History of Ethnic Expansion in China series
7. The Patent of the Liewang
Text/Photo/Series | Cold mountains reminisce about snow
Around 865 BC, King Yi of Zhou died, and his eldest son Ji Hu succeeded him as King Lie of Zhou.
King Lie of Zhou is the name in bronze inscriptions (剌通烈), and in traditional history books, he is known as King Li of Zhou.
King Li of Zhou was one of the more famous kings in the history of Western Zhou. Compared with King Wen of Zhou, who endured humiliation and burden, King Wu of Zhou, King Cheng of Zhou who ruled the world of Wen, King Zhao of Zhou who toured the water in the south, King Mu of Zhou who toured Kunlun in the west, and King You of Zhou who was killed in the destruction of the country, King Li of Zhou was more famous.
The reason why he is famous is more special is that there are two major events related to him, the rebellion/rebellion of the people and the republican administration.
1
During the reign of King Lie of Zhou, he engaged in patents (the benefits of sealing mountains and rivers) and slander (forbidding discussion of government), which caused the residents of the capital (the people) to complain, and when they met on the road, they did not even dare to say hello, and could only make eye contact with each other (the road was eye-catching).
Finally, in 841 BC (the twenty-fourth year of King Lie of Zhou), the inhabitants of the capital launched a rebellion, and King Lie of Zhou was forced to flee (or be expelled) from Hojing and flee to the area of Yanzhì (彘 zhì) near the State of Huo (彘 zhì, in present-day Huozhou, Shanxi).
Without the inhabitants of the capital of the king, a communist monarch (GongBohe), who happened to be serving in the dynasty, was elected to govern and govern the country on behalf of the Son of Heaven. It was not until fourteen years later, when King Lie of Zhou died, that Gong Bohe stepped down and allowed Prince Lie to succeed him.
This special period of time when there was no king, only the sages (Gong Bohe) elected by everyone (the people) presided over the state administration, which was called "republican administration" by posterity. For modern Chinese, which have a history of two or three thousand years of imperial rule, the rule without an emperor is unprecedented, so people have linked this special historical period of the Western Zhou Dynasty to call the democratically elected general system after the overthrow of the imperial system "republican system."
Back to the time of King Lie of Zhou.
Why did King Lie of Zhou only engage in a "patent" and "slander", which triggered a rebellion among the residents of the capital, and was expelled from Beijing and killed elsewhere? You must know that Qin Shi Huang's burning of books pit Confucianism and horizontal conquest only triggered a rebellion in the homeland of the Six Kingdoms, and the homeland of the Qin State is still as solid as a rock. Four consecutive generations of emperors in the Qing Dynasty engaged in literal prisons and chased after the taxes owed by the gentry, but they did not even rebel.
The reason is that the later dynasties implemented the Qin system (legal system), and the power of the emperor was very large, but in the Western Zhou, the power of the Son of Heaven was much smaller than that of later generations.
Due to the legacy of tribal politics, the people living in the capital were basically the same clan relatives of the King of Zhou. Before these people, the status of the King of Zhou was similar to that of the patriarch, not the supreme emperor. And because of the implementation of the feudal system, whether it is the Caiyi vassals within Wang Qi or the feudal princes outside Wang Qi, they all have relatively large autonomy (semi-independent government, army), and the King of Zhou is more like a suzerain or the head of the princes in front of them, rather than an autocratic emperor who can control them in all directions.
Therefore, when King Zhou Lie infringed on the financial power of the countrymen and princes, but did not allow them to complain and discuss, it was natural to be strongly rebounded by them. Therefore, it was natural that after the residents of the capital expelled King Lie of Zhou, they elected Gongbo and Dai Tianzi to rule, and the caiyi vassals within Wang Qi and the feudal princes outside Wang Qi also watched and acquiesced, and did not lead the army to serve the king and escort the king of Zhou back to Beijing.
