The State of Zheng was a small country that was enfeoffed only in the Western Zhou Dynasty. However, due to the painstaking management of several generations of monarchs and the political baggage of the old feudal states of the Western Zhou Dynasty, the State of Zheng was able to

The State of Zheng was a small country that was enfeoffed only in the Western Zhou Dynasty. However, due to the painstaking efforts of several generations of monarchs and the political baggage of the old feudal states of the Western Zhou Dynasty, the State of Zheng was able to develop rapidly and dominate the important time period of the decline of the Zhou royal family. On one side, even Duke Zhuang of Zheng dared to openly confront the Zhou royal family and shot an arrow at the Emperor of Zhou, truly tearing open the fig leaf of the Zhou royal family. From then on, all countries in the Spring and Autumn Period no longer blindly followed Zhou rites and served the Zhou Dynasty, but instead sought to maximize their own interests and achieve the political goal of hegemony. Zhuang Gong led the Zheng State to become powerful. No one could have imagined that such a powerful country would decline rapidly in a hundred years. The huge Zheng State became a chessboard for Jin and Chu to compete for hegemony.

The rise and fall of strength and weakness is really sad, and it all starts with the child who was hated by his biological mother. In 757 BC, Wu Jiang, the wife of Duke Wu of Zheng, gave birth to his eldest son. Wu Jiang was frightened during the birth, so she named the child "Huansheng" and hated him. Three years later, Wu Jiang gave birth to her second son, Duan. Because Duan was born naturally, Wu Jiang liked Duan very much and asked Zheng Wugong many times to make Duan the crown prince, but Zheng Wugong did not agree. Wu Jiang gave birth to two children, who not only created the later powerful Zheng State, but also made outstanding contributions to Chinese literature and history. The handed down book "Zuo Zhuan" begins with this, and later generations of literature and history scholars also paid attention to this period. "Zheng Burke Duan Yu Yan" talked about it with great enthusiasm.

The general idea is that after the death of Duke Wu, Duke Zhuang of Zheng came to the throne, but his mother Wu Jiang was obsessed with letting her youngest son Duan ascend the throne, and she did not hesitate to act as an insider for her younger son to help him plot to usurp the throne. Faced with such a mother with a superb brain circuit and an eyeing brother, Zheng Zhuanggong was as wise as a fool. On the one hand, he kept tolerating his brother's arrogance and domineering, on the other hand, he secretly prepared for war and made sufficient preparations in the intelligence war. Finally, he allowed his brother to go into the abyss of crime. Mobilize your forces in time to eliminate your brother's power.

After driving away his younger brother, Zheng Zhuanggong turned against his mother again, saying that they would never see each other again until the end of the world. Later, perhaps due to the influence of ethics, he still made some superficial efforts to reconcile with his mother, but "Zuo Zhuan" The record in the book is very interesting, saying that mother and son were "reconciled as before." Who doesn't know that Duke Zhuang and his mother had a bad relationship from the beginning?

After quelling the civil strife, Zheng Guo began to campaign for hegemony. His strategy included: first, coercing the emperor to order the princes. Since Zhuang Gong was a minister, he could easily use the king's orders to carry out conquests; second, make friends from far away and attack close by. Zheng's opponents were the alliances of neighboring countries such as Song Wei, Chen Cai, etc. He made friends from far away In the Qi and Lu states, the Zheng, Lu, Qi alliance formed an east-west pincer attack on the Song Wei, Chen and Cai alliance. It only took more than ten years to bring Zheng Guo from a second-rate vassal state to the status of the world's hegemon.

The growth of Duke Zhuang of Zheng aroused the vigilance of Emperor Zhou. In 712 BC, the Emperor of Zhou seized the fields of Wu, Liu, Xi, and X of Zheng State, removing Duke Zhuang of Zheng from his power in the court, and Duke Zheng Zhuang no longer made pilgrimages. Emperor Zhou contacted the enemies of Zheng State: Wei State, Chen State, and Cai State, hoping to reverse the situation of Zhengzhuang Xiaoba. The Battle of Suige broke out in 707 BC, which was an extremely important battle in the history of the Spring and Autumn Period. The result was that the Zheng army defeated the Zhou coalition forces, and Zheng Jun Zhu Dan shot an arrow on the shoulder of Emperor Zhou. Even Zheng Zhuanggong was frightened by this move. He forbade Zheng Jun from pursuing the Emperor of Zhou and ordered him to sacrifice enough to King Lao, but it could not turn the wheel of history. The Zhou Dynasty had the name of emperor, but it was in name only.

The state of Zheng was prosperous for a while, and the Four Young Masters Rebellion broke out in the country only after the death of Duke Zhuang of Zheng. The nobles of Zheng State were fighting to the death for the throne. The hegemony of Duke Zhuang was lost due to extreme internal strife. The status of overlord was officially taken over by Qi State. Qi State united its princes with nine princes in the hands of Duke Huan of Qi to dominate the world, while Zheng Guo was only a member of the Qi State. He exists as a follower of his younger brother.

Finally, in the late Spring and Autumn Period, between the Jin Dynasty and the late Chu Dynasty, the Zheng State, which had been a superpower on the chessboard for hegemony, ended its weak situation for hundreds of years and was destroyed by South Korea.