperity. However, the drawbacks of the system of division became more and more obvious, coupled with the invasion of ethnic minorities, and the Western Zhou Dynasty perished in 771 BC.
At the time of its demise, the Zhou royal family was already in decline, and the Eastern Zhou Dynasty was established in 770 BC. The Eastern Zhou Dynasty was weak and existed for 500 years, and after 25 generations of monarchs, why did it have no chance of revival? This starts with the system of the Eastern Zhou. First of all, the Eastern Zhou inherited the Western Zhou system of division and sealing, and during the Western Zhou period, the power of the Western Zhou royal family had been dispersed by the system of division and sealing, and the power of the princely states became increasingly powerful, while the royal family declined. In this way, the system drawbacks of the division system were also inherited by the Eastern Zhou.
However, the monarchs of the Eastern Zhou Dynasty were also well aware of the current problems in the country and tried to save the situation and restore the power and dignity of the royal family. Many people now ridicule the Eastern Zhou Tianzi for not measuring his strength, but this is exactly what the monarch at that time tried to save the Eastern Zhou dynasty.
For example, the relationship between King Huan of Zhou and Zheng Guo is very delicate, Zheng Guo is a princely state very close to the royal family, and King Huan of Zhou initially gave Zheng Guo warm land because of Zheng Guo's meritorious service in protecting the royal family. Later, King Huan was dissatisfied with the strength of Zheng Guo, and he formed a building army to attack Zheng Guo, which was called the "Battle of Suige", which failed.
Seeing this, the other princely states did not want to submit to the administration of the Zhou royal family. This was because Zheng Guo was not as big as Qi Jin at that time, and King Huan of Zhou's army could not even defeat Zheng Guo, and his strength could not convince the public. In this way, the status of the Zhou royal family in the hearts of the princes and states fell again and again, and it lost its ability to be convincing.
Compared to the Western Zhou Tianzi, which was the heaven of the princely states, when it came to the Eastern Zhou, the Zhou royal family only became a means of checks and balances between the princely states. King Huan of Zhou's efforts to save the Zhou royal family became a "joke", and the Zhou royal family continued to decline even further from then on. After King Huan of Zhou, the chaos in the royal family accelerated its decay, and the existence of the royal family was just that the princely states did not want to resist the pressure of usurping the throne and rebelling against the dynasty, and for the sake of a nice false name of "co-lord of the world". The ambitions of the princely states were not to deal with the Zhou royal family, but in the struggle for power in the various princely states.
When the princely states were fiercely conquests, the Zhou royal family was also experiencing a different situation. The previous generations of monarchs of the Eastern Zhou Dynasty were still ambitious, trying to save the situation and win their position. Instead, instead of working harder, they became luckier, but more sluggish. So after them, King Xiang of Zhou began, becoming inactive and going with the flow.
Later, with the process of princes fighting for hegemony, the Zhou royal family experienced events such as the division of the royal family into two, and Han Zhao Wei forced the royal family to canonize princes. The Zhou royal family had no credibility, and the princely states no longer regarded the Zhou royal family in their eyes. The great power of the princes made the Zhou royal family exist in name only, and the princes also knew this.
Eastern Zhou was coerced and squeezed by the princes, and the existence of the Zhou royal family finally left only the palace of the royal palace, which was finally destroyed by Qin and overthrew the royal power. The wind and clouds were iterative, and the Eastern Zhou finally became a piece of smoke. Throughout the Zhou Dynasty, the system of division and sealing was linked by blood relations, and this system was also blood and defeat.
Initially, Zhou Tianzi canonized close sons with the same surname or meritorious figures with different surnames, in which case, the princes would naturally obey Zhou Tianzi's orders and achieve Zhou Tianzi's goal of strengthening local rule.
But over time, the descendants of the royal family and the princely states, the more and more descendants of the divided fiefdoms, the bond of blood relations will become weaker and weaker, and the ties will naturally not be as close as they were at the beginning. The increasingly estranged relationship would cause the princely states to gradually lose trust and submission to the Prince of Zhou, which was not conducive to the rule of the Zhou royal family.
The Eastern Zhou Dynasty directly inherited this evil result, and as more and more princes divided the fiefdoms, the original role of the sub-sealing system in "strengthening local rule" became less obvious, but gradually lost control over the localities. Once the vassal state develops economically, militarily, etc., how can they hope to have the power to control it?
In addition, the Eastern Zhou Dynasty's rule was based on the well-field system, and with the spread of iron farming tools, the trend of land privatization was overwhelmed. Later, the feudal state was adopted to formulate policies to legalize the private ownership of land, and the foundation of the Zhou Dynasty was shaken, and the collapse of the economic base also heralded the decline of the Eastern Zhou Dynasty.
While facing the increasingly objective shortcomings of the division system, the Eastern Zhou royal family experienced royal scandals such as murdering his father and killing his brother and seizing the throne for power. A dynasty was built by the painstaking efforts of many people, and the fate of the collapse of the same royal family could not be saved by several Eastern Zhou kings.
In the history textbooks, he was familiar with the Five Hegemons of Spring and Autumn and the Seven Heroes of the Warring States, but few people mentioned the royal family of the Eastern Zhou Dynasty. The five hundred years of the existence of the Eastern Zhou Dynasty have its own unique significance: although it was a situation of division of princes and constant wars, it provided lessons for later unification. At the same time, it is also an important period of cultural development, and a hundred schools of thought contend, leaving a rich ideological wealth for future generations.
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