This history of the Zhou Lie king period is very similar to the experience of King Charles I of the island nation at the northwestern tip of Eurasia 2500 years later. Tragically, after Charles I was expelled from the Parliamentary Party, there were still royal parties who supported him in a war with the Parliamentary Party, while King Zhou Lie was completely abandoned by his subjects and could only hide in the land for his eternal life.
At the same time, fortunately, King Zhou Liezheng was completely abandoned by his subjects, but he was able to die well. Charles I, on the other hand, was beheaded and tortured because of his great threat to the Parliamentary Party, after a failed confrontation with the Parliamentary Party.
2
Back to the Western Zhou.
King Zhou Lie's behavior of collecting wealth and forbidding words caused a backlash among the Chinese people, which can be understood. But the question is, why did the king of the spirits collect wealth? In the face of the complaints and discussions of the Chinese people, why did he choose the toughest repressive attitude?
In the interpretation of traditional history books, it is naturally because King Zhou Lie is greedy and absurd. But this is obviously the result of the fact that the people of the country after the republican administration had the right to speak, and the Confucian habit of later generations to comment on history from the moral high ground and smear King Zhou Lie.
If you look at it from a normal historical perspective, if a monarch begins to accumulate wealth, it is nothing more than a financial problem and a tight national treasury. To put it bluntly, there is not enough money.
To maintain a regime, morality belongs to the superficial decorative level of things, and the actual operation depends on money and food. Without money and food, the salaries of officials cannot be paid, no one can work, and the operation of the regime will be paralyzed. The army's food, supplies, and weapons cannot be sent out, and the soldiers' combat effectiveness is reduced and they are unable to win the battle, and if they are heavy, they mutiny, and the barrel of the gun is lost, and there is still political power. In the years of famine, without money and food relief, the people will rebel if they cannot survive, and the people will revolt everywhere, and the foundation of rule will naturally fester.
These problems cannot be solved by moral preaching alone; in the final analysis, they can only be solved by money and food.
However, King Zhou Lie's father, King Zhou Yi, left the King of Lie with a situation of "Filial Piety and Zhongxing", Huaiyi and Inuyasha were defeated, and the finances were also rectified, so why did King Lie still lack money?
Leaving aside the slow decay of the fiscal system itself, the only thing that can plunge a regime into a financial crisis for a short period of time is war, and it is a frequent and large-scale war.
Take an example of ancient Chinese history that everyone is familiar with.
In the late Ming Dynasty, the Ming Dynasty, the late reign of the Wanli Emperor, there was a wanton collection of wealth. He sent eunuchs from the inner court to collect various mining taxes in other places, and was attacked by the government and the public as greedy, and some Qing history experts also followed behind to discredit the Wanli Emperor.
At the beginning of the Wanli Emperor's reign, his father, the Longqing Emperor, left him a Zhongxing situation that had been governed by Xu Jie and Gao Gong, and in the early days of Wanli's reign, the famous minister Zhang Juzheng implemented the New Deal and accumulated millions of taels of silver for the treasury of the Wanli Dynasty.
However, in the middle of the Wanli Dynasty, the borders of the Ming Empire were full of smoke, with Japan invading Korea in the east, the Ningxia Dabai rebellion in the northwest, the Yang Yinglong rebellion in Bozhou in the southwest, and the Burmese Donggu Dynasty invading Yunnan in the southwest. After the four wars of Korea, Ningxia, Bozhou, and Ming-Burma, the national treasury had long been hollowed out, so the subsequent wanli wealth collection act appeared.
The situation of the Wanli Emperor is very similar to that of King Lie of Zhou, who took over a ZTE situation, but in the later period, he needed to collect wealth. Therefore, in the middle and early period of The Zhou Lie King, it is likely that he also encountered frequent and large-scale wars.
3
There is no record of any wars during the Liewang period in the Records of history, but the Bamboo Book Chronicle and bronze inscriptions record several wars that took place during the Zhou Liewang period.
The first war took place in the third year of the Liewang (862 BC). In this year, Huaiyi in the southeast once again invaded the borders of the Zhou Kingdom, and although King Lie of Zhou was young, he led an army to march in person. However, King Zhou Lie's conquest was more symbolic, and the real person responsible for directing the war was the father of Duke Yu, who was the commander of the victorious battle against Inuyasha during the reign of King Yi of Zhou (or King Kao of Zhou).
