From the time King Ping moved east to Luoyi (770 BC) to the forty-fourth year of King Jing of Zhou (476 BC), the history of this period is roughly equivalent to the era of Confucius's revision of the Spring and Autumn Period (722 BC - 481 BC), so it is historically called the Spring and Autumn Period.
King Ping moved east, and the royal family declined
The Spring and Autumn Period was a period of collapse and decline of the royal family. The prestige of Zhou Tianzi was constantly declining, and since the Western Zhou Dynasty, the princes had to make regular pilgrimages to Tianzi, and the system of paying tribute was destroyed, and Zhou Tianzi instead frequently hired the princes. For example, during the 11 years of Lu Yin's reign, Zhou Tianzi sent people to Lu To hire Lu Yin three times, and Lu Yin did not go to Luoyi to see Zhou Tianzi once. According to the Zhou system, "the great powers and the three secretaries are all ordered by the Son of Heaven", and in the Spring and Autumn Period, most of the princes' Zhengqing were not "ordered" by Zhou Tianzi, and "Li Le's conquest came out of the Son of Heaven" became an empty phrase.
Spring and Autumn situation map, surrounded by surrounding tribes
Compared with the decline of the royal family, what is more severe is the infighting of the surrounding tribes. Xi Rong, who occupied the Zongzhou region, continued to threaten Eastern Zhou; Dibu in the north also often attacked the Jin state, clashed with Qi and Yan many times, and defeated Xing and Wei; Jing Chu in the Jianghan River Valley also submitted to the Qunshu and Huaiyi tribes, defeated the northern Sui state, and directly threatened the Central Plains. At this point, a grim situation of "Nanyi and Northern Di are at odds with each other, and China is endlessly like a line".
Under such a severe situation, in order to resist the internal aggression of the surrounding tribes and stabilize the ruling order, the various princely states began to seek hegemony, trying to replace Zhou Tianzi with a hegemon, and then control the princes. The era of great power hegemony has begun.
Qi Huan gong is the first hegemon
The first to seek hegemony was the State of Qi, and the Duke of Qi Huan appointed Guan Zhong as his prime minister to carry out comprehensive reforms in the political, economic, and diplomatic aspects of the State of Qi. In 651 BC, duke Huan of Qi was at the Meeting of princes at Kuiqiu, and Zhou Tianzi also sent people to the meeting and gave him the title of Duke huan. Qi Huangong's hegemony reached its peak. However, after Guan Zhong's death, the Duke of Qi Huan began to appoint Yi Ya and other traitors, and at the same time hesitated on the issue of Li Concubine, after his death, the princes attacked and killed each other in order to compete for the throne, and a generation of overlords finally "died and was not buried for the laughter of the world".
Jin and Chu competed to dominate the Central Plains
This was followed by the struggle for hegemony between Jin and Chu. After Duke Wen of Jin ascended the throne, he vigorously developed the economy and implemented measures such as "ming xianliang" and "rewarding merits", so that the Jin state "governed the people and the people, and the financial resources were not scarce." In 632 BC, the Battle of Chengpu broke out between Jin and Chu. In the war, Jin Wengong skillfully combined cautious military operations with proactive diplomatic offensives, and exchanged political "retreat" for military "late strikes" and achieved the ultimate success of winning more with less. After the Battle of Chengpu, the new king of the Chu state, King Chu Zhuang, took the throne, and after three years of preparation, he put an end to the civil unrest, appointed Gongsun Ao and other sages, rectified the ruling order, and actively built water conservancy and developed aquatic products. In 597 BC, in order to compete with the Jin state for the Central Plains, the Battle of Qi broke out between Jin and Chu. It was a battle, the Generals of the Jin Army had different opinions and different commands, until the outbreak of the war was still undecided, the Chu Army was able to preemptively attack, and the Jin Army was defeated.
The conquest of the Jin And Chu dynasties for hegemony in the Central Plains for many years has brought heavy disasters to the people of all countries in the Central Plains. At the same time, the nearly hundred years of war for hegemony also made the Jin and Chu countries feel exhausted. Thus there were two campaigns of war between the two hegemonic powers.
The Soldier Movement
The First Soldier Movement
In 580 BC, the Song ruler Hua Yuan traveled to the Jin and Chu states to promote the alliance between the two countries. The following year, the Jin and Chu alliances, outside the Song Ximen, agreed that the two countries would "have no mutual hatred, have the same likes and dislikes, sympathize with each other, and be prepared to rescue the evil", and agreed that the two countries would jointly recruit the disobedient princes.
However, the "Ximen Alliance" is only a reflection of the common interests of the jin and Chu countries, and in the middle ground of the two sides' contention, especially on the issue of Zheng Guo, the two sides are still not compromising with each other.
In 575 BC, the Jin and Chu dynasties fought another major war at Yanling only a few years after the alliance. Although the battle ended in the defeat of the Chu army, the two sides did not fight very seriously, nor was it very fierce, and even some courtesy. This shows that both the Jin and Chu sides want to compete for hegemony, but for many reasons, the two sides do not want to fight a decisive battle, and the yibing movement has played some role in a certain sense.
The Battle of Jin and Chu Yanling
The Second Soldier Movement
After the Battle of Yanling, the situation underwent some new changes. The Jin state had a series of civil unrest, and there was no time to take care of the war for hegemony; the Chu state was also attacked by the emerging State of Wu, unable to map the Central Plains.
Therefore, when the Song Zuo Division once again proposed to hold a meeting of the Yi Army, both the Jin and Chu countries gladly accepted. In the autumn of 546 BC, 14 vassal states, led by the Jin and Chu states, held a military congress in the Song capital. At the meeting, although the Chu people secretly hid their armor and preemptively killed the blood, they still reached an agreement that "Jin and Chu were subordinate, and they met each other".
The Meeting of the Soldiers
Jin and Chu are subordinate, and they meet each other", which means that in addition to the two great powers of Qi and Qin and the foreign countries of Qi and Teng, the original respective vassal states of Jin and Chu have now become common vassal states of both Jin and Chu. From then on, small countries such as Song and Zheng had to carry jade and leather coins and worship between Jin and Chu. The Jin and Chu countries took advantage of the meeting of soldiers to sacrifice the interests of small and medium-sized countries and divide up hegemony.
Even so, the Yi bing movement is still an attempt at a diplomatic victory, if there is no yi bing movement, Jin and Chu continue to conquer the Central Plains for many years, then how should the small countries in the Central Plains deal with themselves? What should be the life of the broad masses of the people in the Central Plains? The holding of the Yi army movement won a relatively stable and peaceful environment for the Central Plains, and in the following 40 years or so, the war in the Central Plains was reduced, the people were given a chance to breathe, and objectively favorable conditions were created for the development of production. After the meeting of the soldiers, the situation of hegemony between Jin and Chu was also nearing its end.