When King Wu of Zhou marched east, a wooden tablet rode on one of his chariots.

According to the Shiji, the tablet bore the name of his father, King Wen, and was carried in the center of the army. Wu did not call himself king, only Heir Fa, and said he was acting on his father's orders rather than his own. Before setting out he sacrificed at Bi. Ancient commentators disagree on what Bi was: King Wen's burial ground, or the Bi constellation, which was said to govern war.

Zhou had been a polity on Shang's western edge, in the Wei River valley of present-day Shaanxi, owing Shang tribute and obedience. In the Zhou people's own later account, Danfu the Old Duke led them to the foot of Mount Qi; under Jili and then King Wen they grew strong, and Wen moved his capital east to Feng, beside the Feng River southwest of present-day Xi'an. King Wu built Hao across the river. For a western polity to overthrow a dynasty several centuries old, carrying his father's tablet into the field told the other lords that this was Wen's undertaking.

The army reached the Yellow River ferry at Mengjin. The Shiji says eight hundred lords came to join him without being summoned, and all said it was time to strike King Zhou of Shang. Wu answered that they did not yet know Heaven's mandate; not yet. He led his army home.

The Shiji's "Biography of Bo Yi" also mentions the tablet. Sima Qian says he follows an older account: as Wu carried the tablet east to attack King Zhou, calling it by King Wen's title, Bo Yi and Shu Qi, sons of the lord of Guzhu, seized his horse's bridle and remonstrated: was it filial to take up arms before his father was even buried? Was it humane for a subject to kill his ruler? Wu's attendants wanted to cut them down, but Taigong Wang said they were men of principle and had them led away. After the realm went over to Zhou, the two were ashamed to eat Zhou grain, hid on Mount Shouyang living on wild ferns, and starved. The story does not say which march east this was; it comes from an older account Sima Qian had seen, not from a Zhou record, and is treated here as one tradition.

The white fish and the red crow

The same passage of the Shiji also takes in two omens that circulated in the Han dynasty: halfway across the river a white fish leapt into the king's boat and he offered it in sacrifice; after the crossing a fire came down on the king's roof and turned into a red crow. Neither appears in any chapter of the New Text Documents or in any Western Zhou bronze inscription.

Where they came from can be traced. The Tang scholar Kong Yingda, commenting on the Book of Documents, noted that the Documents known in the early Han had only twenty-eight chapters and no "Great Oath," the speech before the campaign; that chapter turned up later, and many scholars distrusted it. The Eastern Han scholar Ma Rong listed its faults: the writing was shallow, and a fire turning into a bird was just the kind of marvel Confucius would not discuss. This chapter also contains the line about the eight hundred lords arriving unsummoned. Kong added that Dong Zhongshu, answering Emperor Wu of Han's questions, had already quoted the white fish and the fire that became a crow, so the text was circulating by then.

Why would Han writers want such omens? The Han had itself only recently won the empire and needed to explain what entitled a dynasty to Heaven's mandate. A King Wu escorted across the river by good omens made a model of receiving the mandate. That is an inference, though the direction is clear. The effect is that readers of the Shiji easily take the withdrawal at Mengjin as Wu waiting for Heaven to speak, turning a military pause into divine design. Sima Qian tells the withdrawal itself plainly; the omens were brought in from elsewhere.

Two years later

According to the Shiji, the news from the Shang capital grew worse over the next two years: King Zhou killed Prince Bigan and imprisoned Jizi, and the masters of royal ritual music fled to Zhou carrying their instruments. In Sima Qian's telling the Shang court was coming apart from within, though Zhou propaganda may be part of the picture. The lake of wine, the favorite Daji and the other famous crimes mostly come from Warring States and Han books; how the Shang themselves saw their last king has left almost no trace.

This time Wu told the lords that Shang's crimes were too great to spare. By the Shiji's count he marched east with three hundred chariots, three thousand elite warriors and forty-five thousand armored men, and on the wuwu day of the twelfth month the whole army crossed at Mengjin. Sima Qian, drawing on the later Han "Great Oath," has Wu list the Shang king's crimes: he listened only to his women, cut himself off from Heaven, shunned his own kin, and threw away the music of his ancestors for decadent tunes. Wu said he was carrying out Heaven's punishment, and this chance would not come twice. That oath is the very text Ma Rong doubted, not a record of what was said at Mengjin. The three "Great Oath" chapters in today's Book of Documents are a separate matter: they belong to the "old-script" Documents presented in the Eastern Jin, which Qing scholars showed to be later forgeries.

