Another explanation of the cause of King Wu’s attack on Zhou: it was caused by the Zhou People’s plundering of merchants’ grain

There are many foreign princes who belong to him without expedition. In the old times, xibochang was ordered by King Zhou of Shang Dynasty to take charge of the princes next to you in Jianghan Dynasty, and his influence has extended to this area. Later, Zhou people said that “there are two out of three in the world”. If the sphere of influence of the Shang Dynasty was the world, I’m afraid it would not be far away. After the destruction of Chong, xibochang made a new capital in Fengyi (in today’s Chang’an County), and moved east from Qixia. His intention to move eastward is obvious enough.

In the early spring of the fourth year after King Wen’s death, his heir, Wu wangfa, led the election of several princes and several Tu nationalities in the northwest and Southwest (including Yong, Shu, Qiang, Lu, Peng, PU and other races, whose names can not be seen in previous and future history) to attack merchants on a large scale; His oath still exists today, that is, the pastoral oath in the Shangshu. With a victory, King Wu destroyed the Shang Dynasty. The battlefield is Muye, not far from the capital of Zhou, king of Shang Dynasty (now Qi County, Henan Province). Chaoge is where he left the palace, and it is a resort for him to entertain the evening scenery. At this time, he was at least sixty or seventy years old. After enjoying the pleasure of traveling and drinking, his reaction to his first failure was to go back to the palace and burn himself to death. The Shang soldiers broke up, and King Wu and others drove into yin. The Shang Dynasty perished so quickly. According to the later explanation of the people of Zhou Dynasty, the king of Wen and the king of Wu accumulated virtue and benevolence for generations, and the people turned back, while the Shang and Zhou dynasties were dissolute and brutal, and the people rebelled; The so-called “Tang Wu revolution should be suitable for heaven and people”. Although it cannot be said that there is no shadow of some facts, the facts are by no means so simple. There are two points to note about the unintentional disclosure of information about the occasion of Shang and Zhou in the records of Zhou people. One said, “Zhou conquered Dongyi and fell into his body.”. It can be seen that before the battle of Makino, the merchants had greatly lost their national strength due to the conquest of foreign nationalities in the East; King Wu took advantage of his fatigue to win. One said, “in the past weeks, I was hungry, but I was rich.”. It can be seen that the battle of Makino was also a battle for Zhou people to plunder food and compete for survival. King Wu knows how to use the power of hunger.

The fall of the Yin capital and the fall of the Shang Dynasty were only the initial success of Zhou People’s Eastward Development. The land of the old princes of the Shang Dynasty was not owned by the Zhou people, and many old princes did not recognize King Wu as the new patriarch. Since then, the world of King Wu, King Cheng and King Kang has constantly enfeoffed brothers, nephews, relatives in marriage, and meritorious men, and established a new country. These new countries are mostly replacing the old princes, and perhaps some are opening up land that has not been opened up. The establishment of each such new country was an outward migration of the Zhou people and an expansion of their sphere of influence.