Qi Huan Gong builds a super power
After the Zhou royal family moved eastward, its power declined sharply, and the princes no longer obeyed the orders of the Son of Heaven and no longer paid tribute. By the time King Zhou Huan, the grandson of King Ping of Zhou, succeeded to the throne, Duke Zheng Zhuang of Zheng State refused to pay tribute, angering King Huan of Zhou. As a result, King Huan of Zhou led the Zhou army to join forces with the armies of the four kingdoms of Chen, Cai, Yu, and Wei to attack Zheng. However, Zheng's ** team defeated the coalition forces, and King Zhou Huan was shot in the shoulder by General Zheng Guo. This defeat dealt a serious blow to the prestige of King Huan of Zhou, and from then on, Zhou Tianzi was only the nominal co-lord of the world, and the princes no longer valued him. Subsequently, the princes from all walks of life rose one after another, kicking off the prelude to the Spring and Autumn Struggle for Hegemony.
The first to rise was Qi Huan Gong. In the early 7th century BC, Duke Huan of Qi appointed Guan Zhong as prime minister and carried out a series of reforms. Guan Zhong, also known as Yiwu, has a not very good personality and always runs away when fighting, under the pretext of having the responsibility of an elderly mother and an only child. He also often calculates others when he buys and sells. However, he is a very pragmatic person who pursues his goals unfettered.
Guan Zhong was particularly disgusted with meaningless empty talk, and when he was the prime minister of Qi State, he made a famous saying: "Cang Liao knows etiquette and knows honor and disgrace when he has enough food and clothing." This sentence still has practical significance for China today. In other words, people should first pursue material civilization and then spiritual civilization. Where material poverty is poor, spiritual poverty and bad behavior tend to breed. On the contrary, places where people live in affluence tend to have a higher degree of spiritual civilization. Qi upholds the pragmatic spirit of Guan Zhong, and the geographical location is superior, close to the sea, and enjoys the benefits of fishing and salt. As a result, the state of Qi grew rapidly and became the most powerful country.
Duke Qi Huan even established a standing army of 30,000 men. According to the old rules, the size of the army of the vassal states could not exceed 7,500 men, while the size of Zhou Tianzi's own army was only 35,000 men. It is conceivable that other countries are not competitive compared to Qi countries. However, if the Qi State wants to expand externally, it cannot rise without a name. So, they proposed"Respect the king"slogan. At that time, the countries of the Central Plains were in a state of chaos, and the minority regimes of Barbarian, Yi, Di, and Rong united to pose a serious threat to Chinese civilization.
It is recorded in the history books that the situation at that time was that "the Southern Yi and the Northern Di were in exchange, and China was endless", and the Chinese civilization was in a precarious state. The Chinese civilization was relatively advanced at that time, the settlement mode of the Han people had been established, the agricultural civilization had reached a certain level, and at the same time it also had its own script and language, which were not possessed by the barbarian, Yi, Di, Rong and other ethnic minorities. If the Chinese civilization perishes at this time, it will cause immeasurable losses to the entire human civilization. Therefore, whoever can stand up and defend the Chinese civilization is defending the requirements for the development of the advanced productive forces, the direction of progress of the advanced culture, and the fundamental interests of the broad masses of the people in the Central Plains at that time.
The head can be broken, and the hairstyle cannot be messed up
Guan Zhong held high the banner of "respecting the king and conquering the king", so that the Qi State occupied the commanding heights morally. Duke Huan of Qi led a large army to repel the invasion of Xing and Wei by Shanrong, and rescued Xing and Wei, making them more prestigious among the princes. Subsequently, in the face of the northward expansion of the southern barbarians of the Chu State, the Qi State once again sent troops to unite with the armies of the Central Plains countries to jointly crusade against the Chu State, eliminating the threat of minority regimes to the Central Plains. In 651 BC, the Duke of Qi Huan convened an alliance in Kwaiqiu, and Zhou Tianzi sent people to participate and recognize his status. He became the first overlord recognized by the vassal states in the Spring and Autumn Period, and the Qi State officially became the first country to dominate.
