Chapter 221 King Zhou You’s beacon-fire play on the princes is completely smeared by scholars!
After Chen Han finished asking Zhu Shangbing. He said again: “The climate was warm during the Xia and Shang dynasties, so Guozuo could last for such a long period mainly because of its high grain output. Now that we are talking about this, we have to talk about the Zhou Dynasty. After all, Zhou Chao was the beginning of the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period. After that, there was a hundred schools of thought contending. " As he spoke, Chen Han looked at the princes present. "Come here, princes, tell me how the Dog Rong army of King Zhou You could destroy the previous Zhou Dynasty in the eleventh year of his reign?" Zhou Wang Zhu Ji was more concerned about the Zhou Dynasty, after all, his title was Zhou. So he pays more attention to it. Moreover, Kaifeng is only four hundred miles away from Luoyi, the capital of the Eastern Zhou Dynasty. He also visited Luoyi several times to pay his respects. So I still know a lot about what happened in the eleventh year of King Zhou You.
Besides, he himself was a man of culture and immediately replied: "In the last years of King You of Zhou, the country's power was declining. After King You succeeded to the throne, he became ignorant and corrupt. He appointed traitors and doted on his concubine Bao Si. According to legend, in order to win Bao Si's most beautiful smile, he once lit a beacon. , teasing the princes and losing their trust. Then, he abolished Empress Shen and Prince Yijiu, and established Bao Si as empress, and Bao Si's son Bofu as crown prince, and planned to question Marquis Shen. In the eleventh year of King You of the Zhou Dynasty, Marquis Shen joined forces with the Zhen and Quan Rong armies to attack the capital of the Western Zhou Dynasty. King You rushed to light a beacon, but none of the princes came to rescue him. The Zhou royal guards had no fighting power and collapsed at the first touch. King You fled in panic with Bao Si and Prince Bo Fu, but was eventually overtaken by the Dog Rong army. King You and Prince Bofu were killed at the foot of Mount Li, thus ending the Western Zhou Dynasty. Subsequently, the allied forces of Jin, Zheng, Wei, Qin and other princes defeated the Quanrong army, proclaimed Yijiu as King Ping, and moved the capital to Luoyi, which was known as the "Eastern Zhou Dynasty" in history. " After hearing this, Chen Han smiled and said: "It seems that His Highness King Zhou is still knowledgeable, so I would like to ask His Highness. How true do you think this is? " After hearing this, King Zhou smiled slightly and sat down without speaking. But this time, silence is better than sound. King Yan replied from the side: "Basically zero!" The other princes also felt that such a thing could only happen in stories and not in real events. The King of Jin even said: "King Zhou You is fatuous and not a fool. How could he use beacon fire for a woman? This is really far-fetched." King Qi also said, “A fool cannot be stupid when he becomes a king. If King Zhou You is really a fool, the ministers below should be happy. Because for a fool, as long as he is given food, drink and diarrhea, he will not care what his subordinates do! " Everyone agrees with this statement. Chen Han also smiled and said: "That's true. Playing with the princes with beacon fire is just a deliberate attempt by later generations to belittle King Zhou You.
Many of the factors that led to the demise of the Western Zhou Dynasty were deliberately erased, and such a story was made up to warn future kings. The starting point was good, and it could only be used to coax children. What is the real situation?
In fact, we can get a glimpse of it from the history books. The climate of the Zhou Dynasty was initially warm, but soon deteriorated. According to the "Bamboo Chronicles", during the reign of King Zhou Xiao, the Han River, a large tributary of the Yangtze River, froze twice, in the seventh and eleventh years of King Zhou Xiao's reign. The chronicle also mentioned that immediately after the freeze, there was a severe drought, which means that the climate in the Western Zhou Dynasty indeed ushered in a very cold period. " Zhu Biao and the others were entranced when they heard it. They have never understood these details. Of course it is difficult for them to understand. People who don’t specialize in studying history books can’t study it in such detail. Chen Han also accidentally read Professor Zhu Kezhen's masterpiece and studied it carefully because he found it interesting. The most important thing is that his tablet has this information. I didn’t expect that I could show off now. Chen Han then opened another piece of paper, which contained the records of that period in the Book of Songs. "We can also find evidence from the Book of Songs. It is said that "The Book of Songs·Bin (Tongyi, bin) Feng" was a work written during the reign of King Cheng of the early Zhou Dynasty (1063-1027 BC), and may have been written shortly after he became the king. Bin's location is said to be an area not far from Chang'an. The important phenological events of the year at that time can be seen from the following verses in "Bin Feng":
Peel dates in August and harvest rice in October. For this reason, spring wine is used to promote eyebrows and longevity. Then he said: On the second day, he cut through the ice and charged forward.
