After reading the historical records of Yin Benji, we often wonder why, in the ninth year of King Wu, when Mengjin was in alliance, all the princes said, "Zhou can be conquered!" King Wu of Zhou refused to attack Shang Zhou on the ground that "the woman did not know the destiny of heaven". Is it because of the celestial phenomena? "As for the royal house, it turned black, its color red, its voice and soul cloud?" is it because of this As a natural phenomenon, King Wu thought that Shang Zhou's death had not yet come, so he "returned to his master". If it was because of "destiny", it would be impossible to say. Before that, when King Wu crossed the river, there was a white fish leaping in his boat, which was a good omen. Later Confucians often quoted the allusion of the white fish in order to exaggerate that King Wu of Zhou conquered the Shang Dynasty as a "punishment of heaven" and a just act. Therefore, "destiny" is probably not the reason why King Wu of Zhou did not immediately attack Zhou of Shang Dynasty. King Wu and Duke Lu Wang had other considerations. So what makes them postpone the date of conquering merchants? What time are they waiting for? Maybe we can find the answer from the following records in Shiji yinbenji.
"In the second year of Zhou Dynasty, I heard that Zhou was confused and tyrannical. I killed the prince Bigan and imprisoned Jizi. The great master was flawed and the little master was strong enough to hold his musical instruments and rush to the Zhou Dynasty. " When he heard the news, King Wu of Zhou told the princes all over again and said, "Yin has a felony, so you can't leave it." This is intriguing. Is it not a felony for King Zhou to be fond of wine and pleasure, to use wine as a pool and meat as a forest, to set up the punishment of artillery, to kill the daughters of the nine Marquis, to kill the nine Marquis and to preserve the Marquis of E? Only by solving this problem can we solve the mystery of King Wu's delaying the capture of Zhou. King Zhou's profligacy and great loss of popular support have made the princes dare to be angry and speechless. With this, the princes "benefit and spar" King Zhou and "rebel against King Zhou and go back to Xibo". That is to say, the more radical faction with King Zhou as the leader (this radical is relative to the patriarchal clan of Zhou in Shang Dynasty) has now drawn a clear political line with King Zhou, and King Wen and his son have easily won these However, the subordination of these vassals did not mean that the strength of Shang Dynasty had been weakened fundamentally, so the opportunity that King Wu of Zhou and LV Wang were waiting for might be the rebellion of King Zhou. Bigan and Jizi were undoubtedly the relatives of King Zhou and the loyal supporters of the Shang Dynasty. They, together with taishiqi and shaoshiqiang, were thoroughly conservative in the middle class at that time. They wanted to maintain the old political system, but king Zhou even offended these most loyal supporters. In fact, he had become "a loner". American statesman Samuel P. Huntington pointed out in changing the political order in a society that "the deviation of intellectuals is a sign of revolution" and that LV Wang and Wu Wang, who are plotting to cultivate morality and incline to commercial politics, are waiting for this opportunity of course, and what they most want to see is also this opportunity of course. The reason why King Wu of Zhou didn't launch the attack song in Mengjin League at that time was that the time was not ripe. On the one hand, the Conservatives in the Shang Dynasty were still supporting King Zhou. On the other hand, some of the princes of the two kingdoms were still afraid to break with the Shang Dynasty completely, and some were still supporting him. There was a quantitative difference between the "eight hundred Princes" and the "Xianhui of Princes" in the later Muye war.
