The History of China - #8 - Shang 3: The Shang Vanquished

Episode Date: December 29, 2013

This episode we chronicle the decline and eventual fall of the once-glorious Shang Dynasty to the same vices and evils that spelled doom for the Xia centuries ago. In the West, a powerful new clan calling itself the Zhou has risen to power, eventually with an eye to make right what the final Shang Kings have twisted so horribly wrong. Along the way, we'll colonize the Japanese islands and raise a minor Chinese prince to the King of Korea. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to an Airwave Media Podcast. The Civil War and Reconstruction was a pivotal era in American history. When a war was fought to save the Union and to free the slaves. And when the work to rebuild the nation after that war was over turned into a struggle to guarantee liberty and justice for all Americans. I'm Tracy. And I'm Rich. And we want to invite you to join us as we take an in-depth look at this pivotal era in American history.

Look for The Civil War and Reconstruction wherever you find your podcasts. Hello, and welcome to the History of China. Episode 7-2, The Shang Vanquished Last time, we traced the beginnings of the Shang Dynasty, from its founder Tang the Perfect, all the way through Wuding, some 21 emperors, five capital cities, and 400 years later. I left off very clearly stating that this would be a two-episode week, and to expect the second half of the episode quite soon. What I was not counting on was developing a severe chest cold, which rendered me more or less speechless for much of the episode quite soon. What I was not counting on was developing a severe chest

cold, which rendered me more or less speechless for much of the week. So hopefully that will excuse both the delay and also any remaining hoarseness in my voice. This week, we'll finish out the overview of the Shang and its last six emperors, capping off with a man who seemed to be Jie of Xia reincarnated, Emperor Zou Xin. The build to his reign and downfall, as well as its aftermath, has some surprising interactions with the other cultures and foundational legends of East Asia. So to jump right in, we left off with Wuding's death, and so we'll pick up with his son, Zhu Ji, who had been slated to inherit his father's throne from birth. But from an early age,

he had proved himself unworthy of the position. In fact, his transgressions had grown so severe that Wu Ding felt no choice but to banish the prince from the capital entirely. He would end up dying in exile during the 25th year of Wuding's reign. As such, the throne of Shang went to his second son, Zugeng. Alas, Zugeng would have less than a decade of rule before he too perished. Thus, the third son of Wuding, Zuj Jia, would be the next to be enthroned. As emperor, he sought to emulate the successful expansionism of his father. In the twelfth year of his rule, he broke off the diplomatic relations with the Xirong confederation to the west,

and after almost four hundred years of a shaky peace, declared war on them once again. But times and the Shang military had changed in those four centuries. Rather than the stalemate achieved prior, within a year, Zhu Jia had defeated the Xirong and accepted their surrender to the will of Shang. There was a minor rebellion that broke out in the second decade of his reign, but it was quickly and mercilessly suppressed, with harsh penalties imposed to serve a lesson on the price of disloyalty. When Zujia died, his son assumed the title of king,

but would rule for only four years before joining his father in death. In 1170, Gengding, Zujia's brother, assumed leadership, which would hold for almost 23 years before his death. Unfortunately, and without any real sense of why, there's virtually no surviving information on this entire generation of kings. Our next and 26th emperor of Shang is Wu Yi, Gengding's son. And at this point, I know I've been alluding to the state of Zhou and how the Zhou will rebel eventually.

Well, this is the point in the story where I stop alluding to the state of Zhou, and it enters the action directly. Zhou traces its history all the way back to the ancient emperor Ku of Xia. Remember, the one who had four sons, each prophesized to rule? His youngest son, Huo Ji, was eventually bestowed the ancestral name Ji, and granted rule over the area then known as Tai in the western reaches of the Xia Empire. This area would prosper, though it was near enough to the Rong barbarian tribes of the west that they needed to protect their cities and harvests from frequent raids. Under the Shang, it had been fully incorporated as a vassal state with the name of Zhou. In the time of Emperor Wuyi, Zhou was governed by its duke, Ji Li.