On the third day, it was accepted in Lingyin. On the fourth day, when there are no fleas, sacrifice a lamb to a leek. The frost is eliminated in September, and the fields are washed away in October. If we compare the phenology in "Bin Feng" with the phenology of other national styles in the "Book of Songs" such as "Zhao Nan" or "Wei Feng", we will feel the severe cold in Bingdi. The poem "Guofeng·Zhao Nan" says, "There are plum blossoms in the trees, and they are scattered in baskets." The poem "Wei Feng" says, "Looking at Qi'ao, the green bamboos are shining." Both plum and bamboo are plants from warm areas, which proves that the climate in the early Zhou Dynasty was warm, which was very different from the phenology of "Bin Feng". Princes, do you agree? " After reading the information given by Chen Han, King Yan and others were convinced. Chen Han continued: "How long did this cold period last? It was about one or two hundred years, because it became warm again in the Spring and Autumn Period. In "Zuo Zhuan", the fourteenth year of Duke Huan of Lu, the first year of Lu Cheng's reign, and the twenty-eighth year of Lu Xianggong all record that "there is no ice in winter". In the state of Lu in Shandong, there was no ice in the ice house during the winter.
In addition, plants from warm areas such as bamboo and plum trees are often mentioned in "Zuo Zhuan" and "The Book of Songs". " After Chen Han finished explaining, he looked at all the princes and said, "After explaining the climate, let's return to the matter of King Zhou You's destruction of the country. The period of King You of Zhou happened to be during this extremely cold period. And cold will bring drought and less rain!
It will cause a reduction in food production!
Grain production in the Central Plains has decreased, grassland and pastures have stopped growing, and nomadic tribes have invaded southward in order to survive. So why was the Western Zhou Dynasty finally destroyed by dog armies? The situation may not be what we know at all, the so-called court corruption and King You's ignorance. Instead, domestic food production has decreased, civilians cannot survive, and various uprisings have occurred; The army defending the nomadic tribes in the north was weak because of the insufficient supply of food and grass and could not raise many soldiers. In addition, there was no grass growing in the pastures in the north, so nomadic tribes went south to plunder. Internal and external conflicts broke out at the same time, and the Western Zhou Dynasty was destroyed! !
This is the truth!
In that case, let alone King You of Zhou, Emperor Qin and Han Wu would also be unable to make a meal without straw! ! " After Chen Han finished explaining, Zhu Biao and the others suddenly realized. From a climate perspective, it is indeed what Chen Han said. Chen Han also used various evidences to explain that King Zhou You lived in a cold era with low food output, which led to internal and external difficulties. Maybe it wasn't that King Zhou You was incompetent at all, but that he was powerless. It can even be said that the whole country is powerless to deal with this situation. But you have to find someone to take the blame, right? The fact that the beacon fire drama among the princes spread so widely is actually not in the official history books, but through the script drama. As for the age when the test can be taken, it is unknown. Anyway, judging from the urine of the person who recorded this incident, he must be some official. After all, there must be a reason for the demise of the Western Zhou Dynasty. When a scholar becomes an official, it cannot be said that he is incompetent as a minister. If you say this, you are indirectly saying that people like you are incompetent. So the dirty water of King Zhou You's personal stupidity, favoring traitors and sycophants, and playing tricks on the princes was poured on him. What a good story it was. The script must be like this. King You is fatuous and favors the treacherous minister Guo Shifu. He abolishes the elders and establishes the young, corrupting ethics. There must have been loyal ministers in the court to dissuade him, but King You did not listen to the advice of the loyal ministers, and blindly listened to the words of the treacherous minister Guo Shifu, and instead had the loyal ministers imprisoned. The father of Guo Shi even came up with a plan to let King Zhou You play beacon fire on the princes to make his beloved concubine Bao Si laugh, which eventually led to the destruction of the country. What an educational case. We scholars are all loyal ministers, and a foolish emperor must have a treacherous and sycophantic person around him. A foolish emperor favors treacherous and sycophantic people, stays away from his loyal ministers, and indulges himself in the love of men and women, which leads to the destruction of his family. The princes are not fools, as you will know when Chen Han explains it like this.