In fact, King Zhou, who had been completely isolated in politics, was doomed to defeat. With the correct military command of LV Wang, the collapse of the Shang Dynasty could be described as a complete destruction. Although the chariot was invented in the Shang Dynasty, there is a large amount of evidence that the first real large-scale use of chariots was in the battle of Muye. Later generations recorded Lu Wang's book "six Taos" on the art of war, among which "Wentao" said: "when it is necessary to use military forces, there must be military chariots and cavalry. When you see that you can attack, you can attack it." He also said, "the chariots are the wings of the army, so they are trapped in a fortified array to strengthen the enemy and cover the north." In this battle, the vassal states sent 4000 chariots, the Western Zhou Dynasty had 300 chariots, 3000 Huben and 45000 Jiashi. At that time, the platoon was mainly divided into left, middle and right armies. It can be inferred from the historical records that "King Wu's envoys Shangfu and Baifu sent the division to the Emperor Zhou with great soldiers". LV Wang's tactical guidance was to attack the central army of Shang Zhou's army with brave and good at fighting Huben and chariots, break through from the middle, or make a detour around the two wings, and then use infantry to completely defeat the enemy. In ancient times, it was a cold war. The morale of soldiers was very important. "The art of war · nine changes" says: "death is war." "Jiudi chapter" also says: "if you fight with disease, you will survive. If you don't fight with disease, you will die. It's a place of death." And said: "in depth is specialized, the master can not." When the Western Zhou Dynasty went deep into the outskirts of the capital of the Shang Dynasty, it was necessary to hold the heart of death and unite as one, otherwise there would be no place to die. Therefore, King Wu of Zhou understood this fighting psychology very well. Before the war, he made an impassioned oath speech to the troops of Western Zhou Dynasty. The first sentence was to tell the soldiers of Western Zhou Dynasty the "dead place" they are now in: "far away from the people of Western Zhou". The subtext is that now we are far away from home and deep into the enemy's hinterland. If we fight with disease, we will live, and if we don't fight with disease, we will die; Then he explained that the battle to be carried out today is a just war, and then he affirmed discipline. After King Wu's propaganda, I believe that the soldiers of the Western Zhou Dynasty at that time must have been "Shang Huan Huan, like a tiger, like a bottom, like a jackal, like a left!" on the contrary, Shang Zhou was unpopular politically and could not be prepared militarily. When he heard that King Wu's troops had moved to the pastoral areas, he hastily armed hundreds of thousands of slaves, together with a standing army, with a total of 700000 people (I'm afraid this figure is exaggerated) But these hundreds of thousands of troops are just a mob. Sure enough, "the king of Wu rushed, and Zhou's army collapsed.". There are two views in history on whether the battle is fierce or not. One is that King Wu of Zhou should have captured the song without blood, since the division of Zhou had defected. The other is that the battle was very fierce according to the "blood flow" recorded in the book of history. In either case, the Western Zhou Dynasty won a great victory in the end.
In retrospect, we can think about why the Shang Dynasty was so vulnerable. The licentiousness and cruelty of Shang Zhou was only a subjective reason. The objective and fundamental reason was that the political system under the semi primitive and semi slave nature of the old society was no longer suitable for the development of the productive forces at that time, or the "modern society". The emergence of bronzes has greatly developed the social productive forces, and greatly expanded the field of people's conquest and utilization of nature. In this context, in the field of thought, people begin to respect ghosts and gods and tend to humanistic care. The political thought of "respecting the heaven and protecting the people" in the early Western Zhou Dynasty is essentially different from that of the Shang Dynasty, in which everything must be divined and the combination of politics and religion. On the one hand, the impact of the ideological field driven by the productive forces liberated people from the deified world. The common people and princes no longer thought that the kings of the Shang Dynasty were God sent political and religious leaders with inviolable divinity. They were more inclined to identify with a king who cared about humanity and safeguarded their own rights and interests. Therefore, they killed the women of the nine Marquises in the Shang Dynasty and became the leaders of the nine Marquises On the one hand, the old system of integrating politics and religion in Shang Dynasty could not flexibly and correctly absorb and organize the social strata differentiated from the changing society into the political activities of Shang Dynasty, and all kinds of rebellious acts of the tyrannical King Zhou deepened this class contradiction.
From the above, we can draw a conclusion that the failure of the battle between Shang Zhou and Muye was first of all a military failure, and the military failure was due to political chaos, the political chaos was due to the old political system could not mobilize new social groups to participate in political activities, and the emergence of new social groups was due to the development of social productive forces. Therefore, the decisive factor for the victory of the war lies in who is the representative of the advanced productive forces.