At dawn on the jiazi day of the second month of the next year, the Zhou army reached Muye outside the Shang capital. The "Speech at Mu," as the Zhou handed it down, has Wu leaning on a yellow axe in his left hand and raising a white banner in his right. He names distant peoples, the Yong, Shu, Qiang, Mao, Wei, Lu, Peng and Pu (mostly of the northwest and southwest; scholars disagree on where exactly), and tells his men to halt and dress ranks every six or seven steps and after every few thrusts, to fight like tigers and bears, but not to cut down those who come over. The "Speech at Mu" is not among the forgeries, but scholars still argue about when it was written.

In the "Speech at Mu" the first charge Wu lays against King Zhou is that he listened only to a woman. He quotes the ancients: the hen should not crow; when the hen crows, the household is ruined. Blaming Shang's fall on a king who heeded a woman became a story told in ever more detail; that is a modern reading.

According to the Shiji, when King Zhou heard Wu was coming he too sent out troops, seven hundred thousand men. Wu first sent Shishang Fu with a hundred warriors to challenge them, then drove the main army in. King Zhou's soldiers were many but had no will to fight; they wanted Wu to enter quickly, turned their weapons around and opened the way for him. The figure of seven hundred thousand was already doubted by the Tang scholar Kong Yingda, who said King Zhou could not have had so many and that the historian had inflated it to praise Wu for defeating a strong enemy.

The fighting was over quickly. King Zhou fell back into the city, climbed the Deer Terrace, put on his jade-studded robes and burned himself to death.

Later ages said blood flowed so deep that day it floated the wooden pestles. The image comes from the "Completion of the War" chapter of the Documents, and in the Warring States period Mencius already refused to believe it. Believing everything in the Documents, he said, is worse than having no Documents; of that chapter he accepted only two or three bamboo strips. When the most humane man attacks the least humane, how could the blood run like that? The chapter Mencius read has long been lost; the "Completion of the War" in today's Documents belongs to the Eastern Jin forgeries, and the floating pestles are written into it. Mencius's remark became a common warning against trusting books blindly, and it also inclined many readers to believe that a humane army had no need to kill many. How many actually died that day the transmitted texts disagree wildly, and this story does not judge.

The day he entered the city

According to the Shiji, as soon as the battle ended Wu raised his great white banner to the lords, who bowed, and he returned the courtesy. The people of the Shang capital were waiting outside the walls. Wu sent his ministers to tell them Heaven had sent down blessings. The Shang bowed their heads to the ground, and Wu bowed back.

Then he entered the city and went to where King Zhou had died. He shot three arrows into the body, got down and struck it with a light sword, cut off the head with the yellow axe and hung it from the great white banner. The king's two favorite consorts had already hanged themselves; their heads too were cut off and hung from a small white banner. The display was probably meant for the Shang and the lords, to show the old king was truly dead; that is a modern reading, and the history does not state a purpose.

The next day

Early the next day the Zhou swept the roads and repaired the Shang altar of the soil and the royal palace. A hundred soldiers carrying banners led the way; Wu's brothers and chief ministers flanked him with great and small axes. Wu stood south of the altar, clear water was brought, and Taigong Wang led in the sacrificial animal. The scribe Yin Yi read a prayer whose gist was that Zhou, last descendant of Yin, had abandoned the virtue of former kings, neglected the spirits and abused the people, and the high god had seen it all. Wu bowed twice, head to the ground, and declared that Zhou had received Heaven's great mandate and replaced Yin.

The ceremony was held at the Shang's own altar, probably so that the Shang would see the mandate change hands. That is a guess.

Then came the settlement. Wu enfeoffed King Zhou's son Lufu, also called Wugeng, to rule the remaining Shang people; since loyalties were still unsettled, he set his brothers Guan Xian and Cai Du to assist him, in effect to watch him. He freed Jizi, banked up earth on Bigan's tomb, gave out the treasure of the Deer Terrace and opened the granary at Juqiao for the poor. He granted lands by merit, Taigong Wang in Qi, the Duke of Zhou in Lu, the Duke of Shao in Yan, and gave lands to the descendants of Shennong, the Yellow Emperor, Yao, Shun and Yu. Attaching Zhou to a line of ancient rulers was probably meant to show that its rule had a pedigree; that too is a guess. He also had the nine cauldrons and jades of the Shang royal house put on display.

