Author | Leng Yan Author Team - Pilan Read History
Word count: 3714, Reading time: about 10 minutes
Editor's note: For the offensive side, siege battle is one of the most difficult war forms in the era of cold weapons. " Sun Tzu's Art of War " says: "If you repair oars and trolls, you can use equipment, and then you can complete them after three months; if you are away from the trolls, then you can only get three months away. If the general is unable to defeat his anger and ants are attached to him, killing one-third of the soldiers, but the city does not pull out, this is a disaster for attack." In contrast, when the troops are insufficient, the defense will often defend itself based on the city, avoid field battles, and even use solid walls to clear the fields to achieve the goal of dragging down the enemy. There are many such successful examples in the history of Chinese wars. For example, during the Song and Yuan Wars, Diaoyucheng and Xiangyang have made the Mongolian and Yuan cavalry return in failure many times. Although the two cities eventually fell, the protracted siege did cause huge casualties to Mongolia.
However, interestingly, in the Xia, Shang and Zhou dynasties, such examples of self-reliance in the city were relatively rare. When King Wu defeated Zhou, King Zhou did not choose to defend the city in Chaoge, but fought with Zhou in Muye. After defeat, he fled back to the city and set himself on fire. Xia Jie did not choose the most reasonable tactic of defending the city in later generations. Instead, when Mingtiao fought with Shangtang , the troops were defeated, Xia Jie had to run out in a hurry. Why are all this?
" General History of China's Military " has two speculations about the outbreak of Mingtiao Battle. One of them believes that when Shang Tang's troops unexpectedly advanced into the capital of Xia State along the Sakura Road of the Suanyuan Mountain, Xia Jie woke up from the dream of " The West is victorious, and the East is not victorious. He was shocked and did not organize defense. Instead, he chose to escape and reorganized his troops in Anyi, fighting with Shang Yu Mingtiao.
In contrast, Song Jie, the author of "The Geographical Hub of Ancient Chinese War", has more specific explanations about the lack of urban defense wars in Mingtiao and Makino War . He believes that not only did there be no fierce city defense wars in the above two wars, but there was no such war model within three generations.
This is because the productivity level was low during the Xia, Shang and Zhou dynasties. Because bronze tools are rare and expensive, agricultural production and life are mostly dominated by wood and stone tools, and cattle plowing technology has not yet appeared. As a result, people are tied to the land by agricultural production. Even for a capital of a country, mobilizing a large amount of labor to build the city defense is a considerable burden, let alone those small square countries .
Therefore, the urban defense facilities at that time were extremely simple. As Zhao She, a famous general of the Warring States Period, said: " was divided into ten thousand countries in the four seas; although the city was large, there were no more than three hundred feet; although there were many people, there were no more than three thousand families. "
Even the capital of the Xia, Shang and Zhou dynasties had obvious shortcomings in the construction of various defense facilities. For example, the Yin Ruins site in Anyang, Henan, currently the scope of the proven Shang Dynasty ruins is more than 20 square kilometers. However, except for the core palace area, no city walls have been established in the outer city area. Similarly, there is also the Erlitou site. It is generally believed that the capital of the Xia Dynasty is here, but it is also in a state of city but no city wall. Except for the inner city wall with a petite defense range, people have not found any traces of the construction of the city wall around the site, let alone other city defense facilities.
The capital of a country has no city walls that can be used to defend. This is really surprising. The author believes that due to the lack of industry and commerce during the Xia, Shang and Zhou dynasties, even residents of the capital have mostly taken agriculture as their business. In the capital ruins, there are a large number of village-like areas nested, and the population density is not large. Because of this, even if an outer city wall that is suitable for the radiation range of the capital is established, it is difficult to raise enough manpower to defend when the enemy is at the city.There is indeed some truth to the statement of
. In the case of insufficient productivity, it is obviously not realistic to maintain a high-density urban population like Spring and Autumn Period and Warring States Period or even Tang and Song Yuan and Ming dynasties, but it is also biased to include all cities in the Three Dynasties in the category that is not suitable for defense.
The most obvious example is Zhengzhou Mall, which is located in Guancheng District, Zhengzhou City, Henan Province, which is now the old city of Zhengzhou and Beiguan areas in the east of Zhengzhou City, Henan Province. The discovered Shang Dynasty ruins have an area of up to 25 square kilometers. In the early stages of excavation, many archaeological work were difficult to carry out because the site was located near the city of Zhengzhou.