Ji Li was actually the third son of the previous duke of Zhou, Danfu, but both of his elder brothers had recognized the boy's exceedingly virtuous nature and wisdom. They both in turn voluntarily relinquished their claims on the ducky to Jili, and traveled south to found the new state of Wu, which was initially ruled by the eldest brother, Zhongding. The second brother, Taibo, would stay for a time before departing and heading for a set of islands far to the east past the sea. There, he would stay and found the House of Wa, also known as the Yamato, or Japanese people. In 1118 BCE, Duke Ji Li, sometimes styled as King Ji of Zhou, though he would never use the title in his lifetime, traveled from his capital city to the imperial state of Yin.

There, he humbly submitted himself before Emperor Wuyi. For this display of piety and service, Wuyi rewarded his vassal with jade, horses, and increased territorial claims. Of course, those claims would need to be cleaned out before they could be put to use. Thanking his king, Duke Geely rode back to Zhou and raised his levies. His armies went to war and drove out the 20 or so wrong tribes that had inhabited Zhou's new lands after capturing each of their kings in battle. For his part, Emperor Wuyi had become rather strangely and hilariously impious to the heavens. He had a wooden statue of Shangdi, the supreme god, carved, and had a priest bless it as

the legitimate embodiment of the deity. Then he played a popular board game called liub bo against the statue and, it being a statue, he won all three games. Then he destroyed it. He would also hang bags filled with blood high in the air before shooting at them with arrows and declaring that he was shooting heaven. The final insult was blaspheming the god of storms as being powerless. I say final because he then went out for a hunt near the Yellow River when the storm god answered, striking him dead with a bolt of lightning in the 35th year of his reign. You can't say he wasn't asking for it. Wen Ding succeeded his father, and by accounts was little better. Duke Ji Li of Zhou continued to expand his dominion, or was at least trying to, further into the Rong tribe's land.

In the second year of Wen Ding's rule, Ji Li met with defeat by one of the barbarian tribes, the Yanjing Rong. Undeterred, he reorganized his army and attacked the Yuwu Rong, which he succeeded in defeating and incorporating their lands into a Zhou vassal. Several years later, Ji Li was again victorious against the Hurong and the Xiturong peoples. All this victory by the Duke of Zhou made the young emperor, Wen Ding, uneasy. The state of Zhou had amassed tremendous power through their relentless westward expansion. Left unchecked, Duke Ji Li might get it into his head that he no longer needed to pay homage to Shang, or worse yet, might turn his army eastward and conquer it.

So Wen Ding hatched a plan. Wen Jili reported back to Yin and displayed the wrong kings he had captured. The emperor lavished him with praise and gifts, rewarding his loyal vassal for further expanding the Shang Empire. He then dispatched the Duke of Zhou to a place called Saiku, where his personal forces lay in wait. Suspecting nothing, Ji Li followed his orders and was ambushed and murdered by the Shang assassins. His son, Ji Chang, would inherit his father's ducky. followed his orders and was ambushed and murdered by the Shang assassins. His son, Ji Chang, would inherit his father's ducky. Wen Ding would rule for a total of ten years,

leaving the throne to his son, Di Yi. Di Yi ruled for 27 years and made war against the Kun barbarians in modern Inner Mongolia. He is most famous, however, for his four sons. All are worthy of discussion, but we will begin with his eldest and successor, the last of the Shang emperors, King Zhou of Shang. The final emperor of Shang was known in life as Zi Shou, but received his posthumous name as an insult to his terrible reign. The name Zou Xin can translate as saddled with suffering. He was about 30 when he became emperor

in 1075 BCE, and was characterized during his early reign as almost superhuman, quick-witted, quick-tempered, intelligent and argumentative, and strong enough to hunt beasts with his bare hands. Like so many of his predecessors, he engaged frequently in wars of conquest to add to his empire. But unlike his predecessors, his efforts did not focus on the northern Mongols or the western Rong tribes, but on those, quote, barbarians to the east and northeast

of Shang, including a people known as the Gojoseon. As his reign went on, that quick-temperedness and lack of self-control degraded into a very familiar collection of vices, womanizing, drinking, and cruelty, along with ceasing to care about the affairs of state. In a virtual repeat of the hedonism displayed by Jie of Sha, his favored wife, Da Ji, was an enabler of his baser notions. Some accounts say she was an evil fox spirit in human form. They would host massive drunken orgies. And what end of dynasty blowout is complete without, yes, a massive pool of wine, big enough to float several canoes in?

