introduction:
Yuan Shao, a politician and military figure in the late Eastern Han Dynasty, established his own power in the chaos, ruled one side of the territory, and was also a tyrant in the chaotic world. He was born in a famous aristocratic family, and there were many outstanding people in the family, and even within four generations, five people successively ranked among the three dukes.
With the shadow of his family, Yuan Shao served as a lieutenant in the imperial court after he became an adult. When he entered the dynasty as an official, he happened to encounter the imperial power, the eunuchs controlled the government, the situation was turbulent, and the society was in chaos. Yuan Shao, who was born into the nobility, naturally hated such behavior very much, so he finally joined forces with other ministers on the side of qing jun and killed all the eunuchs in the palace in one fell swoop, which was bound to cut the grass and remove the roots.
Later, he directly became hostile to Dong Zhuo and became the leader of the Kwantung Alliance through election. Slowly, he continued to accumulate his strength, defeating the separatist forces stationed in Youzhou in the four-year Battle of Yijing in Jian'an, thus unifying Hebei, and his power has since reached its peak.
Wang Yue once commented on him: Yuan Shao has a posture and a prestige, and he has a name for his soldiers. After all the generations of the Taiwan Division, the guests returned, and they all fell in love with their hearts, and they did not rush to their court, and the soldiers were not noble and lowly, and they fought against it.
The son of a famous man, he opposed the participation of eunuchs in politics
Yuan Shao was born in a family of officials and eunuchs in the late Eastern Han Dynasty, from his great-grandfather to his father, who held important positions in the imperial court, so even if Yuan Shao was only the son of Shu Chu, in the end he was still able to enter the dynasty as an official under the protection of the family.
Yuan Shao has been extraordinary since he was a child, his temperament is unworldly, and he is full of talent, so the elders in his family value him. He once served as the governor of Puyang County when he was twenty years old, and he had outstanding political achievements and strong governance ability. However, due to the death of his mother, he went home to mourn, but his father also died tragically, so it was delayed for six years. After this, he refused the imperial court's conscription and chose to live in seclusion in Luoyang.
The Eastern Han Dynasty ruled darkly during this period, the emperor had no real power in his hands, and the power was controlled by eunuchs, and those righteous scholars and students in Taixue naturally became a thorn in their eyes. Faced with this situation, although Yuan Shao lived in seclusion at home, he learned these things through the mouth of his friend Zhang Mi, who was also a member of the opposition to the eunuch dictatorship. After understanding the specific situation, he formed an alliance with Cao Cao and others to establish a political group against the eunuch dictatorship and act together.
Hunt down eunuchs and attack Dong Zhuo
In the first year of Zhongping, the Yellow Turban Rebellion broke out, and the Eastern Han court was forced to release countless classes of scholars. Therefore, Yuan Shao agreed to the invitation of the then general He Jin and once again entered the court as an official. This He Jin was a powerful courtier at that time, a foreign relative of the empress, and had long been dissatisfied with the eunuch dictatorship. Yuan Shao made good use of this, wanting to borrow his power to eliminate the eunuchs, and because Yuan Shao was from a famous nobleman, He Jin also trusted Yuan Shao, so the two used each other and supported each other.
Yuan Shao, who was once again an official, was made a lieutenant of the Chinese Military Academy, and Cao Cao served as a lieutenant of the military academy at that time, but the power of the court was still firmly controlled by the eunuchs, and even He Jin, as a general, had to obey their dispatches. Under conspiracy, Yuan Shao and his uncle pretended to claim that they had received the emperor's holy will, were ordered to kill the eunuch party, and then mobilized an army through He Jin to surround the palace. The soldiers were ordered to search all the eunuchs in the palace, young and old, and to behead them.
Perhaps the bad influence brought about by the eunuchs' participation in politics was too great for Yuan Shao and others to remember, so they made up their minds to cut the grass and remove the roots, and even those who grew beards were killed as eunuchs. On the way to kill the eunuchs, Dong Zhuo's army was originally dispatched, but Dong Zhuo rebelled, and he held the young emperor hostage to lead the army into Luoyang. During this period, Dong Zhuo's brutal rule caused dissatisfaction among the scholar class, and people everywhere demanded that the imperial court punish him.
And this Yuan Shao became the first choice, because he had meritorious service in killing eunuchs, which was respected by everyone, and everyone recommended him as the leader of the rebel army. Only in the end, due to the looseness of the other taishou troops and internal instability, this war was finally over.
The tactics failed, and he had no choice but to cling to Cao Cao
This Yuan family has deep roots and many children in the family, and this Yuan Shu is one of them. Although Yuan Shu and Yuan Shao were born into the same family, they were sharply contradictory. In the third year of Chuping, Yuan Shao and Yuan Shu officially went to war. At the very beginning, Yuan Shao's forces were unable to defeat Yuan Shu and Cao Cao, and finally defeated the armies of Yuan Shu and Gongsun Zhan. Later, Cao Cao supported his troops and respected himself, held Tianzi hostage to make the people of the world, and occupied most of the land in Henan. At first, Yuan Shao did not worry about Cao Cao, so after Cao Cao developed and grew, he already regretted it. In desperation, the situation changed, and eventually he became Cao Cao's subordinate.
Frustrated Zhi once commented on Yuan Shao as follows: The general weak crown dengchao, then broadcast the name Hainei; zhenyi county pawn, the crowd of jizhou, Wei zhen heshuo, the world's name.
In the last years of the Eastern Han Dynasty, the world was chaotic, and the forces in various places were constantly revolting, and in the context of such chaos, Yuan Shao was able to form his own team with his own ability, which also required skill. His greatest achievement was to overthrow the eunuch clique together with his courtiers, thus temporarily saving the turbulent Eastern Han Dynasty to a certain extent.
Resources:
Book of the Later Han Dynasty, Volume IX, Ninth Chronicle of The Emperor Xiaoxian