Since the fall of Western Zhou under the attack of Inu rong and Shen Hou, since the Zhou Ping King moved east, the income of the royal family in the zhou dynasty's ruling area was greatly reduced, so the authority and control of the former overlord of the Zhou Dynasty declined, and it was difficult to find a Zhou Huan king who wanted to reorganize the dynasty, but was also completely destroyed by zheng Guo's army, and after a long historical progress, the Zhou Dynasty entered the point of being a monk for a day and bumping a day bell, and there was no longer a powerful king with a heart. All the way to the last emperor of the Eastern Zhou Dynasty, a poor worm who coined the term debt shelter.
When the Zhou royal family was gradually weakening, the Qin state that had risen in the western region under the guidance of Shang Martin, through the transformation of the reigning monarch, became one of the most powerful princely states at that time, and the Qin army had been actively launching wars against the various princely states in the Central Plains. Under the influence of the active expansion of the Qin state, soon, the land of Han Zhao and other countries was constantly encroached upon, so it also directly affected the king of Zhou Zhao, so the king of Zhou Zhao felt very worried, so he planned to use the army and national strength of the outside country, especially the southern power of the Chu state, to help him resist the threat of the Qin state, so as to avoid the destruction of his own acres and three points of land.
Stills of King Zhou Zhao
Therefore, he gathered a small number of armies under his command from the Western Zhou Jun, and challenged the powerful state of Qin without self-control, except for Chu Yan and other princely states that sent a very small number of troops to help King Zhou Zhao, the other princely states Mingzhe protected themselves one after another, and avoided his unrealistic ideas and actions. The bold King of Zhou gathered all his armies and handed them over to Western Zhou Jun, with a total of only tens of thousands of troops. Western Zhou Jun took the tens of thousands of troops handed over to him by King Zhao of Zhou and prepared to challenge the Qin army to the west. In Yique, he encountered a large army sent by the Qin state to fight, knowing that it was difficult to ride the tiger, Western Zhou Jun could only carry his scalp under the pressure of the King of Zhou Zhao, and after several months of confrontation with the Qin army, Western Zhou Jun found that the troops of the rest of the countries had not even sent a single soldier to the battlefield.
Stills of the Qin Army
Under the murderous spirit of the powerful army of the Qin army, the Zhou army collapsed without a fight after a few months of confrontation, so the Western Zhou Jun could only return to the Zhou Kingdom with the remaining soldiers and horses, and when he saw that the Zhou army had returned without success, he borrowed money to help the rich men of the Zhou Zhao King to attack the Qin State, so they concentrated outside the palace of the King of Zhou Zhao and forced the King of Zhou Zhao to borrow their military expenses. King Zhao of Zhou, who had not yet paid for the military, closed the palace door and hid himself on a high platform in the middle of the palace, which was called a well-known debt shelter by later generations.
This defeat exacerbated the turmoil of the country, which was already weakening day by day, and the infighting and contradictions between the ruling classes arose one after another, and finally this country with internal and external troubles was split into two halves, the Eastern Zhou Jun and the Western Zhou Jun governed each other, and the King of Zhou Zhao could only move the capital back to his hometown Zong Zhou in the case of the division of the country. After the unexpected death of The Crown Prince of Western Zhou, the State of Chu prepared to intervene in the internal affairs of the State of Zhou to strengthen its authority.
Therefore, he gave part of the land to the re-established crown prince of Western Zhou Jun, ready to curry favor with him, but qin did not want his biggest rival Chu state to enjoy such a cake, so he said to the king of Zhou Zhao, you have to borrow our road to help us attack Korea;
On the other hand, South Korea also sent emissaries to say that you have to use our weapons, grain and grass to help us resist foreign enemies, under the siege of various major powers and the combination of soft and hard, the king of Zhou Zhao can only deal with it with exhaustion, in order to maintain the geopolitical balance under the bag of several big powers.
King Zhao of Zhou, as the last King of Zhou in Eastern Zhou, faced with the chaotic and complicated situation of the Spring and Autumn Warring States, like many of the last kings of the dynasties, wanted to rely on his own efforts to continue the mess passed down to him by his ancestors, he swayed to balance between several major powers in the Warring States, wanted to use the contradictions between the big powers to balance each other, and found a gap in the inheritance of the ancestors.
Resources:
【Western Han Dynasty】Sima Qian: "History"