This matter began in the seventh year of the Han Ling Emperor Guanghe, at this time the Han Ling Emperor was either busy selling officials with his mother Empress Dong to accumulate wealth, or spending adult days in the harem and the concubines and concubines "naked travel", the corruption of the imperial court was corrupt to a certain depth, the eunuchs and foreign relatives were fighting non-stop, the frontier wars were continuous, the country was getting weaker and weaker, and there was a national drought, the grain was not collected, the taxes could not be less, and the people were really tired. It was already miserable that there was no enough to eat and pay taxes, and at this time there was a sudden plague, there was no money to pay taxes, naturally there was no money to see a doctor, the homeless people who died of illness and starvation were everywhere, and the corpses of the dead could be seen everywhere in the thoroughfares and rural fields, and these corpses would soon be eaten by wild dogs.
The people in distress look forward to the gods who save the suffering and save the suffering. The "immortals" really appeared.
As early as the shun emperor's time, an alchemist named Ganji made a book of gods and gods, the Taiping Jing, to spread the religion of the gods and immortals. Later, Zhang Jiao, coupled with the early "Huang Lao Thought", took his two brothers to propagate the Taiping Dao and formed his own doctrine. Zhang Jiao claimed to be a messenger of the Yellow HeavenLy God, a self-proclaimed great sage, combined his own medical skills with the contents of the Taiping Sutra, treated people suffering from diseases through talismans and elixirs, preached to the people to achieve salvation through introspection and repentance, and sent disciples to various places to expand the network of the Taiping Dao.
Open horns
At that time, the poor masses who were uneasy and afraid of life and disease, as well as many of the Hao class, were deeply attracted by the Taiping Dao, and in the more than ten years after 170 AD, from the eastern part of North China to the Yangtze River Valley, the Taiping Dao had a high prestige among the poor peasants, with hundreds of thousands of letters. Under the orders of Zhang Jiao, in 184 AD (the year of Jiazi), the desperate poor peasants rebelled against the Han with the slogan "The heavens are dead, the yellow sky is standing, the age is in the jiazi, the world is auspicious" as the slogan; "Cangtian" refers to the Eastern Han Dynasty, and "Huangtian" refers to the Taiping Dao, and according to the speculation that the Five Virtues have always said, The Han is fire virtue, fire is born of earth, and the soil is yellow, so all the believers tie yellow scarves on their heads as a sign, symbolizing the replacement of the corrupt Eastern Han Dynasty. The believers in the eight prefectures of Qing, Xu, You, Ji, Jing, Yang, Yan, and Yu were divided into thirty-six parties; more than 10,000 people in Dafang and 6,700 in Small Fang; and each side set up a canal marshal, who unified his command, and prepared for a large-scale uprising, with the intention of overthrowing the Han Dynasty and establishing a new world ruled by the Yellow Turban Army.
In the face of this nationwide rebellion, the Eastern Han Court temporarily stopped the power struggle of the Imperial Court and went all out to suppress the Yellow Turban Army. But the fire was already raging everywhere, and the Local Yellow Turban Army, which rose up in the chaos, and the peasant army in various places that echoed the Yellow Turban Army, had great power. Among them, the most powerful are the Montenegrin Army in Hebei and the Wudou Midao army operating in Shaanxi, Sichuan and other places.
In order to effectively suppress the uprising, in March of the fifth year of Zhongping, Emperor Ling accepted the suggestion of Liu Yan of Taichang and changed part of the history of thorns to a state pastor, with the clan or heavy ministers, giving them local military and political power, so as to strengthen the strength of the local government, easier control of the locality, and effectively suppress the remnants of the Yellow Turban. And it is precisely because the Han Ling Emperor delegated power, encouraged the local army to support the self-respect, the various groups of heroes attacked each other, chasing deer in the Central Plains, and even the Eastern Han Emperor was like nothing in the hands of the warlords, the local despised the central government, and ambitious generals or officials used the military strength in the process of suppressing the Yellow Turban Rebellion to divide the localities, which opened the prelude to the warlord melee at the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty.
It took another twenty years for the imperial court to suppress these peasant armies. Although the uprising was suppressed by the Eastern Han court, the prestige of the Han Dynasty suffered a serious blow since then, but the Han Ling Emperor did not change his mind, but continued to enjoy himself.
After the Yellow Turban Rebellion and the subsequent tyranny of Dong Zhuo, the central government delegated armed power to the local powerful clans, which influenced the history of China for at least five hundred years, the Han Dynasty existed in name only, and the world entered an era of division.