Unlike the great victory against Inuyasha more than ten years ago, this time the Zhou people did not achieve the desired effect in the battle against Huaiyi, at most forcing Huaiyi to retreat, but did not kill the Huaiyi army, let alone conquer the territory of Huaiyi.
This war is recorded in the Bamboo Book Chronicle and the "Yu Zhongyu" inscription.
The second war took place in the eleventh year of the Liewang (854 BC). In this year, Xi Rong of the Longxi Plateau invaded the western border of the Zhou Kingdom, and the Yin Qin family, which defended the western border of the Zhou Kingdom, fought with Xi Rong.
At this time, the Yinqin family has been divided into two branches. One is the Dazong Da Luo family, headed by Da Luo's eldest son, Ying Cheng, the grandson of the aforementioned Marquis Shen. The other branch was the Xiaozong Qin Feizi family, whose leader Qin Feizi was the son of Da Luo, who was separated from the Yin Qin family during the Zhou Kao King's reign. Emperor Daizong lived in The Area of Present-day Li County, Tianshui City, and Emperor Xiaozong lived in Qinyi, east of West Dog Hill, around the present-day Qingshui County of Tianshui City.
Xi Rong's invasion led to the fall of Xi Inu Qiu, the Da Luo family was attacked by Xi Rong, and Da Luo himself was killed. Qin Feizi was weak and powerless to support Inuyasha, so he could only stick to Qin Yi. King Lie of Zhou also sent an army to conquer Xirong, but did not achieve any ideal results, nor did he conquer the territory of Xirong.
This war is recorded in the Bamboo Book Chronicle, the History of Qin Benji, and the Later Han Dynasty Book of Xiyi.
The third war took place in the thirteenth year of the Liewang (852 BC). In this year, Huaiyi once again invaded the southeastern border of the Zhou Kingdom.
As in the Huaiyi invasion ten years ago, King Lie of Zhou once again marched in person. However, this time, the eldest father of duke Yu may have died of old age, and the generals who followed the Liewang on the expedition were Wu Wu and Yu Sheng. In addition, the southern tujue power that accompanied the Zao Corridor, the Eguo monarch Yu Fang, also led an army through the Tongbai Mountain, and the Zhou army attacked Huaiyi from the north and south.
Compared with the three-year counterattack of the Liewang against Huaiyi, this counterattack can be said to have achieved remarkable results. The Zhou Dynasty successively conquered the four Huaiyi Fang states (or place names) of Jiao, Jin, Tong, and Song, and finally hit the vicinity of the capital of the State of Fu, forcing the monarchs of the State of Fu to leave the city and surrender.
After the zhou people's victory, the military might also shocked the Huaiyi countries, and eventually twenty-six Huaiyi Fang states submitted and went to the capital of the Zhou Dynasty to make a pilgrimage to the Zhou Lie. King Lie of Zhou was overjoyed, cast a bell out of captured bronze, and put the historical record of the victory over Huaiyi on the inscription of the bronze bell, which was later called "㝬鐘", also known as Zong Zhou Zhong.
In addition to Zong Zhou Zhong, this war is also recorded in the Bamboo Book Chronicle and in inscriptions such as Wu Shu Shu ( 無㠱簋 , 翏生盨 ) , and Ehou Yi Fangding ( Ehou Yi Fangding ) .
The fourth war, which coincided almost at the same time as this counterattack against Huaiyi, took place in the fourteenth year of the Liewang (851 BC).
In this year, King Lie of Zhou had already mobilized Wang Shi's army and was fighting huaiyi in the Huai River valley, and the troops in the Wang Qi area were relatively empty, and the foxes in the northwest of the Longdong Plateau took the opportunity to invade the Guanzhong area of Wang Qi.