Later, Confucius affectionately praised Guan Zhong and said: "Guan Zi did his best for the Qi country, unified the princes of Jiuhe, and governed the whole world, and to this day, the people are still benefiting." Although I am insignificant, I am willing to follow Guan Zhong's example and follow his morality. "Meaning, we ordinary people are benefiting from Guan Zhong's contribution to this day. If there is no Guan Zhong, we will be assimilated by ethnic minorities and nomads. In Confucius's description, "It was sent to the leftrefers to the hairstyles and clothing characteristics of ethnic minorities. "Quilted" refers to loose hair that surrounds the lop ears; "Left side" refers to the right side of the garment pressed against the left side. In fact, it doesn't make much difference whether you press on either side, but in ancient China, if you change your clothes and hairstyle, it means the collapse of the etiquette system, the demise of the state, and the severance of traditions. This is the reason why "the head can be broken, but the hairstyle cannot be messed up".
For example, after the Manchurians entered the customs at the end of the Ming Dynasty, a shaving order was issued, requiring Han Chinese to change to Manchu hairstyles and shave their hair but keep braids. Many were unwilling to comply, so they were suppressed by the Qing army. You can't have both when you keep your hair but you don't have life, or you can't have it both ways. Even so, in order to oppose the shaving order and keep the hair, Jiangyin City insisted on resisting for more than 80 days, and as a result, the whole city was ** by the Qing army. There is a couplet that expresses this event: "Eighty days with allegiance, the characters of the seventeenth dynasty of Taizu; 100,000 people died with one heart and left 300 miles of rivers and mountains in the Ming Dynasty. "This shows how much attention was paid to hairstyles at the time. When you are young, you may shave your head, but when you reach adulthood, you can no longer shave your hair, and you must have long hair and beard until you die. Therefore, when Emperor Chongzhen was martyred in Coal Mountain, he did not have the face to see his ancestors and ancestors under Jiuquan, because his hair covered his face, and his hair was long enough to drag down to his waist.
If Guan Zhong had not put forward the concept of "respecting the king and defending the Central Plains", the Central Plains at that time might have been assimilated by ethnic minorities, and once the hairstyle was changed, there would have been no such things as later.
King Zhao fell for the plan of the Chu State
In the period after the hegemony of Duke Huan of Qi, Duke Wen of Jin and King Zhuang of Chu rose one after another. The reason why Duke Huan of Qi and Duke Wen of Jin are honored as dukes is because both the state of Qi and the state of Jin are marquises, and the duke here is not a knighthood, but an honorific title. However, the king of Chu Zhuang was called a king because Chu was originally a viscount state, a minority regime that was only canonized by the Son of Heaven in the middle of the Western Zhou Dynasty. The monarch of Chu felt that his status was low, so he decided to proclaim himself king in order to be equal to the Son of Heaven. This move made King Zhao of Zhou at that time dissatisfied, and he personally went to the state of Chu to seek an explanation. When the people of Chu heard that the Son of Heaven was coming, they prepared a ship to meet him, and King Zhao of Zhou was very happy, thinking that the people of Chu were scared and realized their mistake. However, in fact, the Nanban people of the Chu State designed a ship glued together because they were disgusted with the interference of the people of the Zhou Dynasty. Not long after King Zhao of Zhou boarded the ship, the ship collapsed, and Zhou Tianzi and his entourage sank into the water and died in the belly of the fish. It can be seen that the Southern Barbarian Nation of Chu is a nation with quite individuality.
The failure of Zhou Tianzi's southern expedition led to the shattering of the myth of the entire Zhou dynasty, which led to the dynasty going from its heyday to its decline. In the late Spring and Autumn Period, King Wu Lu and King Goujian of Yue competed with each other for hegemony. Wu and Yue are located in the Yangtze River Valley, the capital of Wu is today's Suzhou, and the capital of Yue is located in today's Shaoxing. At that time, the Gangnam area had already been initially developed.