In this case, though, Zhou Xin did Jie of Xia one better. On a small island in this wine lake, he ordered a meat forest erected, with the branches of its false trees overflowing with roasted meat skewers. This is how Zhou and his retinue spent many of their days, floating through this testament to decadence, reaching down into the pool with their hands when they thirsted, and reaching up to pluck meat from the trees when they hungered. It does sound far-fetched, but in 1999, archaeologists actually found the pool.

It was one and a half meters deep and lined with polished white stones. Of course, such extravagances meant enormous tax rates. Crushed by their financial obligations to the throne, and with no recourse, lest they be executed for impudence, the citizens despaired. Both emperor and empress came to delight in the suffering of others. A particularly noteworthy example is Zhou Xin's invention of a new form of execution to please the desires of Empress Da Ji. He called it the Baoluo Zixin, or burning cannon punishment. A large hollow cylinder of bronze

was stuffed full of charcoal and then lit. Soon the metal would glow red hot. Then prisoners were forced to hug the cylinder until they roasted to death. Zoshin and Daji were known to become highly aroused by the agonized screams of their prisoners as they burned alive. And no one was safe from such an excruciating and embarrassing death. Victims ranged from average citizens, to captured enemies, to even high officials who had displeased their king. Even his grand counselor, Mei Bo, would meet his end after having the gall to express to his king

that such extra-legal executions of loyal servants was, quote, like cutting pieces off of his own body. At first, the king ordered the counselor beaten to death, but Daji insisted that he be subjected to the burning cannon. At this, Mabua declared, eye to your idiotic cruelty. I only fear that the dynasty of glorious King Tong will not outlive me, and it is your doing. And with that, Mabel was stripped bare and burned to death. Hi everyone, this is Scott. If you want to learn about the world's oldest civilizations, find out how they were rediscovered, follow the story of Mark Antony and Cleopatra's descendants over 10 generations, or take a deep dive into the Iron

Age or the Hellenistic era, then check out the Ancient World Podcast. Available on all podcasting platforms or go to ancientworldpodcast.com. That's the Ancient World Podcast. When the king's uncle, Prince Bi Gan, brother of King Di Yi, arrived at the palace to protest the abysmal conditions, he earned the ire of his nephew. Bi Gan was renowned throughout the kingdom as a living sage of pure heart. But Empress Da Ji commented that she had always been curious what the pure heart of a sage looked like. And so Zou Xin ordered it torn out of his uncle's chest, still beating, so that his wife could study its properties. His other uncle arrived after to also protest the devastation his nephew was causing.

But on hearing the awful fate bestowed on his brother, feigned madness before Zoxin and was merely imprisoned. In the far western state of Zhou, its duke Ji Chang, the lord of the west, remained steadfast in his loyalty to the king. His sizable army had been ordered by Zoxin to serve as a rear guard while the main Shang force engaged the armies of the eastern tribes, collectively known as the Dongyi. But like his father before him, the emperor eventually came to fear the power of the Duke of Zhou. He ordered the arrest of both Ji Chang and his eldest son Bo Yikao. Brought to the capital in chains, the duke saw firsthand how far the Shang empire had

fallen and suffered its cruelty firsthand when Bo Yikao was executed in what had become the typical horrific fashion. It was this that finally hardened Ji Chang's resolve that the Shang dynasty could be allowed to exist no longer. Ji Chang's influence was such that his many allies pleaded for his release, and after being ransomed for an enormous amount of gold, horses, and women, the emperor relented and allowed the duke to return to Zhou. As you can imagine, this is a big mistake. Returning to his homeland, Ji Chang waited no time in readying his armies for war.