Therefore, archaeologists only discovered the inner wall of Zhengzhou Mall. The wall is almost rectangular and has a circumference of 6960 meters. In the 1980s and 1990s, two sections of rammed earth walls were found in the outer city of Zhengzhou Mall. Archaeologists linked it to the two-kilometer rammed earth wall discovered in Erligang, a generation outside the city in the early 1950s. Only then did they realize that the three sections of rammed earth walls may be the outer city walls of the mall. The structure and construction method of the three-section rammed earth wall are exactly the same as that of the inner city wall. The wall body is composed of two parts: the foundation groove and the wall. By analyzing the ceramic fragments of the rammed earth layer, people found that the construction time of the inner and outer city walls is basically the same.
is bounded by the outer city wall. Archaeologists failed to find traces of cultural relics outside the city wall. In the outer city wall, there are many ruins such as handicraft workshops, tombs, residential areas, etc. appear. As for the inner city area, it is a palace area full of large rammed earth buildings. It can be seen that in the shopping mall at that time, ordinary people did live in the outer city and outside the inner city.
This also conforms to the ancient idea of building a city with the help of " to build a city with the help of guarding the king, and to build a country with the help of guarding the people with the help of ". In addition to Zhengzhou Mall, Yanshi Mall also has an inner and outer city structure. The only special thing is that the outer city wall forms two outer cities, large and small. The outer city was built earlier, with a width of about 6-7 meters, while the outer city is an expansion product. The wall width is between 17-20 meters, and its solidity is obviously better.
In the outer city area of Yanshi Mall, kiln holes, wells, ash pits, and other remains were found. It can be seen that the outer city at this time had part of the role of garrisoning troops, granaries, and treasury, which could support the military and civilians in the city to resist the siege of foreign enemies. The moat outside the outer city wall was between 18-20 meters wide, and the outer city wall with a wall width of 16-17 meters was enough to become a defensive fortification that siege troops could not cross.
It is worth noting that in the small outer city area of Yanshi Mall, people even found defense facilities similar to later horse face . Although they only exist at the corner of the city, the design concept of using their height advantages to expand the projection surface is quite obvious. Although the city defense facilities during the Xia, Shang and Zhou dynasties were not as complex and diverse as those in later generations, the siege weapons of the same period were relatively simple, and the attacking side undoubtedly had to spend a huge cost in the face of such defensive means.
So the question is, since Zhengzhou Mall and Yanshi Mall both have relatively complete outer city walls and supporting defense facilities, why don’t Zhenxun and Chaoge?
This is because unlike Zhenxun and Chaoge, Zhengzhou Mall and Yanshi Mall were established during the Xia and Shang dynasties. At that time, the Shang tribe had just broken away from the control of the Xia Dynasty and gradually rose up, and settled in the northern and southern Hebei regions of today. With the expansion of its power, the Shang tribe began to move south, and moved to Zhengzhou area through the Danyang 1, Changyuan 1, , 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1,
At this stage, the Shang people were always under military threat. Because of this, the Zhengzhou Mall, which was built at this time, all had a strong military color. The same is true for the construction of Yanshi Mall. After Shang Tang destroyed Xia, the descendants of the Xia tribe did not disappear, but continued to be active in the current , northern Henan and southern Hebei. In order to prevent the counterattack of Xia tribe descendants, the mall established in Yanshi must have sufficient defensive capabilities.
Professor of the School of History of Zhengzhou University and Vice President of the Chinese Shang Culture Society Zhang Guoshuo is the support principle of the "Xia Capital Zhenxun Theory". He believes that Zhenxun is the capital of the Xia Dynasty, which is what we call Erlitou Culture . Various documents contain 16 kings of the Xia Dynasty once lived in many areas such as Yangzhai , Zhengxun, Shangqiu, and Chunguan . However, the Xia and Shang dynasties implemented the main and auxiliary capital system, which is to continue to maintain a deterrence to the surrounding areas under inconvenient transportation.
Therefore, as the capital of Jinxun has never been abandoned and continues to radiate influence to the surrounding areas. As the place where the Xia people grew up, Zhenxun is located in the core area of the Xia culture. Unlike the Zhengzhou mall in the early days of the Shang Dynasty in , there are almost no hostile forces around it. Instead, there are a large number of Fangguos with the same surname as the Xia people. It is a natural alliance of the Xia Dynasty in . Taking the Taikang era as an example, the main enemy of the Xia Dynasty was located in eastern Henan, southern Shanxi and other places. In this case, it was not worth the loss to spend a lot of manpower and material resources to build city walls and other defense facilities.
