Forces allied with the Quanrong attacked the Zhou heartland and killed King You, triggering the fall of Western Zhou authority and setting the stage for the Eastern Zhou’s weaker royal power and intensified interstate rivalry.
The Zhou royal house shifted its capital east to the Luoyi/Luoyang area under King Ping, a move conventionally associated with the start of Eastern Zhou and the broader Spring and Autumn era of decentralized power.
Zheng defeated a punitive expedition led by King Huan of Zhou; the king was wounded, and the loss further undercut the Zhou court’s remaining coercive authority over vassal states.
Qi’s Duke Huan, aided by minister Guan Zhong, became the first widely recognized ba (hegemon) of the era, using interstate alliances and conferences to manage conflict under nominal Zhou legitimacy.
A noted early Spring-and-Autumn battle in which Lu defeated Qi; later tradition used the episode (recorded in the Zuo Zhuan tradition) to illustrate tactical patience and morale in war.
A major alliance conference convened by Duke Huan of Qi at Kuiqiu illustrates the mature hegemon system, where leading states coordinated diplomacy and coercion while the Zhou king’s role became largely ceremonial.
Jin defeated Chu at Chengpu in a landmark clash of northern and southern coalitions; the victory helped establish Duke Wen of Jin’s hegemonic standing and checked Chu’s northern ambitions for a time.
Jin again defeated Chu at Yanling, highlighting the prolonged, shifting balance among major powers and the centrality of interstate warfare to Spring-and-Autumn politics.
Wu’s decisive victory over Chu at Boju led to the capture and destruction of the Chu capital (Ying), demonstrating that rising peripheral states could overwhelm established great powers in the late Spring-and-Autumn world.
Tian Heng (Tian Chengzi) killed Duke Jian of Qi and installed a replacement ruler, accelerating Qi’s internal power shift from the old ruling house toward powerful ministerial clans—an important late-period trend.
Confucius (Kongzi), a defining thinker of the Spring and Autumn period, died in 479 BCE; his teachings on ethics, ritual, and governance later shaped East Asian political and social thought.
Yue’s King Goujian defeated and annexed Wu after prolonged rivalry; later tradition treats Goujian’s victory as the culmination of Wu–Yue competition and part of the late Spring-and-Autumn hegemonic landscape.
Spring and Autumn Period within the Eastern Zhou (771–476 BCE)