The Shiji also says Wu honored the village gate of Shang Rong. Who Shang Rong was is disputed. In the "Basic Annals of Yin," Sima Qian makes him a worthy man loved by the people and dismissed by King Zhou, and the old commentary on the Shiji cites the Jin scholar Huangfu Mi treating the name as a person's. But the same note cites the Eastern Han scholar Zheng Xuan: shang rong was the Shang official in charge of music, versed in ritual deportment. On Zheng's reading, what was honored was a ritual office, not a particular worthy. Today's "Completion of the War" chapter also records the honor, and as it was read over the centuries Shang Rong settled into a definite person.

The sleepless night

Back home in Zhou, Wu could not sleep. According to the Shiji, when his brother the Duke of Zhou asked why, Wu said that for the sixty years since before his birth the Yin countryside had lain waste, deer roaming the pastures and insects (some say wild geese) filling the fields; when Heaven founded Yin, it had three hundred and sixty men of note, and that was how Yin had lasted. Zhou's hold on the mandate was not yet secure; how could he sleep? He wanted to build a new city between the Luo and Yi rivers, not far from the dwelling of the high god. He turned his warhorses loose south of Mount Hua and his oxen into the open country at Taolin, to show there would be no more war.

In the second year after the conquest Wu asked Jizi why Yin had fallen. Jizi could not bring himself to speak ill of his own fallen state and talked only of how states survive and perish; Wu felt the question had been unseemly and asked about the way of Heaven instead. Soon Wu fell gravely ill, and the Duke of Zhou fasted and prayed to die in his place. Wu rallied for a while, then died, leaving the young King Cheng.

The Zhou gave this whole chain of events a name, receiving the mandate: Heaven's mandate had rested with Shang and now passed to Zhou. Most scholars today place the conquest in the eleventh century BCE.

Epilogue

That first time at Mengjin, Wu carried his father's tablet on a chariot and called himself only the heir; the lords said it was time to fight, and he turned back. Two years later he crossed at the same ferry, and at the Shang's own altar declared that the mandate had passed to Zhou.

The tablet on the chariot bore King Wen's name throughout. When Wu died the new city had not been built, and what he left his son was a realm only just taken and not yet settled.