Bypassing shenguo, the foxes flowed down the Jing River, breaking through the land and invading the western outskirts of Hojing. Subsequently, Duoyou, the defender of The Town, led an army into battle, and took advantage of this time difference to evacuate from Guanzhong and wander to Xunyi in the eastern part of the land, and plundered and captured the Zhou residents there.
Duoyou led his army in pursuit, chased the remnants of the foxes in the lacquered land, and after a big battle, beheaded more than 200 people, captured 23 people, captured 117 chariots, and rescued some of the plundered residents of Xunyi.
Subsequently, Duoyou continued to pursue, engaging the Foxes in Gong, Shi, and Yangzuka respectively, beheading 150 people and freeing the people on the outskirts of Hojing who had been captured by the Foxes.
This war is recorded in the Bamboo Book Chronicle and the Duoyouding inscription.
The exact year of the fifth war is uncertain, but it is certain that it was fourteen years after the king. Because the other side that was the enemy of the Zhou Kingdom was the Eguo Kingdom, which had once attacked Huaiyi with the King of Zhou Lie.
4
After the unexpected death of King Zhou Zhao's southern tour, the Zhou Kingdom adopted a contraction strategy in the Jianghan region, and Zeng Guo, as a great power in southern Turkey, was also evacuated to the Nanyang Basin, and the power space of the Zao Corridor was inherited by the State of E, and the State of E thus developed into a great power in the eastern Han region, controlling the Jinxi Passage in the south of the kingdom.
Therefore, for the Zhou Kingdom, the status of the State of E is very important. In order to win over the State of E, King Yi of Zhou also married a princess of the State of E, and married the State of E. The State of E at this time was very similar to the State of Qi during the reign of King Cheng of Zhou.
However, the State of E was not willing to be a prominent foreign relative. After experiencing the decline of the Zhou Yi King' period, the unintended heart of the Eguo gradually emerged. Although after Xiaoyi Zhongxing, King Lie of Zhou counterattacked Huaiyi twice, the first defeat, and the second time also needed the State of E to attack from the south to defeat Huaiyi, which made the State of E think that the strength of the Kingdom of Zhou could not be returned, and also believed that Huaiyi was available.
So the State of E chose the path that the Kingdom of Zhou had taken more than two hundred years ago. Like King Wen of Zhou and the anti-Shang of the Jianghan states, the Marquis of Ehou also united with Huaiyi and Jingman, raising troops against Zhou and trying to replace Zhou.
The scale of this rebellion was very large, and the Jinghuai coalition army went north directly along the Han river and Danshui, broke through the Qinling Wuguan Road, and hit the upper reaches of the Luo River, which is now the area of Shangluo City in Shaanxi Province, only more than a hundred kilometers away from Hojing.
Whether it was the rebellion of Guan Cai and wu Geng during the Zhou ChengWang period, or the Western Expedition of Xu Guo during the Zhou Mu King, or the Huaiyi and Inu Rong attacks on the Zhou Kingdom during the Zhou Yi Wang, they did not reach such a huge scale. Only in the pre-Shang era, when the Shang emperor Di Xin faced the Battle of Muye, could it be compared with this time when the Eguo rebelled against Zhou.
This was the closest the Zhou Kingdom had been to the fall of the kingdom.
In the face of this rebellion, King Lie of Zhou ordered the East Eighth Division and the West Sixth Division to move. In addition to all the armed forces under the direct jurisdiction of the Zhou Kingdom, the armies and tribal soldiers of the princely states were also mobilized to counterattack the Eguo alliance with Jingman and Huaiyi in all directions.
Compared with the comparison of shangzhou strength on the eve of the Battle of Makino, the Eguo at this time was still weaker after all. Before the destruction of the Shang, the Zhou state already controlled Guanzhong and the Luoyang Basin, and after adding allies, the strength was equal to that of the Shang state, and the royal strife within the Shang kingdom, the Zhou people could destroy the Shang in one battle.