The monarchs of Qi Huan, Jin Wen, Chu Zhuang, Wu and Goujian, who successively became hegemons, were collectively called in historySpring and Autumn Five, all of them are outstanding people.
The three families were divided into Jin and Tian generations
According to the records of Zizhi Tongjian, in 403 BC, a major event occurred in the twenty-third year of King Weilie of Zhou. In this year, King Weilie of Zhou rewarded the doctors of the Jin Kingdom, Han Qian, Zhao Ji, and Wei Si as Han Hou, Zhao Hou, and Wei Hou, which are usually called the three families of Jin. At the same time, the Tian family, the doctor of the Qi State, also deposed the Jiang family and replaced him as the princes of the Qi State.
From this change, it can be seen that the sub-sealing system has played an important role. The method of the Zhou Dynasty to implement the sub-feudal system was that the Son of Heaven divided the land to the princes, and the princes then divided the land to the doctors, and the doctors then divided the land to the Qing, and the Qing then divided the land to the scholars, and the hierarchy of the whole system was decreasing. Therefore, the Son of Heaven was later controlled by the princes, and the princes were also controlled by the doctors of their own country. This is mainly due to the different levels of productivity in different regions. Basically, the upper level is only in charge of the surrounding capital, and all the land below is divided. As local power grew larger, centralization also began to decline. Taking the Jin Kingdom as an example, there were six Dafu families with considerable power at that time, in addition to the Han, Zhao, and Wei families, there were also the Zhi family, the Zhongxing family, and the Fan family. The Zhongxing and Fan clans were soon destroyed, and the Han, Zhao, and Wei families united to eliminate the Zhi clan, and eventually these three families even deposed the monarch of the Jin state and became princes themselves. Seeing this situation, Zhou Tianzi felt powerless and was forced to recognize these three families as princes, soThe Jin state** was Korea, Zhao and Wei
Sima Guang once said that the most important thing in the duty of the Son of Heaven is etiquette, and the most important thing in etiquette is to divide the seal, and the most important thing in the division is the title. The Zhou Dynasty's reward of the Three Jin Dynasty completely shook the duty of the Son of Heaven, and the etiquette system was an important factor in the country's maintenance of discipline, and the Three Jin Dynasty actually threatened Zhou Tianzi to make them princes, and Zhou Tianzi had to submit, which led to the chaos of the Gang and discipline, and also marked the end of the Zhou Dynasty.
The seven gentlemen want to compete for hegemony
In the early days of the Qi Kingdom, most monarchs were surnamed Jiang, such as Jiang Xiaobai, and they didn't pay much attention to their names at that time. However, the Dafu Tian clan became powerful and overthrew the Jiang clan and dominated one side, and the Qi state changed its surname to Tian. Therefore, with the Tian clan replacing the national name of Qi, the pattern of the Seven Heroes of the Warring States was formed.
At first, the Seven Heroes of the Warring States were not limited to seven countries, and more than 20 countries at that time were eager to compete for supremacy. And after a series of wars, these competitors went through a fierce selection and in the end only remainedYan, Qi, Chu, Qin, Zhao, Wei, HanThese seven players continue to compete. fromThe Five Tyrants of the Spring and Autumn Period were upgraded to the Seven Heroes of the Warring StatesIt can be seen that the main contradiction in the Central Plains during the Spring and Autumn Period was the contradiction between the north and the south, which was mainly reflected in the struggle for hegemony between the Jin and Chu countries. Jin is located in the north, and Chu is located in the south, and they have been facing each other all the time. In the Warring States Period, the main contradiction changed to the east-west contradiction, which was embodied in the contradiction between the Qin State and the Six Kwantung States. Because the Six Kingdoms of Kwantung were located in the area east of the Kushan Mountains and Hangu Pass, they posed a certain threat to the Qin State. Especially at the end of the Warring States period, the Qin state intended to unify the six kingdoms, further exacerbating the contradictions between them.