Sources and editorial notes

1. Shiji, "Basic Annals of Zhou," the ninth-year review of troops: sacrifice at Bi; King Wen's wooden tablet carried on a chariot in the center of the army; Wu calling himself Heir Fa; eight hundred lords gathering at Mengjin without appointment; Wu's reply that they did not yet know Heaven's mandate; the withdrawal. On Bi, Pei Yin's Jijie cites Ma Rong (King Wen's burial ground) and Sima Zhen's Suoyin reads it as the Bi constellation, which "governs war"; both readings are kept. Bo Yi and Shu Qi: Shiji, "Biography of Bo Yi" ("the account says"). (Shiji juan 4 and 61, Kanripo KR2a0001; Jijie KR2a0002 and Suoyin KR2a0003 compared; Zhonghua pages pending.) 2. Zhou origins and capitals per the "Basic Annals of Zhou"; Hao per the Book of Odes, "King Wen Has Fame" (Shisanjing zhushu Maoshi zhengyi; edition, juan and page pending). Shang treating Zhou as a subordinate polity, with oracle-bone records of campaigns against Zhou, is the standard scholarly view; inscription numbers not checked (pending). The earlier draft's sentence on the scale of Yinxu has been cut. 3. White fish and red crow: "Basic Annals of Zhou." Their origin follows Kong Yingda's subcommentary to the "Great Oath" in the Shangshu zhengyi: the early Han Documents had only twenty-eight chapters and no "Great Oath"; the later-found "Great Oath" was widely doubted; Ma Rong's Shu xu called it shallow and asked whether a fire turning into a bird was not among the things Confucius did not speak of, and also quoted its "eight hundred lords came unsummoned"; Dong Zhongshu's memorial to Emperor Wu already quoted the white fish and the fire that became a crow. Kong's "forged Great Oath" means the Han new-script text, not the three chapters in today's Documents (see note 5). (Shangshu zhushu, Kanripo KR1b0004, Wenyuange juan 10, juan 11 in the usual Shisanjing zhushu; page pending.) Dong's memorial itself (Hanshu, biography of Dong Zhongshu) was not checked (pending). Why the Han wanted omens, and how readers came to see the withdrawal as waiting for Heaven, are the author's inferences and flagged as such. 4. "Basic Annals of Zhou," "two years later": Bigan, Jizi, the music masters' flight; three hundred chariots, three thousand elite warriors, forty-five thousand armored men; the crossing on the wuwu day. Reading the flight as the court coming apart is the author's, with possible Zhou propaganda flagged. The lake of wine, Daji and similar stories mostly come from Warring States and Han texts and are not stated as fact. 5. "Great Oath": the "Basic Annals of Zhou" says Wu "made the Great Oath"; Sima Qian's source was the later Han new-script text (note 3). The three "Great Oath" chapters in today's Documents belong to the old-script Documents presented by Mei Ze in the Eastern Jin, shown to be forgeries by Yan Ruoju's Shangshu guwen shuzheng and others; this is the standard conclusion, but Yan's book was not seen and the exact location is pending. 6. "Speech at Mu" (Shisanjing zhushu Shangshu zhengyi; edition, juan and page pending): the dawn of the jiazi day at Muye; the yellow axe and white banner; the eight peoples; dressing ranks; tigers and bears; "do not strike those who come over" follows the traditional gloss. It is a new-script chapter, not among the forgeries, but its date is debated, hence "as the Zhou handed it down." Map point: "Muye (present-day Xinxiang area, Henan; exact site debated)." The hen that crows: "Speech at Mu"; the Shiji quotes it too. The battle at Muye, the 700,000 men, the challenge by Shishang Fu and the soldiers turning their weapons: "Basic Annals of Zhou"; Kong Yingda's doubt about 700,000 is in his subcommentary on the "Completion of the War" (Kanripo KR1b0004/010). 7. King Zhou's self-immolation per the "Basic Annals of Zhou." 8. Floating pestles: Mencius, "Jin xin II," on believing the Documents, taking only two or three strips of the "Completion of the War," and asking how the blood could have floated the pestles (Shisanjing zhushu Mengzi zhushu; page pending). Today's "Completion of the War" contains "blood flowed and floated the pestles" and also "honored the village gate of Shang Rong"; it is an Eastern Jin forgery, and the chapter Mencius read is lost (Kanripo KR1b0001/031 and KR1b0004/010; page pending). The Eastern Han thinker Wang Chong also rejected it: in Lunheng, "Yi zeng," he says the claim goes too far, since the Muye ground was high and dry, blood would sink into the soil, and soldiers carried dry rations, not pestles and mortars; "Yu zeng" also cites the chapter against the claim that no blood was shed (Lunheng juan 7-8, Kanripo KR3j0080; page pending). The effect on readers is the author's inference. The large casualty and captive figures in the Yi Zhou shu, "Shi fu," were not checked (pending). 9. Entering the city per the "Basic Annals of Zhou." Parallel Yi Zhou shu "Ke Yin" not checked against a reliable edition (Huang Huaixin et al., Yi Zhou shu huijiao jizhu, not seen, pending); the story follows the Shiji only. The purpose of displaying the heads is a modern reading, flagged. 10. "The next day" per the "Basic Annals of Zhou," paraphrased. That the rite was staged for the Shang to see is a guess, flagged. 11. Settlement per the "Basic Annals of Zhou"; the name Wugeng per the "Basic Annals of Yin." The ancient-rulers pedigree is a guess, flagged. 12. Shang Rong: "Basic Annals of Zhou" (honoring Shang Rong's gate); "Basic Annals of Yin" (Shang Rong a worthy loved by the people and dismissed by King Zhou). The Suoyin note there cites Huangfu Mi (a personal name) and Zheng Xuan ("the Shang official in charge of music, versed in ritual deportment"). The "Treatise on Music" has a variant phrasing (the parallel in the Liji was not checked, pending); today's "Completion of the War" also records it (note 8). (Shiji juan 3, 4, 24, Kanripo KR2a0001; Suoyin KR2a0003; Zhonghua pages pending.) 13. The sleepless night, the plan for a city between the Luo and Yi, and the release of horses and oxen per the "Basic Annals of Zhou"; feihong read as insects or as wild geese. The parallel Yi Zhou shu "Du yi" not checked (pending). 14. Wu's question to Jizi, his illness, the Duke of Zhou's prayer and Wu's death per the "Basic Annals of Zhou"; the "Metal-bound Coffer" parallel not checked. 15. Date: the Xia-Shang-Zhou Chronology Project's 1046 BCE (its 2000 interim report, abridged edition; not seen, pending); other reckonings differ. The story says "eleventh century BCE." 16. Textual basis: the Zhonghua punctuated Shiji and the Shisanjing zhushu Shangshu zhengyi, Maoshi zhengyi and Mengzi zhushu; edition (Shiji 1959 or 2013 revision) and all pages pending and not filled from memory. Quotations were checked word by word against the Kanripo digital texts (Shiji KR2a0001-0003, Shangshu KR1b0001 and KR1b0004, Maoshi KR1c0001, Mengzi KR1h0001, Lunheng KR3j0080).