It seems that the evaluation of King Zhou You over the years has been a bit unfair to him. Chen Han continued: “The warm climate continued during the Warring States Period. From the situation of food crops mentioned in the Book of Songs, it can be concluded that from the Western Zhou Dynasty to the Spring and Autumn Period, people in the Yellow River Basin grew millet and millet as their main food. But during the Warring States Period, they lived on millet, wheat and beans instead. Mencius said in "Mencius: Gaozi [-]": "Now you are sowing wheat and working on it. The ground is the same, the trees are the same at the same time, and they grow wildly. When the sun comes, they are all the same." Wheat is what we now know as wheat. This change is probably mainly due to improvements in agricultural production tools, such as the invention and use of iron farm tools. Xunzi, who was slightly later than Mencius, not only confirmed what Mencius said, but also recorded that at that time, grain cultivation in Qilu area could produce two crops a year. This statement is recorded in "Xunzi: Fuguo Chapter" - Today, the soil produces grains. If people manage it well, they can harvest several acres of pots and harvest them again in one year. In the Qin Dynasty and the former Han Dynasty, the climate continued to be mild. There is a lot of phenological information in the "Randi Pian" of the "Lu Shi Chun Qiu" compiled by Lu Buwei of the Qin Dynasty. "Lu's Spring and Autumn Annals" says: "The calamus begins to grow on the fifty-seventh day after the winter solstice. The calamus is the master of all kinds of grass. So plowing began. Nowadays, the land in the north is cold, and there are some people who do not have sprouts in the sixty-seventh day after the winter solstice." During the reign of Emperor Liu Che of the Han Dynasty, Sima Qian wrote "Historical Records", in which "Biographies of Huo Zhi" described the geographical distribution of economic crops at that time: thousands of orange trees in Jiangling in Shuhan; thousands of acres of lacquer in Chenxia; thousands of mulberry and hemp in Qilu; and thousands of bamboos in Weichuan. It is said that orange, lacquer, and bamboo are all warm zone plants, but the places where they were bred at that time, such as orange in Jiangling, mulberry in Qilu, bamboo in Weichuan, and lacquer in Chenxia, were all within the limits of the current distribution of these plants. The northern limit or beyond the northern limit. "Historical Records: River Canal Book" also records that in the first year of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, the Yellow River burst at Huzi. In order to seal the breach, bamboos in Qiyuan, Henan were cut down and made into containers to hold stones to block the breach of the Yellow River. It can be seen that bamboo was very luxuriant in Qiyuan, Henan Province at that time. However, the warmth in the Early Han Dynasty did not last until the Later Han Dynasty, and this situation did not even last until the Later Han Dynasty. The temperature had dropped sharply in the late Han Dynasty. " As he spoke, Chen Han flipped the white paper again, and there was also a piece of information filled with words underneath. "Based on the statistics and analysis of the records in the "Book of Han" written by Ban Gu, I have listed some of the information. You can see that the decline of the former Han Dynasty mainly started from the four generations of Yuan, Cheng, Ai, and Ping. There is a saying that goes well: Yuan, Cheng, Ai and Ping, each generation is worse than the last. Let us not consider factors such as the monarch's incompetence and the chaos of the government, and simply highlight the disasters of these fifty-four years. In these fifty-four years, a total of forty-seven major disasters occurred. 其中地震14次、水灾13次、旱灾8次、寒冷灾害6次、风灾3次、蝗灾2次、冰雹灾害1次。 If we remove earthquakes, floods, and wind disasters, we can find that the number of disasters caused by sudden drops in temperature is unimaginable, a total of 17 times. Frequent disasters even gave rise to the theory of yin and yang disasters. Jingfang, the Taizhong official in the Han Dynasty and Yuan Dynasty, used the Yin-Yang disaster theory to analyze the Book of Changes, and the Yin-Yang scholar Li Xun used the Yin-Yang disaster theory to interpret the Book of Changes. Among them, the greatest achievement was made by the literary master Liu Xiang. He wrote "Hong Fan's Five Elements Biography" and "Hong Fan's Five Elements Biography" based on "Hong Fan's Five Elements Biography" and "Shang Shu·Hong Fan", combined with the theory of fortune and disasters from ancient times to the Qin and Han Dynasties. This theory was used as a tool in officialdom struggles. Emperors, bureaucrats, relatives, and eunuchs were all deeply influenced by it and talked about yin and yang disasters. On the one hand, these nonsense stories put great pressure on the people's psychology and affect the stability of civil order. Every time a disaster occurs, they are explained indiscriminately, causing rumors to fly all over the sky and causing huge panic.
There are even stampede accidents that occur because people are afraid of disasters and are trying to avoid disasters based on rumors. This incident happened during the reign of Emperor Cheng. There is a very representative incident in "The Book of Han·Cheng Di Ji". Due to the popularity of the theory of yin and yang disasters, in July of the third year of Emperor Cheng's founding, the people in the capital were frightened for no reason, saying that a flood was coming. The people ran around and ravaged each other, and the old and the weak howled. , Chang'an was in chaos, with hundreds of casualties. Later, after investigation, it was discovered that someone accidentally stepped into a puddle when going out. He thought it was an ominous sign. Using disaster theory to deduce, he thought that the capital would be flooded in the near future! " King Jin was extremely angry after hearing this: "Isn't this a magic stick? Are the people at that time stupid?" Chen Han smiled and said: "The area is like this, but this is not a frightening bird. The people have witnessed too many life and death in frequent disasters. It is no wonder that whenever there is a disturbance, there will be a roar of wind and cranes!" All the princes were filled with emotion after hearing this. Zhu Biao said: "If I remember well, these people used this theory as a weapon to attack political opponents in the former Han Dynasty, and the government and the public were in chaos for a while." Chen Han nodded: "Yes, so what happened later was that Wang Mang usurped the Han Dynasty and became independent." After hearing this, King Zhou finally said: "It seems that the sudden change in climate is actually a big reason for the change of dynasty!" As soon as these words came out, they immediately attracted everyone's attention. Chen Han smiled and said: "The final conclusion has not been drawn yet, let's continue talking!!" …… (End of this chapter)