But like the Duke of Shang in his rebellion against the corrupt Xia centuries ago, Ji Chang knew he would have to bide his time and weaken the enemy without alerting him to the threat. He engaged in several small wars against neighboring states on the pretext of the normal aggressive politics of the day between vassals. But in truth, he was picking off Shang loyalist states to slowly sap the emperor's army of their power. In the meantime, he deemed that he needed to be closer to the east that he could better strike at the Shang state when the time came. To that end, he left the traditional Zhou capital of Qiyi and set up his new capital on the western bank of the Feng River,

the city Fengjing, which is now within the city Xi'an. Unfortunately, before he deemed it was time to strike in truth, Duke Jichang died in 1050 BCE, leaving the as-yet-unfought war to his son Jifan. This new lord of the west picked right up where his father had left off. He had married the woman Yi Jiang, the daughter of the brilliant military strategist Jiang Ziya. It was Jiang who stopped the talented but fiery Ji Fa from attacking immediately, telling the youth, There is one truth in fishing and warfare.

If you want to succeed, you need to be patient. We must wait for the appropriate opportunity to eliminate the king of Shang. His father-in-law's counsel and strategy would prove vital to the task at hand. In 1048, the two deemed the time to declare their intentions had come. Jifa marched a force down to the banks of the Yellow River and met with some 800 other regional lords, including the heads of the Di and Qiang tribes, as well as the Ba Confederation. Yeah, remember them? I told you they bookended the Shang Empire. They were all in agreement. Conditions under the Shang king were intolerable, and they had lost all faith in the dynasty.

They resolved to ally with Ji Fa against the evil emanating from Yin. To that end, they constructed a new ancestral tablet naming Ji Fa's father Ji Chang the founder of a new dynasty and renaming him King Wen of Zhou. As his heir, Jifa adopted the regnal name King Wu of Zhou. The coalition ferried their forces across the river at this site, known thereafter as Mengjin, or the Crossing of the Alliance. On the far bank, they awaited the remainder of their armies to group.

There was now no going back, and as a certain Roman general would say almost exactly one millennium later in a similarly fateful river crossing, the die was cast. Thus in 1046 BCE, King Wu finally mobilized his army against the hated Shang king, Zhou Xin. His forces numbered around 50,000, including some 45,000 Zhou infantry, led by 3,000 elite troops. The Zhou had, in their frequent warfare in the west, adopted a new and effective tactic that remained unknown in the east. Using their chariots as swift weapons platforms

rather than just battlefield transports for commanders. They brought to bear 300 of their own battle chariots, as well as around 3,700 of their allies. Zoxin had by this point learned of his vassals' uprising in the west, led by this so-called king of Zhou, Wu. Traditional accounts paint the Shang king as having more than 700,000 soldiers, but this is likely a wild exaggeration by a factor of 10, as ancient Chinese historians were prone to do.

More likely, the Shang army did considerably outnumber the Zhou forces, fielding as many as 70,000 soldiers and arming tens of thousands of slaves to boot. Side note, if you're a tyrannical, despised king facing a massive rebellion, arming your slaves and telling them to go die for you may not be the wisest course of action, because almost as soon as they were fielded, virtually all of the slave soldiers defected to the oncoming Zhou force. This decidedly dampened the morale of the Shang army, while doing wonders for that of the Zhou. The two forces met some 35 kilometers south of Yin, at an extensive wilderness called Muye. As the two armies met in combat at dawn,

many of the Shang soldiers held their spears upside down, signaling that they did not wish to fight and surrendered. Some of them even defected outright and turned on their loyalist comrades. Still, the bulk of the Shang army remained loyal and the melee was joined. Had it remained merely infantry locked together, the battle might have gone either way. Though the Zhou soldiers were highly disciplined, they were still outnumbered by the loyalist Shang troops in spite of the rash of defections but from the flanks streaked lines crumbled beneath the chariots' repeated charges and Emperor Zhou Xin was forced to flee back to the capital. Loyalist troops were rounded up and put to death by the Zhou army, while those who had surrendered or defected

