In the history of ancient China, the most widely known is probably the Three Kingdoms period at the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty. The main reason is the influence of the famous book "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" and the TV series.
During the Three Kingdoms period, the most remarkable thing is that it was its endless strategists and tyrants, Liu Bei, Cao Cao, Zhuge Liang, Guan Yu, Lü Bu, and so on, which were almost known to women and children. But what many people don't know is that this early heroic era was a hell for ordinary people.
During the Three Kingdoms period, because of the fighting and fighting of various forces, wars continued, and in these successive wars, some of the forces on all sides were damaged and some benefited, but for the people, it was a huge suffering.
From the perspective of population, when the Yellow Turban Rebellion in 184 AD, there were about 16.07 million households and a population of about 50 million; by the end of the Three Kingdoms, in 280 AD, about 96 years before and after, the total population was only 1.49 million households, about 5.6 million people, more than 44 million less than the Yellow Turban Uprising. During World War I, the number of deaths was only 10 million, and only 20 million were injured, less than half of the Three Kingdoms period.
There is a reason for such a large population loss. First of all, during the Three Kingdoms period, cold weapons were used, and cold weapons were used, and numbers were the key to victory. Therefore, in order to enhance their own strength, all forces are desperate to recruit troops. And when fighting, a large number of soldiers are thrown into the battlefield.
It takes more than ten or twenty years for a person to become an adult, and in a war, as few as dozens of people, as many as tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of deaths. The most famous battle of Chibi, Sun Liu's coalition army defeated Cao Cao's 800,000 troops with fewer victories and more victories. This result was a great honor for Sun Liu, but this glory was exchanged for the lives of hundreds of thousands of people.
In addition to direct death on the battlefield, many soldiers and civilians died under the bad habits of ancient times - slaughtering the city. During the Three Kingdoms period, the most favorite to slaughter the city was probably Cao Cao, and there were as many as seven times recorded in the history books. The most famous of these is the Xuzhou Massacre.
After Dong Zhuo entered Beijing, Cao Cao's father Cao Song fled to Xuzhou to avoid trouble. At that time, Xuzhou Mu was Tao Qian. At that time, Cao Cao had not yet established a position, but the Cao family was an official for generations, so Tao Qian was very courteous to Cao Song. However, some of Tao Qian's men had bad intentions and coveted Cao Song's treasure, so they killed Cao Song.
Cao Cao learned that Nature was very angry and came to attack Xuzhou. Tao Qian was afraid, so he tied up cao Song's men and handed them over to Cao Cao, hoping that Cao Cao would retreat. But Cao Cao refused to give up, and eventually broke Xuzhou, and then slaughtered the city. Hundreds of thousands of people were killed in Xuzhou City, and rivers of blood flowed. The bodies were thrown into the Surabaya River, but because there were too many corpses, the Surabaya River was cut off.
This was only one of them, and the total of seven times was that the number of people killed by Cao Cao was at least two or three million. Moreover, the vast majority of these people were not soldiers, but unarmed people. This also shows Cao Cao's cruelty, and it is no wonder that posterity calls him a traitor. In addition to Cao Cao, Sun Ce, Sun Quan, Ma Chao and others all have records of slaughtering the city.
In addition, there is another reason is the plague. There must be plague after the Great War, almost a law of ancient warfare. Because the war caused a large number of deaths, a large number of corpses can not be disposed of, many times are shallow burial, or even exposed to the wilderness, so that it will lead to the breeding of bacteria and viruses. In ancient times, the sanitary conditions were extremely poor, and there was little concern for food and water, so it was easy to lead to a plague epidemic.
According to records, the plague of the Three Kingdoms period occurred a total of 17 times, the most serious occurring in the 22nd year of Jian'an (207 AD). At that time, countless people died from this plague, and many historical celebrities such as Chen Lin, Xu Gan, Liu Zhen and others died from this plague.
These people are all people with official positions and status, and even these people have died in this plague, and the fate of ordinary people is even more imaginable. Cao Zhi, a literary scholar at that time, also wrote an article entitled "Talking about epidemic gas" to describe the tragic situation of society at that time.
In addition, there were many natural disasters at that time. There is a very famous battle in the Three Kingdoms, that is, Guan Yunchang flooded the Seventh Army. The reason why Guan Yu was able to flood the Seventh Army was because it was raining heavily at that time, causing the river to flood, and Guan Yu thought of a plan to flood the enemy army.
In addition to floods, there are droughts, earthquakes and other disasters, which make the people who are already suffering from war and chaos even worse.
In the final analysis, the fundamental reason for the sharp decline in population during this period was war. If it were not for war, there would be no soldiers dying, there would be no plague without a large number of soldier deaths; if there had been no war, even if there were natural disasters, whether government or civilian, assistance would not have been caused by huge population losses.
Rejoice, the people suffer; die, the people suffer!