At this time, the Eguo State could only directly control the Suiju Corridor, and did not exceed the area and population of Zhou Wangqi. Even with the addition of Jingman in the Jianghan region and Huaiyi in the Huai River Valley, the overall strength can only be matched by the strength of Zhou Wangqi at most. And the Zhou Kingdom not only had one Zhou Wangqi, but also hundreds of princely states in the east. In addition, there was no civil strife within the Zhou royal family, and there was no leading party to help the Eguo destroy the Zhou in World War I.
In the end, King Lie of Zhou, who counterattacked with all his strength, defeated the State of E, Huaiyi, and Jingman. Since the State of E was the country of King Zhou Lie's maternal uncle, and in the second war against Huaiyi, King Zhou Lie's various rewards for the State of E, and the glory was revealed to the princes, so the rebellion of the State of E caught King Zhou Lie off guard and made King Zhou Lie angry to the extreme. During the counterattack on the State of E, King Lie issued the royal order of "do not leave a child behind", which means to exterminate the State of E, which shows the resentment of King Lie of Zhou against the State of E.
However, in the end, the state of E was not exterminated, but was only relocated to the Nanyang Basin and taken care of nearby, while Zeng Guo went south to take over the Suizao Corridor again.
The reason for this is that the first reason is that the state of E, after all, is the country of King Zhou Lie's maternal uncle, and in the name of the Kingdom of Zhou, which rules the world with virtue, it has done the slaughter of relatives and cannot explain it to the princes of the world. The second reason is that even if King Lie of Zhou poured all his strength into the country, he was powerless to slaughter the state of E, and could only defeat the state of E and accept the surrender of the state of E.
In this war, the Western Sixth Division and the Eastern Eighth Division of the Zhou Kingdom performed poorly, and it was the army of the princely states that finally defeated the Eguo army and captured the Ehou Yifang. The commander of this army was named Yu, probably from the state of Xing. The army led by Xing Yu was only more than a thousand people and a hundred chariots, while the total strength of the Zhou Wang Division was more than 40,000 people.
The Eguo Kingdom, which more than 40,000 Wang Shi could not take, was taken by more than a thousand princely armies, so why did the Wang Shi's combat effectiveness decline to this point?
5
The roots are still financial. Although Xiaoyi Zhongxing left a not very bad situation, after the four wars in the middle and early period of the Liewang, the national treasury had been almost consumed. Without the continuous support of the national treasury, the decline of the army is inevitable.
It is precisely because of these fierce wars that King Zhou Lie, after the end of the counter-rebellion, deeply felt that the kingdom's finances still needed to be reorganized, and the national treasury needed to be replenished again.
However, the Zhou Dynasty has been established for nearly two hundred years, and the large and small noble vassals have long since encroached on the land of the Zhou King, and formed a powerful interest group.
It was impossible to restore the WangTian system, and King Lie of Zhou eventually adopted rongyi gong's advice and implemented the patent system.
This patent is not the current patent protection, but refers to the collection of some interests that originally belonged to the private sector to the Royal Government. For example, the salt and iron tea monopoly pioneered by the later Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty is a patent.
During the reign of King Lie of Zhou, the salt profit was in the hands of the State of Qi, the iron smelting technology had not yet spread to Middle-earth, tea had not yet been included in the daily recipes of the people at that time, and the remaining gold and copper benefits were still in the hands of Zeng Guo. Therefore, the benefits of salt, iron, tea and copper, King Zhou Lie was unable to specialize.
However, at that time, there was another kind of benefit, yamazawa's benefit. At that time, the mountains and lakes were not owned by the royal family, but belonged to the terra nullius, and the common people, from the nobles down to the commoners, could easily profit from them, or chop firewood, hunt, or fish.
Rong Yigong suggested that these mountains, rivers and lakes should be nationalized, and the people would need to pay taxes to profit from them. King Lie of Zhou adopted this suggestion, and around the twentieth year of liewang (845 BC), he opened the new policy of liewang.
And then the history that follows is the wrath of grievances, the slander of the king, and the eyes of the road. Three years later, the people of the country rioted, the king fled, and the republic was administered. As already said, I will not repeat it.
This article is the original article of the history of Hanshan spray
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