were spared, and offered the chance to put down the evil of Shang once and for all. It was said on the plains of Muye that day, enough blood had been spilled to float a log. Emperor Zoxin hastened back to the capital in his chariot and scrambled for some way to stave off the oncoming Zhou army. But with his defensive force shattered and the bulk of his army far afield to the east on campaign, the writing was on the wall. But he was resolved not to give King Wu of Zhou

the satisfaction of killing him directly. Gathering all the valuables that he could in his opulent Deer Terrace Palace, he locked himself in as the Zhou armies surrounded the city, and he set his own castle ablaze. King Wu's forces were led into the capital by his father-in-law, Jiang Ziya. He had been given specific orders to find the demon queen, Da Ji, an executor on site.

With her dead and her husband incinerated, the Shang dynasty was no more. Officials that had been so afraid of their king that they dare not speak out were spared, and some even retained their positions in the new Zhou dynasty. In his first order as emperor of Zhou, Wu opened all of the imperial rice stores in the capital, alleviating the suffering of the starving citizenry. For this, and for his mercy in the field, he was hailed as a father of the people in his war against the evil of Zhou Xin. As for the House of Shang, it was deposed, but not destroyed. As mentioned before, Emperor Zexin had three brothers, all of whom survived his mad reign.

In the spirit of forgiveness and mercy, and not blaming the entire family for the madness of one of its members, Emperor Wu of Zhou did not punish the brothers of Shang. The eldest two, Wei Zixi and Wei Zhong, he reinstated to officialdom and granted them the ducky of Song, with its capital, the ancient Shang city of Xiangqiu. The new state would mark itself as being descended from Shang rather than Zhou, by keeping the long-standing Shang succession tradition of agnatic seniority, rather than the primogeniture practiced by the Zhou kings. Zhou Xin's youngest brother, Ji Zi, long ago had had a falling out with his kingly brother and had been banished from the land. After his fall, Ji Zi returned from his exile to the east

and was taken on as an advisor to Emperor Wu. Proving his virtuousness, the Zhou Emperor bestowed on Jizhe a great promotion. The Shang war against the eastern tribes had gone very well in spite of the fact that the Shang king had not lived to see its favorable conclusion. Among the territory gained was a large portion of a peninsula to the northeast, whose people were called in China the Chaoxian, and pronounced by the tribal locals as Jiu Song. Unfortunately, the territorial gains were too remote to be effectively managed from yin, and so there was need for a vassal that could remain loyal while enjoying a large degree of autonomy from the empire.

To that end, Wu of Zhou enfifed Jizhe as the vassal king of Gojoseon, which we know better by its English pronunciation, Korea. King Jidza, who is known in Korean as Gijia, brought many aspects of Chinese culture and civilization to the Gojoseon people, and raised their civilization to the same level as its Hwasa neighbor. King Gijia is still as much of an integral component of Korean cultural identity as the Yellow Emperor is to Korean cultural identity as the Yellow Emperor is to Chinese cultural identity. And so we conclude our chapter on the Shang.

Next episode, we'll begin our analysis of the Zhou Dynasty, beginning with its first emperor, Wu of Zhou. I say next episode rather than next week, since I will be traveling out of town to go visit my in-laws in southern China, and may or may not have that out by next week. We'll see. Regardless, wishing all of you a very safe and happy new year. See you in 2014. Have you ever gazed in wonder at the Great Pyramid?

Have you marvelled at the golden face of Tutankhamun? Or admired the delicate features of Queen Nefertiti? If you have, you'll probably like the History of Egypt podcast. Every week, we explore tales of this ancient culture. The History of Egypt is available wherever you get your podcasting fix. Come, let me introduce you to the world of Ancient Egypt.