In ancient society where productivity is not developed, the cost of creating urban defense cannot be ignored. Take the example of Sumer , which is regarded by the West as a classic civilization model. This civilization was born in the southern part of Mesopotamian plain. The land here is fertile and extremely suitable for agricultural irrigation production. However, the tributaries of the two rivers are crisscrossed and lack resources such as copper ore, , stone, etc. This has led to the locals who can only try to "save" when building houses and palaces, and have to build houses with mud bricks as building materials, and even build new buildings based on the ruins formed after the collapse of the old house.
Over time, on the plain, a small hill made of old building communities are formed everywhere. Despite this, the internal internal of the Mesopotamia of is not peaceful. From the Kharav era to the Third Dynasty of Ur, there have been constant wars for thousands of years. Not only have they always faced the threat of nomads from the Zagros Mountains of Northeast China, even tribes with the same faith often clashed for various reasons, so that for the city-states during the Sumerian civilization, defense facilities such as city walls have almost become a necessity.
In the late Uruk period, about 5,000 years ago, the city of Uruk built a mud brick wall of more than 7 meters high. There are even supporting towers at the city gate as guardrails. The fragments of the mud panel map excavated by Nipur City also provide a glimpse of the city's defense system at that time. On this floor map, in addition to the city wall, there is even a moat based on , the Euphrates River, and its canal. It can be seen that cities in the four battles tend to build defensive walls.
▲"City Origin and Planning Issues in the Sumerian Civilization Period"
As for Chaoge's situation, it is even more special. The capital of the late Shang Dynasty was Yin, and Chaoge actually belonged to the "Li Palace and Farewell Hall" of the Shang Dynasty. The ancient version of " Bamboo Book Anniversary " says, "The town is slightly larger when the seal is sealed, and the south is located in Chaoge, and the north is located in Handan and Xiaoqiu. Both are Ligong Pavilions. " Ligong Pavilions now refer to palaces for emperors to live on patrol.
However, although King Zhou has a dark history of "Wine Pool and Meat Forest", in addition to enjoying himself, King Zhou stayed in Chaoge for a long time and did not "lost to return". Instead, the focus of the attack in the late Shang Dynasty had shifted from Guifang, Tufang and other forces in the northwest to Renfang and Linfang in the southeast and southwest directions. The sphere of influence of the country of Renfang covers four provinces today, Henan, Shandong, Anhui and Jiangsu. According to the records of the "Yin Li Biography", it took nearly a year for the Shang Dynasty to conquer Renfang alone.
When the merchants went south to attack Renfang and other countries, the Zhou people were also attacking the Shang tribe's forces. In this situation of being attacked on both sides, the Shang king had to choose to live in Chaoge for a long time. After all, compared with Yin, Chaoge was more southern and could take into account the wars between the Zhou people in the southwest and the southeast countries.
Therefore, Chaoge gradually transformed into a front-line hub similar to the Fudu in the late Shang Dynasty.Its military status has been gradually strengthened by garrisoning troops and grain. However, due to the sudden destruction of Shang Dynasty, Chaoge lost the possibility of transforming into a mall similar to Zhengzhou and Yanshi.
References:
1, "The geographical hub of ancient Chinese wars" Song Jie;
2, "General History of Chinese Military Volume 1: Xia, Shang and Western Zhou"
3, "Research on the Capital System of the Xia, Shang and Shang Era" in the Xia, Shang Era 》Zhang Guoshuo
4, "The Selection Elements of the Xia Dynasty and the Diversity of Social Functions" Chen Chaoyun
5, "The Origin and Planning Issues of the Sumerian Civilization Period" Cao Kang
6, "Social in the Sumerian Region and the Taihu Lake Region... Preliminary Comparison of Er Civilization and Liangzhu Civilization" Chen Minghui
This article is an original manuscript of the Cold Weapon Research Institute. The editor-in-chief Yuan Kuo and the author Pilan read history. No media may reprint without written authorization. Violators will be held legally responsible. Some pictures are from the Internet. If you have any copyright issues, please contact us.
