In the fourth year of King An of Zhou, Guiwei, 398 BC
Chu Wei Zheng. Zheng people killed his prime minister, Ziyang.
This year's Chu Wei Zheng was actually retaliating against the incident of "Wei, Han, Zhao and Chu, to Sanqiu" three years ago, because the three kingdoms of Wei, Han and Zhao were relatively united at that time, and Chu did not dare to attack directly rashly, so he chose to start with Zheng Guo, a weak country bordering it, because Zheng Guo was often attached to the Jin State before, and now although the three families are divided into Jin, Wei Guo and Zhao Guo have always maintained a good relationship with Zheng Guo, and Zhao Wei will inevitably make a move to revenge Zheng Guo.
What happened after that was not recorded by Sima Guang, but it was supplemented in other historical sources, and the outbreak of the war forced Zheng to fall to the Chu camp. Here is a special explanation of this "wai", in ancient Chinese the word "wai" has only one meaning is to surround, but the way of encirclement can be three or four sides. "Chu besieges Zheng", if it is on paper, it is that Chu sent troops to surround Zheng State, Zheng State is a country, even if the order is that no matter how strong Chu State is, it is impossible to completely surround Zheng State across hundreds of miles, so in the pre-Qin literature, where there is a record of "a certain siege", if there is a specific city name, it is the city that is besieged, if there is only a country name and no specific city name, generally speaking, the default siege is the capital of the country, of course, there is also a possibility of an unknown city or stronghold, However, well-known cities will definitely explain, and I have done a comparative statistical study of the five books "Shiji", "Warring States Policy", "Chinese", "Zizhi Tongjian", and "Zuo Chuan", basically saying that the siege of "a certain country besieging a certain country" is about half of the country's capital.
Another thing this year was that South Korea's Xiangguo Si Ziyang was killed, why was this Si Ziyang killed? Killed by whom? There are many current theories, "Historical Records of the Zheng Family" said that he was killed by the then monarch Zheng Xianggong, but some people say that he was killed by the people of Zheng Guo, combined with the possibility that "Zheng Si Ziyang's Party Killing Gong Xuangong" was killed by Zheng Xianggong two years later, as for the reason for killing him, "Huainanzi Fan Commentary" believes that his character is too strong. But in fact, a series of civil strife events that occurred in Zheng Guo around the fifth century BC were essentially a contest between the princes' power and their own family secretaries, which was not unique to Zheng Guo, but was common to all vassal states during the transition from the Spring and Autumn Period to the Warring States Period, but because the specific national conditions of each vassal state were different. For example, a superpower like the Jin State is the last three branches of the Liuqing ruling family, and the Qi State is the political transmutation of the Tian family on behalf of Qi, and the smaller countries such as Zheng, Wei, Song, and Lu will generally evolve into this endless vendetta.